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Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

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Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#101

Post by saraid216 »

joezydeco wrote: post #29
mattmaroon wrote: post #7

Wait, I don't get it. I'm at GDC. A very large portion (maybe even a majority) of either gender is non-technical. It's an industry event so there are lots of salespeople, hr, biz-dev, etc. I wouldn't assume a man I met here was a developer. There are some pretty obvious booth babes (the energy drink girls, ones with swords, etc.) There are women who, while perhaps non-technical, legitimately work for the companies th…

So GDC isn't the Game Developer Conference? I thought E3 was for the marketing and sales types.

It's the Game Developer Conference. Marketing and sales are sort of baked into the very idea of a major conference, these days. It may not be ideal, but it's reality.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#102

Post by joe_the_user »

Shivetya wrote: post #92
onemorepassword wrote: post #6

Seems like a hard problem to solve. Sending people to do product promotional is perfectly legitimate depending on the type of event. Even if you weren't deliberately targeting a male audience with attractive females (although I'm sure that was the case), odds are that if you were recruiting for that kind of work 90% would be outgoing and attractive young women. Just like recruiting programmers will get you 90% geeky…

As was mentioned on this site before, burqa or bikini, there is always someone telling OTHER women how they must dress, how they must act, what they must be. It does not matter which sex the speaker is, they should respect the choice another makes.

Wow, you've distorted the situation considerably.

These saleswomens' employers are giving them dress-code guidelines already - " telling OTHER women how they must dress". That was true with "booth babe" dress and presently. The woman's blog post was clearly addressed to GDC which seems to have set the tone for the companies at the booth who hired their saleswomen/demonstrators. There's no situation of a woman commenting about another woman's clothing choice on, say, her day off.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#103

Post by JPKab »

onemorepassword wrote: post #6

Seems like a hard problem to solve. Sending people to do product promotional is perfectly legitimate depending on the type of event. Even if you weren't deliberately targeting a male audience with attractive females (although I'm sure that was the case), odds are that if you were recruiting for that kind of work 90% would be outgoing and attractive young women. Just like recruiting programmers will get you 90% geeky…

As a 31 year old male, here is my message to tech companies with products to sell:

If you have "booth babes" (I think she did a great job in the article of defining what that term means), I'm not going to buy your product. I hate it and always have. Its trashy and demeaning, and I resent being grouped into the lowest common denominator when I go to view a product I actually care about. As demeaning as it is to women, I think a lot of men would agree that its demeaning to be treated like a dog who can be baited with a doggy treat.

If you have a good product, you don't need to lure in knuckle draggers who let themselves be led around by their reproductive instincts.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#104

Post by smoyer »

bluehat wrote: post #50
smoyer wrote: post #16

Hmmm ... I'm not sure I can agree with the idea of dressing more of the booth babes in bikinis (seems like a step backwards), but I can understand the need to be viewed as technical. And at a conference like GDC, it can be hard for the guys to know who is technical and who isn't. I propose the people that want to talk technical and be treated as "nerds" all wear propeller beanies from now on. That way we'll be able t…

I was actually thinking a solution might be to hand out awesome buttons that say "I make stuff!" and then encourage both women and men to wear them.

Buttons, badges that are different colors, or find a sponsor to give t-shirts to the technical people for each day of the show? The propeller beanie isn't really something I picture many of us wearing (well ... until it advances to the point we can use it as a personal transportation device), but anything to differentiate the real techies is good.

I should also point out that meaningful conversations can happen between the marketeer and techies, but what do we do with the non-exibitor PHBs that attend.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#105

Post by jiggy2011 »

calibraxis wrote: post #96
jiggy2011 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how such a boycott would even work, insist that all advertising uses ugly women?

No need for body-shaming terms like "ugly women". In any case, the US civil rights, feminist and leftist movements have all sorts of successful case studies, if you are seriously interested in helping pursue this.

Well, you could say "women with body types that men are more likely to pay attention to" or as they are commonly known "models".

Trying to get people to deprogram their own biology at a very deep level is probably going to be a losing battle.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#106

Post by andyl »

Hacker News: your go-to site for Gender Politics! Bring your grievance to Hacker News, and let our expert commentators put your resentments under the microscope. We've already analyzed dozens of fascinating complaints just like yours, and our appetite for endless debate grows day by day!

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#107

Post by [deleted] »

thedufer wrote: post #63
peterevans wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem I have with your comments is that you haven't put yourself in her shoes. You've simply related how you see things and drawn your conclusion from that alone. Her point was that women engineers seem to have a hard time at GDC -- so yeah, as a male engineer, it's not shocking that things seemed fine to you. She took the time to put up a sincere blog post about her experience; she's probably not doing…

But his point is that the problem she's writing about (people assuming she's non-technical) is true of both male and female devs, because there are so many non-technical people of both genders. Him being right doesn't make her "contrary or [a] troll".

[deleted]

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#108

Post by mbetter »

andyl wrote: post #106

Hacker News: your go-to site for Gender Politics! Bring your grievance to Hacker News, and let our expert commentators put your resentments under the microscope. We've already analyzed dozens of fascinating complaints just like yours, and our appetite for endless debate grows day by day!

First ten participants get a free "My feelings for dongles are modern and nuanced" t-shirt.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#109

Post by saidajigumi »

skastel wrote: post #88
saidajigumi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure I can agree with the idea of dressing more of the booth babes in bikinis I don't think that was OP's point, per se. It's that the bikini-clad "uniform" tended to provide an automatic distinction between the women hired to staff booths from the women attending the conference. Once that distinction was removed an unfortunate bias and/or numbers game kicked in: attendees started implicitly assuming "woman…

Might be worth noting that even if a woman is there staffing a booth, that doesn't disqualify them from being technically inclined.

I'm quite aware of that, thanks. View that sentence as a verbal experiment whilst trying to generalize around the hornet's nest my mind has accrued around the phrase "booth babes."

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#110

Post by mmcnickle »

bluehat wrote: post #91
danilocampos wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I'm understanding correctly You most certainly are not. The author is simply pointing out that ending the booth babe situation isn't a panacea. The real issue is the shortage of actual technical contributors who are also women: > Goodness knows, if I had the power to bring tons of other technical women at the conference that would be an optimal solution

(I added that after he posted, because s/he brought up a good point.)

Could you mark your edits in the article as such? It's making the discussion here difficult to follow as people are referring to outdated versions.
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