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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

#111

Post by ojbyrne »

chc wrote: post #13
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…

Are PR people really 90% attractive young women? I would be very surprised to find that out.

Attractive is subjective, but a (female) friend in PR told me that 80% of PR people are female. And given the well documented ageism in tech, young seems probable.

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

#112

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#113

Post by rada »

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…

Odds are, if you were recruiting for [promotional ] work 90% would be outgoing and attractive young women, just like recruiting programmers will get you 90% geeky white males.

Absolutely not true. There is no shortage of male actors and models. Whatsoever. And the prettier they are, the bigger the pay delta vis-a-vis the female actors and models. Whoever is hiring booth babes is actively excluding men, and paying through the nose to do it.

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

#114

Post by smackfu »

JPKab wrote: post #103
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,…

She's talking about "women who are pretty but not models, dressed in normal street clothes to push whatever product they have." Is that what you think of for "booth babes"?

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

#115

Post by lmm »

jblz wrote: post #23

If I'm understanding correctly, the author would prefer it if non-technical female expo floor workers were scantily-clad so she would be less likely to be assumed by other conference-goers to be non-technical herself..? I'm sorry, but I find that pretty offensive. I don't claim to know what it's like to be a woman in a heavily male-dominated field (or just your de facto patriarchy, for that matter), but I also don't…

>More importantly, I assume anyone representing a product or service at a show is knowledgeable about its inner-workings until they give me some reason to believe otherwise regardless of their gender or attire.

That must get pretty tiring at a conference like this (assuming the description in the post is accurate). People don't stereotype for fun, they do it because it's effective.

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

#116

Post by spocktacular »

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…

The trick is that when people you talk to universally assume you're not technical due to your gender, it is simultaneously:

a) exhausting to have to change every person's perception of you prior to being able to really engage in conversation b) demoralizing when your male peers are treated with more respect automatically based on their gender c) a sad loss of opportunity to engage in the discussion, when no opportune moment arises where you can comfortably communicate that you are qualified to participate

The author cited conversations where men she was with did not have the same experience as her. She essentially had to work harder in order to be seen as an equal participant.

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

#117

Post by bluehat »

unreal37 wrote: post #79

It was an interesting blog post, that puts a new spin on the Booth Babe controversy. Thanks for sharing. Saying that she was less uncomfortable with a bunch of drunk guys yelling "take your shirt off!" at Defcon than at GDC is saying something...

When the guys were shouting, the rest of the crowd and security was frowning at them. It was really easy to see this problem was something everybody knew about, that good people had my back, and something we would solve shortly. It wasn't fun at the time, but I knew it would be done soon.

GDC was a worse experience because it was profoundly isolating, and made me feel like an outsider. Also, I don't see an easy solution coming to fix it, which makes the situation feel more depressing.

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

#118

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#119

Post by rada »

blhack wrote: post #21
JulianMorrison wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets make it really, really simple. 1. Do not hire eye candy as eye candy. Of either sex. Dressed up or dressed down. 2. Product promotion staff should be clearly labeled as such.

Good luck with that first one. This isn't tech, this is every business since the beginning of business.

They said the same thing about flight attendants.

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

#120

Post by JulianMorrison »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #85
calibraxis wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, that's why you retaliate against such advertisers. Boycotts, public campaigns, etc. Through such efforts, corporations have become noticeably less overt about using people of color and women as inferior objects for the amusement of the dominating classes.

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

When orchestras started doing tryouts behind an opaque screen, they found that their previous insistence that women couldn't play as well as men was bogus, because the interviewees that got the job were 50/50 male and female. You could get a third party to white out the gender cues on resumes before you sort them into the shortlist, and then conduct interviews over text skype.

But honestly, someone who uses the concept "ugly women" is failing so hard at sexism already they might as well be a character from "Mad Men".

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