I threw that one in for the men - it’s a real thing they say in these job guides. Looking all professional isn’t really about personal choice, there’s a look and if you conform to it you show that you understand the game. A guy who goes all full beard, a woman who overdoes the cleavage are both sending the same message (more or less) that they either are too clueless (unprofessional) to know what is expected or places more value on their own individual style than on corporate style. It’s all about the conformity. I’m not saying I approve, just that is how business attire works.
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I’d like to see where they pack their hard drives, har har har.
Not choices that I’ll ever be offered.
Good on you for resisting the urges of your colleagues, but I think you’re too focused on the trees when the whole forest is on fire.
I suppose to a degree I am saying that because I have a rather polarized view of advertising on the whole. Advertising has so completely decoupled itself from reality as to be laughable, and I believe that advertisers would happily use any method possible to attempt to manipulate me into buying their product with absolutely no regard as to whether I need it or not, and especially with no regard as to how those manipulations can and will affect me as a person. You talk about not wanting to make a product appear sexy, unless it’s a sexy product–products are not sexy to me, they are products. People are sexy, products are window dressing, and advertising is the shady scumbag in the corner telling you not to worry about money, time, family, nature, or a hundred thousand other things more important than your godamned ipod cover.
So you might get all high and mighty about booth babes and boycotting products that objectify women, where I see all advertising as objectifying humans in general.
This is getting pretty far off topic, but hell, I’m game.
You seem to be completely disillusioned with society in general. Fair enough, go start your revolution. But for those of us who see redemption and incremental improvement within the realm of possibility, we’ll fight for the individual causes that we believe will make society a better place.
On a side note: Do you really not believe a product, an object, can be sexy?
Art, clothing, tools, furniture, buildings, they all spur emotions across the spectrum. Why not arousal, or lust, or sexual confidence? Sure, advertising is manipulating your emotions in order to make you want that object, but if you didn’t have those emotions towards it to begin with there would be nothing to manipulate.
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Who have started Not using women as sex objects in their Ads, apparently they’ve finally realised it’s a bit wrong
Isn’t that called objectophilia?
Cripes, really?
What’s more, the kind of attendees the “babes” attracted were less valuable to Chen’s companies: rather than roping in executives with purchase-decision power, they brought in young “IT nubs” who just wanted to get their pictures taken with models in sexy outfits.
Are you just trying really hard to say that the execs aren’t buying from the boot babes because misogyny, or what? I don’t know about the execs, but out-of-place “babe” is usually a good indicator that the product is crap, and that they’re trying to attract horny rubes. Further, they tend to be models hired for a convention solely for their looks; they’re not from the sales department or even employees, in other words.
I don’t do something like, say, avoid a movie with a half-naked girl on the movie poster because I hate women, I do so because I know that the naked or half-naked women will be the highlight of the movie. It’s 2014. If I want to see a woman fellating a Mauser while humming the German national anthem and has a tiny German flag with the flagpole stuck in her anus while a nude Hitler lookalike is tied to a chair and struggling to masturbate, there are probably at least 500 such videos on various tube sites. (Disclaimer: I do not want to see any of those videos.)
I figure the booth babes are a throwback to the days when a business convention was a total sausage fest. I remember going to a car convention about 25 years ago, and there were about 2 booth babes per car, and most of them had skirts that were shorter than TOS Star Trek female uniforms. As I was about 14 at the time, I remember no other details. So their sales pitches were super-effective…
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I’m just going to leave this here:
Black Cat cosplayer sexually harassed at Comic Con becomes Tumblr hero
I mean…I get what comparison you’re trying to make, and to be sure the women who are taking jobs as booth babes almost certainly have agency (I have my doubts that there are too many slaves working the booths, for serious) there’s a pretty serious difference here: the women working the booths are hired specifically to be overtly sexual. The women who go to conventions dressed that way are doing so (I hope, at least) due to their own decisions. You might make it your mission to convince them that they do so because of societal norms or internalized misogyny, but there are some seriously attractive people who are nonetheless big fans and dress that way because they think it’s fun to look like their favorite characters. Me, I’m a fat dude and there’s no way I’m subjecting anyone to myself in a superhero suit or a Starfleet uniform. Maybe Jedi robes. Maybe.
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I have to confess to some hypocrisy here. Booths with booth babes really annoy me, and I don’t like being treated with that kind of disrespect, but as phlavor commented above, I would totally check out a booth with a freaking llama or a sloth in it., and bribing me with coffee or good chocolate will get you a booth visit. Or you can have Rivest or Schneier or Dan Kaminsky at your booth to draw in visitors as well. (I do remember one year that some vendor at the RSA show in San Francisco had booth babes; almost everybody who bothered to stop told them that they’d seriously misjudged their audience.)
And when my company has booths at events, my physical appearance is a factor in what I’m doing, because I’m recognizably the guy with a beard and sandals that you drag out to talk to the visitor’s guy or girl who’s also dressed as a hacker. And we’ll often have some people at the booth who don’t know much about the product, including employees or professional event staff (dressed professionally) who keep traffic moving through the booth, make sure that visitors can get to the people who can talk about the product, make sure that the people at the front desk have working card-scanners and tchochkes, make sure that the people who are talking about the products are ready to go on schedule, etc., and I think that’s all fine.
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I too like your way of thinking. Why limit, not diversify?
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I think the “un-serious” bit is probably more related to the vinyl shorts and thigh high boots.
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That is a very specific video you’re strenuously denying wanting to see there. Just sayin… 
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I would totally check out a booth with a freaking llama or a sloth in it., and bribing me with coffee or good chocolate will get you a booth visit. Or you can have Rivest or Schneier or Dan Kaminsky at your booth to draw in visitors as well.
Yep. I like your description of how your booth was run. The “floor pros” directing traffic to the sales reps and the product people. Sounds like a good booth.
Here’s the thing…all of those things are either totally appropriate in a professional situation (coffee especially), or, if not 100% appropriate, aren’t exactly inappropriate either. Floor Pros are totally appropriate and probably necessary if it’s a large show. Promotional materials that are appropriate for the crowd are appropriate to hand out. It’s worth noting that “appropriate for the crowd” doesn’t mean sex stuff, but…if you are a civil engineer, there’s a different range of oooh aaaah gadgets than one would give to a racehorse breeder. (The civil engineer would probably not know what to do with a hoof pick.) Livestock like llamas or, say, sheep at a tech show are in the not-inappropriate category if it’s tech. Can you imagine a games convention where the folks selling Catan had a live sheep and a stack of wood? At a livestock-industry convention, llamas are totally appropriate. With the llama or the sloth or the coffee or the chocolate, there will be a sales rep behind all of that to give you the pitch.
And sex in a business setting isn’t always inappropriate. If you are at a trade show where some of the biggest names in the business are Jenna Jameson and Ron Jeremy, sex on display is 100% appropriate. Depending on the product being sold, sometime more than simple display may be appropriate (touch the Real Doll’s lifelike skin, everybody!).
Whereas if you’re looking at sex at a non-adult-industry show, and you leave out the obvious sexism, if I showed up at work in one of the booth-babe outfits, I would at least be disciplined and possibly fired. If my engineering-related-industry boss told me that I was required to wear a booth-babe outfit, and submit myself to sexual objectification and in some cases sexual harassment by floor patrons all day long, in order to keep my job, that would be illegal on grounds of sexual harassment. If my engineering-related-industry company had all the women wearing booth-babe outfits at a show as a condition of our future employment (and likewise we were subject to objectification and harassment) and the men were wearing khakis and polo shirts, then that would be illegal on grounds of workplace gender discrimination. It’s inappropriate for the setting, it’s inappropriate behaviour towards the female employees, and in some cases it’s illegal. Why would it be appropriate, then, to hire outside contractors under the same set of rules? If it is inappropriate in day-to-day work, it’s inappropriate at a trade show.
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The size of the hard drive is meaningless if the unit doesn’t have enough RAM to function properly. It’s also important to know the down-time. You might want to check out the responsiveness of the new SSD models.
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I hear you; boy do I hear you.
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Speaking just for myself, but as a cosplaying woman; whether or not my outfit is sexy is not really what matters to me. I’m interested in a) the character that I like, and b) showing off the artistry of creating the costume. I’ve done “sexy” and I’ve done fully clothed dressed as a man. The older I get, the less interested I am in walking around with my ass hanging out all day, but there’s still some skimpier outfits I’d try. My daughter and myself are thinking of doing Silk Spectre I and II together sometime.
So basically I’m agreeing with you. Ironically, the fact that I will never cosplay my favorite superhero isn’t because her outfit is skimpy or revealing, it’s because she’s Storm and I’m white.
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Bully for you, and thanks for the assumption that a critic of advertising cannot participate in ways and methods that will make society a better place. Because, you know, advertising in general has helped us move forward so very far… Also, that’s a wonderful little bit of conflation you’ve got there. Redemption in advertising? Making society a better place…through advertising? Color me unimpressed.
And since we’re discussing this in the context of advertising, your use of the word “redemption” is a bit odd. Oh, gosh, look at how that Cracker Barrel ad helped save the little children. Let’s all advertise!!
I take your point that you’re doing what you can within your particular working world, but when the basis of that world is the manipulation of people’s feelings and desires, and the advertisers who most readily and effectively sustain those urges (especially in ways that are intended to keep those urges from being fulfilled), then we’ve got a problem.
And just because seeing art, clothing, tools, furniture, buildings might generate some emotion doesn’t mean it’s okay to manipulate that emotion for your personal gain.
Because society==advertising, amirite?
You realise you’re doing it too?
I think the older, charming women can also be considered “booth babes.” They are not attracting customers with their body, but instead with their personalities, charm, and professionalism. Maybe it’s more accurate to call one of them a “booth madame.”
I’m not impressed with their hypocrisy. When trying to discredit and shame the use of women as customer magnets, they chose to use charming old women to attract customers as an alternative to physically attractive women.
