The BBC posted a piece about the practice of electronics companies hiring models to "promote" their company's booths at tradeshows like the currently underway Consumer Electronics Show. The practice goes something like this:
- Find a hot woman.
- Dress her in small amounts of fabric.
- Have her stand near/hold your product
- Have her talk to creeps who would normally just stare at her from afar.
- (Optional - if you're nice) Pay for any counseling that may be required after Step #4.
It's pretty clear that this is not exactly a pillar of gender equality, and the tech writers interviewed in the BBC video outline how ridiculous the booth babe concept is, but the star of the show is definitely Consumer Electronics Association CEO Gary Shapiro. His time on camera is brief, but he makes the most of it, dropping gems like,
"Sometime it is a little old school... uh, but it does work."
and...
"So your effort to try and get a story based on booth babes, which is decreasing rather rapidly in the industry, and say that it's somehow sexism imbalancing, it's cute, but it's frankly irrelevant in my view."Brilliant deflection sir! A masterful display of verbalgenesis with "sexism imbalancing." Although, we may not have bought it had you not immediately followed these terrific responses with a self-satisfied smirk for the ages.
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| "Oh yeah. I fuggin' nailed that one." |
The video is interesting, and one guy actually makes a kind of compelling case for why booth babes are there; but despite his arguments, the whole concept still seems pretty pathetic, both for the companies that hire booth babes and the attendees who are draw in by them.
I personally plan to boycott any show that employs booth babes. It is indicative of the rampant sexism in our society that men are not presented with the same opportunities for objectification.
Bring on Booth Bros!
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