13 ms·

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

173 points by jchrisa 14y ago

davidroberts 14y ago
Maybe wearing a beat-up t-shirt that says "Come to the Dark Side. We have cookies. " would help establish the OP as an engineer.
- Killah911 14y ago
  That's why I prefer to be an engineer, so I don't have to F#@$ing dress up like anybody! "Dress up like an engineer", WTF is that supposed to be? Am I the only person who is dumbfounded by this? We're all about judging worth based on who someone is and what they've done... The only time I ever "dress up" is when I have to deal with certain business types who are perfectly comfortable with a monocle & a pocket watch.
  - claudius 14y ago
    Monocles and pocket watches are cool (just like bow ties).
  - stephencanon 14y ago
    Seriously. Engineers don't (shouldn’t) need to dress like anything to have their skills recognized. Like dressing like a hipster? Great. Enjoy wearing bespoke suits? Great. Look like a Abercrombie model? Great. Hoodies? Great. If you’re competent and honest and work hard, I respect your chops. I don’t care how you dress.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    And therein is the paradox. James Gosling tells a great story about having a visiting professor come in to give a talk, the grad students hosted him for dinner the night before. The professor casually remarked that he was sad he had left his plaid shirt at home. Every grad student was wearing a plaid shirt. It was a completely unconscious thing, but when pointed out very obvious. James tends to wear t-shirts these days with inside jokes on them :-) When I was working at Google the cafes provided a great place to watch people. Here was a large sample of silicon valley engineers. And looking at the way they chose to wear was fascinating. From really carefully put together outfits, to random sets of things, to carefully selected to appear random but not actually be random. An amazing spectrum. What I concluded is that if you make no conscious choice at all, your random selection will be biased toward what your eye has seen on others. That leads to a homogeneity in appearance which is both unintentional and obvious when you look for it. The interesting people for me were the ones who looked like they were part of the random crowd except they didn't have the sort of random mistakes that came with true randomness. Either by design or a natural fashion talent I don't know. But interesting anyway.
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    > "WTF is that supposed to be?" A de facto norm that arises out of any subculture. When you have enough people all hanging around each other all the time, all kinds of things develop, including fashion. > "We're all about judging worth based on who someone is and what they've done..." > "is when I have to deal with certain business types who are perfectly comfortable with a monocle & a pocket watch" So... you balk at being judged on your fashion choices, but you're more than willing to judge others for their fashion choices? These two sentences refute each other.
    - Killah911 14y ago
      Monocle & a pocket watch aren't exactly fashion choices. I was hinting at "dress codes" as being more reflective of the 18th-early 19th century thinking and not quite so relevant in the 21st century and the Information Age. I was trying to be succinct.
      - potatolicious 14y ago
        Those two concepts aren't as separate as you want them to be. At the end of the day you're still suggesting a link between a mode of thinking and a mode of dress - while at the same time objecting to that link being drawn for yourself. You can't make a post complaining about people stereotyping engineers, while stereotyping "business types" in the same sentence.
        Killah911 14y ago
        Congrats, you win!
  - lmm 14y ago
    It's a more efficient social protocol - rather than having to ask everyone what their interests are at the start, and abandon 80% of conversations, you dress in a way that indicates what you're interested in, and then can quickly identify the like-minded people you want to talk to. I thought engineers were all about efficiency.
    - stephencanon 14y ago
      The Knuth quote regarding premature optimization is rarely so apt.
      - lmm 14y ago
        Being able to spend less time talking to the people I don't want to (and more time talking to the people I do) would probably be the single greatest improvement to my life. It's not at all premature to expend a bit of effort on it.
        stephencanon 14y ago
        Two things: first, learning how to talk to people with whom you don't have much in common is remarkably valuable. Second, even if you don't care, making that decision on the basis of how someone is dressed is superficial in the extreme.
saraid216 14y ago
I wish we had more men who dressed up as booth babes. Don't we have enough body builders in the game industry yet?
- TwiztidK 14y ago
  That is the secret plot behind "brogramming."
- sargun 14y ago
  What would be the benefit of this to the companies promoting their product?
  - saddestcatever 14y ago
    People are generally attracted by attractive people.
    - sargun 14y ago
      I would rather have a talkative, witty, intelligent person at a vendor booth as opposed to an attractive, non-talkative, non-witty, non-intelligent man, but perhaps that's just me.
- corin_ 14y ago
  I just hired a split of both genders for the booth of a client at an event next week. Not sure if it's a coincidence that no-one else around me thinks of doing that and that I'm gay, or not..
  - abraininavat 14y ago
    How could you not know if that's a coincidence? You're the one who did the hiring. Attractiveness either was a factor in your selection of booth people or was not.
    - corin_ 14y ago
onemorepassword 14y ago
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 white males.
- chc 14y ago
  Are PR people really 90% attractive young women? I would be very surprised to find that out.
  - onemorepassword 14y ago
    I'm not talking about PR people, I'm talking about promotional staff usually hired on a temporary basis. Most of what they do is hand out leaflets and goodies, and persuade people to visit the company's booth were the companies actual PR/marketing/sales people are.
    - danielvinson 14y ago
      At every place i've worked, people in marketing/sales are significantly better looking than in engineering jobs (by that I mean a significant number of people are significantly more attractive). The easy way to explain this is that being attractive is enough to get your foot in the door for a sales position. It also is worth noting that they are, on average, making much less money than the engineers, so it would be a resonable hypothesis that they are less driven to learn because they are good looking, thus end up in an easier job.
  - mtrimpe 14y ago
    While trying to learn how to sell I once tried to sell charity on the street for a single day. Already in that first day one of the less attractive, but probably more skilled, co-workers told me that in most cases you're actually selling 'having an attractive person be very friendly to me for a while.'
mattmaroon 14y ago
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 they're hawking. I don't get the impression they're hired guns, though I haven't done a survey. Perhaps it's easy to say because I'm not a woman, but I think I'd feel less uncomfortable here than anywhere else where I was outnumbered 10:1.
- joezydeco 14y ago
  So GDC isn't the Game Developer Conference? I thought E3 was for the marketing and sales types.
  - CodeCube 14y ago
    E3 targets the consumer/sales end of the game market. GDC targets the developer (in the general sense, designers, 3d modelers, etc.) ... so there are marketing and sales types trying to sell developer tools (maya, perforce, etc.)
    - mattmaroon 14y ago
      Yeah. It's more technical and less consumer than E3 for sure. So instead of ads for games, you see ads for game development tools. The ecosystem is huge now that there are multiple platforms (console, pc, mobile, web, etc.), ad channels, payment methods, etc. All of those tools are still b2b companies, and b2b software companies have lots of non-technical people. Sales, support, execs, etc. I haven't done a poll but I'd bet even here the non-technical people are at least 50%.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    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.
sharkweek 14y ago
I can't imagine how frustrating that must be. But I hate the concept of giving up fighting for yourself. Why not put a few people in their place? If that's just not in your nature, fair enough; but I say make a few guys feel like idiots by stepping up to the plate with your expertise. If they don't like it, that's their problem. And if that fails, I like davidrobert's idea as well -- maybe wear a shirt that has a really nerdy programming joke on it. Or, better yet, the HN shirt ^_^ -- http://teespring.com/hntees http://teespring.com/hntees
- blhack 14y ago
  Got my HN shirt a couple of days ago, wearing it right now! Hooray!
- scott_s 14y ago
  People who want to do their work don't want to spend time "putting people in their place." And once you do, you haven't gained much - there's still many other interactions throughout the day, and are you going to put them all in their place? That's the point, and the frustration: she wants to spend her effort talking about technical things.
  - sharkweek 14y ago
    Sorry, putting people in their place is probably a bit strong for what I'm trying to say. What I ultimately mean is, it doesn't take long to prove you know what you're talking about in a conversation. Sure, it sucks that she has to do that at all, but I would personally think it's worth it versus the alternative options of just staying silent or playing the role of "just along for the ride with my technical boyfriend."
    - scott_s 14y ago
      I feel like you're really missing the point. She did that, and it became tiresome. Then she wished she didn't have to do that, and wrote this post explaining why.
jgj 14y ago
Interesting read, but I have to say I'm a little put off by the conclusion > [...] if I could have substituted them all for traditional booth babes, I would have done it in a heartbeat. Then I’d be free to have a great time being what I normally am at conferences: a curiosity, an anomaly, and an excitable nerd. In my opinion, this trivializes what was, prior to its inclusion, a worthwhile lament. The conclusion makes it sound as if the author is ultimately dismayed not that she was dismissed as being unworthy of unadulterated engineer-speak, but more so bothered by the fact that she was no longer the center of attention and no longer unique. I'm sure in reality she cares much more about being the former, but it was quite a shallow consummation to an otherwise interesting piece.
- originalcvk 14y ago
  I don't think that was the point of her statement. I think she was basically saying "At least before, the booth babes were obvious, and other women were assumed to be engineers who belonged there for their technical merits. Now, companies are sending attractive, non-technical female product promoters and others outside of the engineering field dressed in street clothes. Now, it is harder to tell which women are engineers and which are PR/marketing/booth babes/whatever." Seems a valid observation, though I think the real issue is that women need to vet themselves as engineers at all, while it is assumed that men at a conference are technical unless proven otherwise.
  - abraininavat 14y ago
    Yeah, but you could (1) wish all non-technical women went back to dressing like hookers, or (2) wish there were more technical women at the conference or that there was some other means to distinguish between techie and non-techie.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      Don't read too much into it. It was just a wry observation that something that looks very much like progress actually made her life harder.
    - 14y ago
smoyer 14y ago
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 to tell our fellow hackers, and it will also root out those annoying fashion conscious nerds.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - smoyer 14y ago
    She said it would have been easier to be recognized as a techie if all the marketeers were in bikinis (well ... the women anyway). I don't think she actually wished it actually happened. But if she had her beanie on, then we'd all know!
- saidajigumi 14y ago
  > 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 == hired help." "Out of the frying pan and into the fire" has never been such a depressing turn of phrase. :-P
  - skastel 14y ago
    Might be worth noting that even if a woman is there staffing a booth, that doesn't disqualify them from being technically inclined.
    - saidajigumi 14y ago
      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."
jblz 14y ago
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 assume anyone I'm talking to at a conference has any reason to believe I possess any sort of prowess or authority without my convincing them of such even while donning my geekiest T-shirts. 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. While I appreciate that it is often difficult dealing with misogyny at conferences, I think it's unfair to lump a proper PR employee in with a model in a Princess Leia slave bikini who knows nothing about the product.
- DucktourDreams 14y ago
  From the article's author's words "if I could have substituted all the plain-clothes promoters for traditional booth babes, I would have done it in a heartbeat," I would say your understanding is correct. What the author experienced is status-checking. Status-checking is a human activity. Here is a key component in this conversation. The author writes: "When trying to join lots of interesting conversations, I either had to be that asshole who casually drops her credentials, or deal with a few rounds of being told things were “complicated engineering stuff.”" That is a problem ALL male developers face repeatedly. It's the problem of getting respect and status. It's the same as when two dogs meet in a park. You always have to fight to convince other people you're intelligent. I have three degrees and 20 years of working experience, yet I still have to compete with others to convince them I deserve the status and respect I do. Probably many of you who are reading this now will not be convinced. I am tested daily at my job. And it's got nothing to do with my gender. It's how living beings maintain order. We test each other. We sniff each other's butts. We keep track of who knows what they're doing and who is a pretender or out of date. The author suggested that if all the non-skilled ladies were pigeon-holed as sexual objects, the male geeks would be prejudiced into adorning her with the status she deserves. This assumption is false. She would still have to compete. In tech circles and every other field from welding to law to nuclear physics to snowmobiling to kitesurfing, one faces significant social obstacles when meeting strangers to communicate one's experience and status levels. There is no shortcut (until you're famous). This is quite simply how human interaction works in competitive environments: people jockey for position. It's in our DNA throughout all of the mammalian kingdom. All of the blogs and tweets in the world won't change this. One notable exception is the "nice guys" who afford woman status before they deserve it. Many women are quite familiar with this behavior (and many of them are frustrated with it, because once they realize they are afforded status they haven't earned, they realize the person is unskilled at determining people's social status or just trying to appeal to their ego). I hope every woman who thinks that the tech world will suddenly somehow deviate from 195 million years of evolution - who thinks that the tech world could possibly ever deviate from 195 million years of evolution - in order to accommodate her unfounded expectations takes this seriously and deeply to heart. No matter what, you're going to have to fight to convince other people that you know what you're talking about and that's got nothing to do with your gender, it's got to do with the fact that you're in a competitive social situation. That's they way nature created mammals, and eventually, the human being. I hope they all recognize this behavior in all of the other situations they take part in: going to the bank, playing on a team, fitting in with a church - all humans of all genders experience this. The "world of tech" is especially rife with it b/c it is especially competitive.
Tichy 14y ago
Since in general few women are developers, I rather doubt the hiring of pr women has any bearing on the situation. If it is really so frustrating, maybe dressing accordingly would alleviate the pain - don't know, carry a Linux book, a T- Shirt that says "no, I won't fix your computer", or something like that.
- abraininavat 14y ago
  A linux book? This is a game developer's conference. A sign saying "Will work for change" would do just fine.
- bluehat 14y ago
  So I like the core of this idea, but since many gentlemen have been trained to not stare at a girl's boobs and make a great point of keeping their eyes up, I'm not sure if they'd read my shirt at all. It would probably have to be a different piece of clothing
  - Tichy 14y ago
    Argh, tough problem indeed. Short of a tattoo on the forehead, maybe Google Glasses or a geeky cap might work?
unethical_ban 14y ago
I'm not familiar with this kind of event, but are there not usually badges that designate different kinds of participants? The writer could have a "attendee" badge, while advertisers and pushers would have a different color/label on their badge.
ionwake 14y ago
oh for gods sake. Girl doesn't get any attention at GDC. Why is this news.
- scott_s 14y ago
  This is already buried, but I feel compelled to say: that is clearly not her complaint.
gavinlynch 14y ago
I think I'm missing where the friction is in dropping your credentials? You don't have to storm in and say, "Do you know who I am??!". Isn't it easy and actually very polite to introduce yourself and what you do? "Hi I'm {Name}, This topic fascinates me as I'm also a developer..." And go from there?
- ebiester 14y ago
  The issue is that as a man, you don't have to. I know it seems weird, but as men we have a blind spot -- there's a lot of bullshit we have to deal with, but there's a lot of bullshit we don't have to deal with by the mere fact that we'r male. Women in technical fields (and nearly every woman in tech whom I've befriended mentions this) get subtle cues that men don't even notice, because we're not the target. (Worst yet is that women have a tendency to do it to each other as well!) It's as if you have the bozo bit dropped on you before you've spoken a word, and you're continually fighting an uphill battle.
  - cs02rm0 14y ago
    Hmmn. It's just an odds game isn't it? Our sales guy came to a conference and between the talks was desperate for people to talk about something other than code, anything else. And everyone seemed happy to oblige once aware. Seems to me like these are just examples of people taking branch prediction optimisations.
- DucktourDreams 14y ago
  Thank you for succinctly stating what I used 9,000 words above to say. Sure, thanks to discretely-dressed marketing ladies, the author's life has become "harder than it used to be." She can no longer count on being on oddity. It was great while it lasted. Now, she can learn to introduce herself just like everyone else...
monksy 14y ago
Can we talk about tech things instead of gender politics please? I'm just here for rampart, err, technical things.
- mnicole 14y ago
  The state of the industry punishes a sizable amount of people that want to talk about these types of things too. If you really care about tech, you'll care about issues that keep people out that otherwise could have had a profound impact on you.
eumenides1 14y ago
I hope this is a short term pain point to getting a real sol'n to a better gender equalibrium among developers. Face it, the only real sol'n is to have really technical women working in our field because we can't go back. GDC has progressed, but as an industry it needs to keep progressing. Maybe we can highlight booths that go above and beyond for the sake of the GDC? Like a best booth award selected based a set of criteria that includes having technical women available and knowledgeable. Then give them 5 mins to make a presentation.
JVIDEL 14y ago
Maybe a compromise: instead of extremes like latex bikinis or just plain-clothes why don't use a subtle corporate uniform? That way is not sexist nor something that a non-employee might be wearing.
randall 14y ago
Holy cow! I had never thought of this before. Thank you so much for sharing!
TheMagicHorsey 14y ago
Beautiful people, both male and female, work well in sales positions because they can draw you in by faking interest in you (the fake interest may be in the form of a question, familiarity, body language, etc.) A lot of people find it hard to resist sales pitches from attractive people. Very few people can stay aloof of the social advances of attractive people. Believe it or not, most companies with an attractive sales person, also have a technical sales engineer on hand to talk to you once you are hooked. I used to be a technical sales engineer, so I'm familiar with the hustle at the GDC. You have the attractive woman pull people in, and then she stands around while the engineers talk about the product. A lot of times the people have no interest in the product, but sometimes someone who came for the girl stays to hear about the product, and three months later is a client, because it turns out he needs your software after all. It sucks, but its just the way most males work. I'm used to this hustle, that is why at trade shows I avoid eye contact with the marketing/sales people and make a beeline directly for the materials/people I'm interested in.
corysama 14y ago
I can see how this could be a significant problem for women at GDC. I'm a guy who has been going to GDC for over a decade. Pretty much every year there are a few promoters using fairly aggressive "stealth" tactics to hook people walking around the expo floor. As in, reasonably attractive woman in plain clothes glances at your badge, waits a bit, then walks up quickly saying "Hey, Corysama! Good to see you! Hey, what do you think about..." After a few of these highly awkward encounters, the promoters have pretty effectively trained many of the men to insta-dismiss reasonably attractive women in plain clothes at the show.
unreal37 14y ago
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...
- bluehat 14y ago
  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.
bluehat 14y ago
Hey guys, Katy here, just wanted to thank everybody for the support and super insightful feedback. I will continue to edit the post and post here with clarifications, mostly after work hours :) And yes, I know everybody's probably sick of gender issues, and that's why I almost didn't bring it up, but I hoped it would be a chance for a good civil discussion, and I'm really glad to see it turning into that. Hopefully someday soon everything can be awesome, we'll never have occasion to talk about this garbage again, and we can all go back to nerding. I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to that day. But, seriously, the civility and respect here have totally blown me away. Really proud to be a part of this community. Thanks everybody, you give a lady hope!
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Your post was much more thoughtful and therefor conductive to reasonable discussion than the shitstorm we had last week.
  - MartinCron 14y ago
    Talk about setting a low bar.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      At least it's not reddit.
- physcab 14y ago
  Personally, I'm glad you did. I'm a male engineer, but there are two women engineers in my family (mom and sister). They always bring up these situations to me that few seem to notice. And honestly its really difficult for them at times to be in this industry. More discussion is good.
- lincolnq 14y ago
  I think it's safe to keep bringing it up as long as issues keep existing. The culture IS changing, but slowly, and requires constant pressure.
obviouslygreen 14y ago
Women were being very clearly, intentionally objectified with the "booth babe" thing. Now, rather than something obnoxious and sexually overt, we have something that I'd call far worse in its subtlety: Using women for exactly the same purpose but in a much more approachable, casual, and probably effectively interactive way. How did this happen? I seriously doubt it's because girls in bikinis stopped being effective. But when you can't get away with sexualized advertisement without being martyred, you're going to look for similarly effective marketing that won't offend the people throwing the stones, and in my opinion they've done exactly what we should have expected in this situation. I'm not saying it's right or that women shouldn't expect to be treated as equals. I am saying that the tech community (and several others) have tried and are trying so hard to reject sex and sexuality and any application of it that might possibly offend someone that we're finally making it worse. Before it was just an obnoxious inability to be comfortable with ourselves. Now that we've gotten to the point where everyone knows how prudish and hyperconservative we are, they've also figured out how to keep marketing to us effectively without offending our delicate sensibilities. And we're still upset. It's a shame that so many men have such a hard time conducting themselves well in mixed professional company. It's also a shame that we are so utterly unable to be men and women without pigeonholing ourselves and harassing each other over it. It's a sad situation.
- Kequc 14y ago
  I think the major source of OPs discomfort at the conference was that she is surrounding herself with gamers. I'm just saying gamers spend time playing video games they could be spending interacting with other human beings, going out. Two things that many gamers significantly undervalue. So they get weird. I mean I don't really know how else to put it. No group of grown ups standing around at a conference would notice the number of "booth babes" and then get upset. Something which happened to gamers a little while ago. So a bunch of pretty girls who probably didn't like being there in those places very much to begin with lost their jobs. The hyper insecurity of attendees at these conferences and previously mentioned "weirdness" are contributors. Many, from my research of the opposition to "booth babes" are insecure that they are not regarded as adults due to "booth babes" being around. Even some people in this thread have stated that they don't like being marketed to as knuckle draggers. Well. The gaming industry is largely populated by adolescents, that is why the marketing that is chosen gets chosen. If they were adult enough to not mind the presence of "booth babes" and just enjoy themselves at the conferences, investigating the technologies they are interested in things could be a lot better. But they're not. Things are weird. Interactions are stressful and now marketers need to awkwardly conceal their attempts at marketing.
andyl 14y ago
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- mbetter 14y ago
  First ten participants get a free "My feelings for dongles are modern and nuanced" t-shirt.
pouletencolere 14y ago
This problem isn't limited to conferences. I'm a woman and an engineer, and I can't count the number of times I've met someone at a casual tech meetup and the first thing out of their mouths was "You must be in PR." If you want to make a small difference in making the world a nicer place, just ask me what I do. Booth babes and female sales reps are an interesting thing to discuss, but we can't individually change the whole marketing culture. But we can individually make the tech scene more inclusive just by being more sensitive about the way we interact with other people. So please, please, please don't make assumptions about me or start presumptuously explaining things to me without asking what I do.
- Tichy 14y ago
  Why is it such a problem, though? It is statistically unlikely that a woman is developer, so people react accordingly. Does it really hurt so much to say "no, I'm a developer"?
  - bluehat 14y ago
    Yes, it makes the very demographic people are trying to reach out to the most feel very unwelcomed. It also means that many people never challenge their assumptions and the lady doesn't get to correct them.
    - Tichy 14y ago
      I don't understand why it supposedly makes them feel unwelcome.
bitwize 14y ago
Here's the problem. Humans of any gender perceive women to be less of a potential threat, and therefore more friendly, than men. This is why onboard computers for US jet fighters, and the American version of Siri, have female-sounding voices. And it is why the employment of women for promotional purposes will no doubt continue: if you want to persuade someone to buy your product in a way that comes off as friendly, hiring an attractive and friendly-seeming woman to promote the product is an easy and effective choice to make.
- neurotech1 14y ago
  You are mistaken about the reason for the voice in jet fighters. "Bitching Betty" [1], the voice warning in aircraft such as the F-16 and F/A-18 was originally female because female pilots, especially in the military were relatively rare, although there were some female controllers. The female voice was more noticeable above the normal male pilots chatter on the radio. The wiki entry is somewhat inaccurate on the historical detail, so I included some info from F-16.net [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitching_Betty#Voice_gender http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitching_Betty#Voice_gender [2] http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-1950-postdays-0-postorder-asc.html http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-1950-postdays-0-p...
gavanwoolery 14y ago
Sex sells. Actually one of the more popular search terms associated with E3 was "booth babes." Are companies willing to sacrifice their "dignity" in order to have their brand appear in more searches? Absolutely. Some of the most visited sites on the internet are pornography sites. Lets not kid ourselves - we were genetically designed to reproduce and value sexual attraction. The problem is that every one treats women using their sexual attraction like it is a bad thing (or it somehow undervalues their intelligence -- which it does not; just because you value one thing does not mean you don't another). I don't think there is any shame in it. We have been promoting products with sexual appeal since the dawn of advertising. Everybody get off their high horse already and accept that we are beasts of nature. :)
- Tichy 14y ago
  I find it ironic if women fight against sexual attraction, effectively depriving themselves of one of their powers. The same pattern can be seen in lots of feminist positions, like deriding of housewives and thereby eroding the privilege of being able to take time off for family.
martinced 14y ago
My partner in life used to be a booth babe, wearing sexy clothes etc. (for energy drink stuff and all) because she preferred that to earn money than flipping burgers (not that there's anything wrong with flipping burgers). Nobody forced her to do such jobs and I can tell you one thing: beautiful slim women typically know the power they have on men. I can also tell you that not a single customer of any of the product she demo'ed / promoted did ever manage to get her out for a drink (I wasn't with her yet and she told about her exs, so I don't see why she would lie on that). Seriously: how many of you did you ever pick up a booth babe? Or even saw someone getting a booth babe's phone number? It's not as innocent as you think: they're not "food" or "dogs" or anything like that. They know they're good looking and they're using it as an advantage. It's not as if they were forced to have sex or something like that. I can also tell you that some women just like to dress sexy: you can be classy and sexy. Slim dress, Louboutin high heels, etc. Some women simply like to take time to put make-up on and dress well and do look beautiful and they know the power they have on men. And the hard truth is: most men don't stand a single chance with these women. So if you're a women and get mistaken for a booth babe, it's quite simple: simply tell gross guys coming at you that a) you're not a booth babe and they don't stand a chance and b) they don't stand a chance with the booth babes either ; ) Back to technical stuff instead of this crazy gender thing: what's next, women who want to dress sexy can't, like in some crazy countries applying the sharia!?
hackernewbie 14y ago
I feel like there was a time when gender politics wasn't so abrasive in computing. It wasn't healthy, but it didn't make you constantly feel mired in some swamp of unsolvable problems. I preferred the swamp of (un)solvable problems that is computing.
- pekk 14y ago
  Did the problem not exist before, or was it just invisible?
- bluehat 14y ago
  (Katy here) I would super appreciate feedback on how to be less abrasive.
jack-r-abbit 14y ago
Holy Shitsnacks! Did I really just read that? We can't fucking win. Last year: Holy mother of God we have so many hookers at this event. This has to stop! Now! This year: Holy mother of Dog... we have too many regular looking people. This has to stop. NOW! I can't keep it all straight. I'm pretty sure the only solution is for everyone to wear the same colored body suit that masks all indications of gender, a mask to cover the face and an auto-tune device to cover the voice. And everyone will just have a number badge so names are not a hint. I guess we should probably have a different color suit for the non-technicals?
jchrisa 14y ago
My solution is to (as much as possible) assume that women at technical conferences are technical. If they aren't, it's not awkward, generally. At least it's less awkward than the inverse. That is something that is in all of our power to do.
ikailan 14y ago
I went to GDC in 2011. I remember that there was a country trying to talk game companies into opening a branch in their country. It was Germany, I believe. They had a beauty pageant contestant dressed in full garb at their booth. It made absolutely no sense at all.

173 points by jchrisa 14y ago

Maybe wearing a beat-up t-shirt that says "Come to the Dark Side. We have cookies. " would help establish the OP as an engineer.

Killah911 14y ago
That's why I prefer to be an engineer, so I don't have to F#@$ing dress up like anybody! "Dress up like an engineer", WTF is that supposed to be? Am I the only person who is dumbfounded by this? We're all about judging worth based on who someone is and what they've done... The only time I ever "dress up" is when I have to deal with certain business types who are perfectly comfortable with a monocle & a pocket watch.
- claudius 14y ago
  Monocles and pocket watches are cool (just like bow ties).
- stephencanon 14y ago
  Seriously. Engineers don't (shouldn’t) need to dress like anything to have their skills recognized. Like dressing like a hipster? Great. Enjoy wearing bespoke suits? Great. Look like a Abercrombie model? Great. Hoodies? Great. If you’re competent and honest and work hard, I respect your chops. I don’t care how you dress.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  And therein is the paradox. James Gosling tells a great story about having a visiting professor come in to give a talk, the grad students hosted him for dinner the night before. The professor casually remarked that he was sad he had left his plaid shirt at home. Every grad student was wearing a plaid shirt. It was a completely unconscious thing, but when pointed out very obvious. James tends to wear t-shirts these days with inside jokes on them :-) When I was working at Google the cafes provided a great place to watch people. Here was a large sample of silicon valley engineers. And looking at the way they chose to wear was fascinating. From really carefully put together outfits, to random sets of things, to carefully selected to appear random but not actually be random. An amazing spectrum. What I concluded is that if you make no conscious choice at all, your random selection will be biased toward what your eye has seen on others. That leads to a homogeneity in appearance which is both unintentional and obvious when you look for it. The interesting people for me were the ones who looked like they were part of the random crowd except they didn't have the sort of random mistakes that came with true randomness. Either by design or a natural fashion talent I don't know. But interesting anyway.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  > "WTF is that supposed to be?" A de facto norm that arises out of any subculture. When you have enough people all hanging around each other all the time, all kinds of things develop, including fashion. > "We're all about judging worth based on who someone is and what they've done..." > "is when I have to deal with certain business types who are perfectly comfortable with a monocle & a pocket watch" So... you balk at being judged on your fashion choices, but you're more than willing to judge others for their fashion choices? These two sentences refute each other.
  - Killah911 14y ago
    Monocle & a pocket watch aren't exactly fashion choices. I was hinting at "dress codes" as being more reflective of the 18th-early 19th century thinking and not quite so relevant in the 21st century and the Information Age. I was trying to be succinct.
    - potatolicious 14y ago
      Those two concepts aren't as separate as you want them to be. At the end of the day you're still suggesting a link between a mode of thinking and a mode of dress - while at the same time objecting to that link being drawn for yourself. You can't make a post complaining about people stereotyping engineers, while stereotyping "business types" in the same sentence.
      - Killah911 14y ago
        Congrats, you win!
- lmm 14y ago
  It's a more efficient social protocol - rather than having to ask everyone what their interests are at the start, and abandon 80% of conversations, you dress in a way that indicates what you're interested in, and then can quickly identify the like-minded people you want to talk to. I thought engineers were all about efficiency.
  - stephencanon 14y ago
    The Knuth quote regarding premature optimization is rarely so apt.
    - lmm 14y ago
      Being able to spend less time talking to the people I don't want to (and more time talking to the people I do) would probably be the single greatest improvement to my life. It's not at all premature to expend a bit of effort on it.
      - stephencanon 14y ago
        Two things: first, learning how to talk to people with whom you don't have much in common is remarkably valuable. Second, even if you don't care, making that decision on the basis of how someone is dressed is superficial in the extreme.

saraid216 14y ago

I wish we had more men who dressed up as booth babes. Don't we have enough body builders in the game industry yet?

TwiztidK 14y ago
That is the secret plot behind "brogramming."
sargun 14y ago
What would be the benefit of this to the companies promoting their product?
- saddestcatever 14y ago
  People are generally attracted by attractive people.
  - sargun 14y ago
    I would rather have a talkative, witty, intelligent person at a vendor booth as opposed to an attractive, non-talkative, non-witty, non-intelligent man, but perhaps that's just me.
corin_ 14y ago
I just hired a split of both genders for the booth of a client at an event next week. Not sure if it's a coincidence that no-one else around me thinks of doing that and that I'm gay, or not..
- abraininavat 14y ago
  How could you not know if that's a coincidence? You're the one who did the hiring. Attractiveness either was a factor in your selection of booth people or was not.
  - corin_ 14y ago

onemorepassword 14y ago

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 white males.

chc 14y ago
Are PR people really 90% attractive young women? I would be very surprised to find that out.
- onemorepassword 14y ago
  I'm not talking about PR people, I'm talking about promotional staff usually hired on a temporary basis. Most of what they do is hand out leaflets and goodies, and persuade people to visit the company's booth were the companies actual PR/marketing/sales people are.
  - danielvinson 14y ago
    At every place i've worked, people in marketing/sales are significantly better looking than in engineering jobs (by that I mean a significant number of people are significantly more attractive). The easy way to explain this is that being attractive is enough to get your foot in the door for a sales position. It also is worth noting that they are, on average, making much less money than the engineers, so it would be a resonable hypothesis that they are less driven to learn because they are good looking, thus end up in an easier job.
- mtrimpe 14y ago
  While trying to learn how to sell I once tried to sell charity on the street for a single day. Already in that first day one of the less attractive, but probably more skilled, co-workers told me that in most cases you're actually selling 'having an attractive person be very friendly to me for a while.'

mattmaroon 14y ago

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 they're hawking. I don't get the impression they're hired guns, though I haven't done a survey. Perhaps it's easy to say because I'm not a woman, but I think I'd feel less uncomfortable here than anywhere else where I was outnumbered 10:1.

joezydeco 14y ago
So GDC isn't the Game Developer Conference? I thought E3 was for the marketing and sales types.
- CodeCube 14y ago
  E3 targets the consumer/sales end of the game market. GDC targets the developer (in the general sense, designers, 3d modelers, etc.) ... so there are marketing and sales types trying to sell developer tools (maya, perforce, etc.)
  - mattmaroon 14y ago
    Yeah. It's more technical and less consumer than E3 for sure. So instead of ads for games, you see ads for game development tools. The ecosystem is huge now that there are multiple platforms (console, pc, mobile, web, etc.), ad channels, payment methods, etc. All of those tools are still b2b companies, and b2b software companies have lots of non-technical people. Sales, support, execs, etc. I haven't done a poll but I'd bet even here the non-technical people are at least 50%.
- saraid216 14y ago
  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.

sharkweek 14y ago

I can't imagine how frustrating that must be. But I hate the concept of giving up fighting for yourself. Why not put a few people in their place? If that's just not in your nature, fair enough; but I say make a few guys feel like idiots by stepping up to the plate with your expertise. If they don't like it, that's their problem. And if that fails, I like davidrobert's idea as well -- maybe wear a shirt that has a really nerdy programming joke on it. Or, better yet, the HN shirt ^_^ -- http://teespring.com/hntees http://teespring.com/hntees

blhack 14y ago
Got my HN shirt a couple of days ago, wearing it right now! Hooray!
scott_s 14y ago
People who want to do their work don't want to spend time "putting people in their place." And once you do, you haven't gained much - there's still many other interactions throughout the day, and are you going to put them all in their place? That's the point, and the frustration: she wants to spend her effort talking about technical things.
- sharkweek 14y ago
  Sorry, putting people in their place is probably a bit strong for what I'm trying to say. What I ultimately mean is, it doesn't take long to prove you know what you're talking about in a conversation. Sure, it sucks that she has to do that at all, but I would personally think it's worth it versus the alternative options of just staying silent or playing the role of "just along for the ride with my technical boyfriend."
  - scott_s 14y ago
    I feel like you're really missing the point. She did that, and it became tiresome. Then she wished she didn't have to do that, and wrote this post explaining why.

jgj 14y ago

Interesting read, but I have to say I'm a little put off by the conclusion > [...] if I could have substituted them all for traditional booth babes, I would have done it in a heartbeat. Then I’d be free to have a great time being what I normally am at conferences: a curiosity, an anomaly, and an excitable nerd. In my opinion, this trivializes what was, prior to its inclusion, a worthwhile lament. The conclusion makes it sound as if the author is ultimately dismayed not that she was dismissed as being unworthy of unadulterated engineer-speak, but more so bothered by the fact that she was no longer the center of attention and no longer unique. I'm sure in reality she cares much more about being the former, but it was quite a shallow consummation to an otherwise interesting piece.

originalcvk 14y ago
I don't think that was the point of her statement. I think she was basically saying "At least before, the booth babes were obvious, and other women were assumed to be engineers who belonged there for their technical merits. Now, companies are sending attractive, non-technical female product promoters and others outside of the engineering field dressed in street clothes. Now, it is harder to tell which women are engineers and which are PR/marketing/booth babes/whatever." Seems a valid observation, though I think the real issue is that women need to vet themselves as engineers at all, while it is assumed that men at a conference are technical unless proven otherwise.
- abraininavat 14y ago
  Yeah, but you could (1) wish all non-technical women went back to dressing like hookers, or (2) wish there were more technical women at the conference or that there was some other means to distinguish between techie and non-techie.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    Don't read too much into it. It was just a wry observation that something that looks very much like progress actually made her life harder.
  - 14y ago

smoyer 14y ago

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 to tell our fellow hackers, and it will also root out those annoying fashion conscious nerds.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- smoyer 14y ago
  She said it would have been easier to be recognized as a techie if all the marketeers were in bikinis (well ... the women anyway). I don't think she actually wished it actually happened. But if she had her beanie on, then we'd all know!
saidajigumi 14y ago
> 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 == hired help." "Out of the frying pan and into the fire" has never been such a depressing turn of phrase. :-P
- skastel 14y ago
  Might be worth noting that even if a woman is there staffing a booth, that doesn't disqualify them from being technically inclined.
  - saidajigumi 14y ago
    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."

jblz 14y ago

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 assume anyone I'm talking to at a conference has any reason to believe I possess any sort of prowess or authority without my convincing them of such even while donning my geekiest T-shirts. 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. While I appreciate that it is often difficult dealing with misogyny at conferences, I think it's unfair to lump a proper PR employee in with a model in a Princess Leia slave bikini who knows nothing about the product.

DucktourDreams 14y ago
From the article's author's words "if I could have substituted all the plain-clothes promoters for traditional booth babes, I would have done it in a heartbeat," I would say your understanding is correct. What the author experienced is status-checking. Status-checking is a human activity. Here is a key component in this conversation. The author writes: "When trying to join lots of interesting conversations, I either had to be that asshole who casually drops her credentials, or deal with a few rounds of being told things were “complicated engineering stuff.”" That is a problem ALL male developers face repeatedly. It's the problem of getting respect and status. It's the same as when two dogs meet in a park. You always have to fight to convince other people you're intelligent. I have three degrees and 20 years of working experience, yet I still have to compete with others to convince them I deserve the status and respect I do. Probably many of you who are reading this now will not be convinced. I am tested daily at my job. And it's got nothing to do with my gender. It's how living beings maintain order. We test each other. We sniff each other's butts. We keep track of who knows what they're doing and who is a pretender or out of date. The author suggested that if all the non-skilled ladies were pigeon-holed as sexual objects, the male geeks would be prejudiced into adorning her with the status she deserves. This assumption is false. She would still have to compete. In tech circles and every other field from welding to law to nuclear physics to snowmobiling to kitesurfing, one faces significant social obstacles when meeting strangers to communicate one's experience and status levels. There is no shortcut (until you're famous). This is quite simply how human interaction works in competitive environments: people jockey for position. It's in our DNA throughout all of the mammalian kingdom. All of the blogs and tweets in the world won't change this. One notable exception is the "nice guys" who afford woman status before they deserve it. Many women are quite familiar with this behavior (and many of them are frustrated with it, because once they realize they are afforded status they haven't earned, they realize the person is unskilled at determining people's social status or just trying to appeal to their ego). I hope every woman who thinks that the tech world will suddenly somehow deviate from 195 million years of evolution - who thinks that the tech world could possibly ever deviate from 195 million years of evolution - in order to accommodate her unfounded expectations takes this seriously and deeply to heart. No matter what, you're going to have to fight to convince other people that you know what you're talking about and that's got nothing to do with your gender, it's got to do with the fact that you're in a competitive social situation. That's they way nature created mammals, and eventually, the human being. I hope they all recognize this behavior in all of the other situations they take part in: going to the bank, playing on a team, fitting in with a church - all humans of all genders experience this. The "world of tech" is especially rife with it b/c it is especially competitive.

Tichy 14y ago

Since in general few women are developers, I rather doubt the hiring of pr women has any bearing on the situation. If it is really so frustrating, maybe dressing accordingly would alleviate the pain - don't know, carry a Linux book, a T- Shirt that says "no, I won't fix your computer", or something like that.

abraininavat 14y ago
A linux book? This is a game developer's conference. A sign saying "Will work for change" would do just fine.
bluehat 14y ago
So I like the core of this idea, but since many gentlemen have been trained to not stare at a girl's boobs and make a great point of keeping their eyes up, I'm not sure if they'd read my shirt at all. It would probably have to be a different piece of clothing
- Tichy 14y ago
  Argh, tough problem indeed. Short of a tattoo on the forehead, maybe Google Glasses or a geeky cap might work?

unethical_ban 14y ago

I'm not familiar with this kind of event, but are there not usually badges that designate different kinds of participants? The writer could have a "attendee" badge, while advertisers and pushers would have a different color/label on their badge.

ionwake 14y ago

oh for gods sake. Girl doesn't get any attention at GDC. Why is this news.

scott_s 14y ago
This is already buried, but I feel compelled to say: that is clearly not her complaint.

gavinlynch 14y ago

I think I'm missing where the friction is in dropping your credentials? You don't have to storm in and say, "Do you know who I am??!". Isn't it easy and actually very polite to introduce yourself and what you do? "Hi I'm {Name}, This topic fascinates me as I'm also a developer..." And go from there?

ebiester 14y ago
The issue is that as a man, you don't have to. I know it seems weird, but as men we have a blind spot -- there's a lot of bullshit we have to deal with, but there's a lot of bullshit we don't have to deal with by the mere fact that we'r male. Women in technical fields (and nearly every woman in tech whom I've befriended mentions this) get subtle cues that men don't even notice, because we're not the target. (Worst yet is that women have a tendency to do it to each other as well!) It's as if you have the bozo bit dropped on you before you've spoken a word, and you're continually fighting an uphill battle.
- cs02rm0 14y ago
  Hmmn. It's just an odds game isn't it? Our sales guy came to a conference and between the talks was desperate for people to talk about something other than code, anything else. And everyone seemed happy to oblige once aware. Seems to me like these are just examples of people taking branch prediction optimisations.
DucktourDreams 14y ago
Thank you for succinctly stating what I used 9,000 words above to say. Sure, thanks to discretely-dressed marketing ladies, the author's life has become "harder than it used to be." She can no longer count on being on oddity. It was great while it lasted. Now, she can learn to introduce herself just like everyone else...

monksy 14y ago

Can we talk about tech things instead of gender politics please? I'm just here for rampart, err, technical things.

mnicole 14y ago
The state of the industry punishes a sizable amount of people that want to talk about these types of things too. If you really care about tech, you'll care about issues that keep people out that otherwise could have had a profound impact on you.

eumenides1 14y ago

I hope this is a short term pain point to getting a real sol'n to a better gender equalibrium among developers. Face it, the only real sol'n is to have really technical women working in our field because we can't go back. GDC has progressed, but as an industry it needs to keep progressing. Maybe we can highlight booths that go above and beyond for the sake of the GDC? Like a best booth award selected based a set of criteria that includes having technical women available and knowledgeable. Then give them 5 mins to make a presentation.

JVIDEL 14y ago

Maybe a compromise: instead of extremes like latex bikinis or just plain-clothes why don't use a subtle corporate uniform? That way is not sexist nor something that a non-employee might be wearing.

randall 14y ago

Holy cow! I had never thought of this before. Thank you so much for sharing!

TheMagicHorsey 14y ago

Beautiful people, both male and female, work well in sales positions because they can draw you in by faking interest in you (the fake interest may be in the form of a question, familiarity, body language, etc.) A lot of people find it hard to resist sales pitches from attractive people. Very few people can stay aloof of the social advances of attractive people. Believe it or not, most companies with an attractive sales person, also have a technical sales engineer on hand to talk to you once you are hooked. I used to be a technical sales engineer, so I'm familiar with the hustle at the GDC. You have the attractive woman pull people in, and then she stands around while the engineers talk about the product. A lot of times the people have no interest in the product, but sometimes someone who came for the girl stays to hear about the product, and three months later is a client, because it turns out he needs your software after all. It sucks, but its just the way most males work. I'm used to this hustle, that is why at trade shows I avoid eye contact with the marketing/sales people and make a beeline directly for the materials/people I'm interested in.

corysama 14y ago

I can see how this could be a significant problem for women at GDC. I'm a guy who has been going to GDC for over a decade. Pretty much every year there are a few promoters using fairly aggressive "stealth" tactics to hook people walking around the expo floor. As in, reasonably attractive woman in plain clothes glances at your badge, waits a bit, then walks up quickly saying "Hey, Corysama! Good to see you! Hey, what do you think about..." After a few of these highly awkward encounters, the promoters have pretty effectively trained many of the men to insta-dismiss reasonably attractive women in plain clothes at the show.

unreal37 14y ago

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...

bluehat 14y ago
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.

bluehat 14y ago

Hey guys, Katy here, just wanted to thank everybody for the support and super insightful feedback. I will continue to edit the post and post here with clarifications, mostly after work hours :) And yes, I know everybody's probably sick of gender issues, and that's why I almost didn't bring it up, but I hoped it would be a chance for a good civil discussion, and I'm really glad to see it turning into that. Hopefully someday soon everything can be awesome, we'll never have occasion to talk about this garbage again, and we can all go back to nerding. I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to that day. But, seriously, the civility and respect here have totally blown me away. Really proud to be a part of this community. Thanks everybody, you give a lady hope!

jiggy2011 14y ago
Your post was much more thoughtful and therefor conductive to reasonable discussion than the shitstorm we had last week.
- MartinCron 14y ago
  Talk about setting a low bar.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    At least it's not reddit.
physcab 14y ago
Personally, I'm glad you did. I'm a male engineer, but there are two women engineers in my family (mom and sister). They always bring up these situations to me that few seem to notice. And honestly its really difficult for them at times to be in this industry. More discussion is good.
lincolnq 14y ago
I think it's safe to keep bringing it up as long as issues keep existing. The culture IS changing, but slowly, and requires constant pressure.

obviouslygreen 14y ago

Women were being very clearly, intentionally objectified with the "booth babe" thing. Now, rather than something obnoxious and sexually overt, we have something that I'd call far worse in its subtlety: Using women for exactly the same purpose but in a much more approachable, casual, and probably effectively interactive way. How did this happen? I seriously doubt it's because girls in bikinis stopped being effective. But when you can't get away with sexualized advertisement without being martyred, you're going to look for similarly effective marketing that won't offend the people throwing the stones, and in my opinion they've done exactly what we should have expected in this situation. I'm not saying it's right or that women shouldn't expect to be treated as equals. I am saying that the tech community (and several others) have tried and are trying so hard to reject sex and sexuality and any application of it that might possibly offend someone that we're finally making it worse. Before it was just an obnoxious inability to be comfortable with ourselves. Now that we've gotten to the point where everyone knows how prudish and hyperconservative we are, they've also figured out how to keep marketing to us effectively without offending our delicate sensibilities. And we're still upset. It's a shame that so many men have such a hard time conducting themselves well in mixed professional company. It's also a shame that we are so utterly unable to be men and women without pigeonholing ourselves and harassing each other over it. It's a sad situation.

Kequc 14y ago
I think the major source of OPs discomfort at the conference was that she is surrounding herself with gamers. I'm just saying gamers spend time playing video games they could be spending interacting with other human beings, going out. Two things that many gamers significantly undervalue. So they get weird. I mean I don't really know how else to put it. No group of grown ups standing around at a conference would notice the number of "booth babes" and then get upset. Something which happened to gamers a little while ago. So a bunch of pretty girls who probably didn't like being there in those places very much to begin with lost their jobs. The hyper insecurity of attendees at these conferences and previously mentioned "weirdness" are contributors. Many, from my research of the opposition to "booth babes" are insecure that they are not regarded as adults due to "booth babes" being around. Even some people in this thread have stated that they don't like being marketed to as knuckle draggers. Well. The gaming industry is largely populated by adolescents, that is why the marketing that is chosen gets chosen. If they were adult enough to not mind the presence of "booth babes" and just enjoy themselves at the conferences, investigating the technologies they are interested in things could be a lot better. But they're not. Things are weird. Interactions are stressful and now marketers need to awkwardly conceal their attempts at marketing.

andyl 14y ago

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mbetter 14y ago
First ten participants get a free "My feelings for dongles are modern and nuanced" t-shirt.

pouletencolere 14y ago

This problem isn't limited to conferences. I'm a woman and an engineer, and I can't count the number of times I've met someone at a casual tech meetup and the first thing out of their mouths was "You must be in PR." If you want to make a small difference in making the world a nicer place, just ask me what I do. Booth babes and female sales reps are an interesting thing to discuss, but we can't individually change the whole marketing culture. But we can individually make the tech scene more inclusive just by being more sensitive about the way we interact with other people. So please, please, please don't make assumptions about me or start presumptuously explaining things to me without asking what I do.

Tichy 14y ago
Why is it such a problem, though? It is statistically unlikely that a woman is developer, so people react accordingly. Does it really hurt so much to say "no, I'm a developer"?
- bluehat 14y ago
  Yes, it makes the very demographic people are trying to reach out to the most feel very unwelcomed. It also means that many people never challenge their assumptions and the lady doesn't get to correct them.
  - Tichy 14y ago
    I don't understand why it supposedly makes them feel unwelcome.

bitwize 14y ago

Here's the problem. Humans of any gender perceive women to be less of a potential threat, and therefore more friendly, than men. This is why onboard computers for US jet fighters, and the American version of Siri, have female-sounding voices. And it is why the employment of women for promotional purposes will no doubt continue: if you want to persuade someone to buy your product in a way that comes off as friendly, hiring an attractive and friendly-seeming woman to promote the product is an easy and effective choice to make.

neurotech1 14y ago
You are mistaken about the reason for the voice in jet fighters. "Bitching Betty" [1], the voice warning in aircraft such as the F-16 and F/A-18 was originally female because female pilots, especially in the military were relatively rare, although there were some female controllers. The female voice was more noticeable above the normal male pilots chatter on the radio. The wiki entry is somewhat inaccurate on the historical detail, so I included some info from F-16.net [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitching_Betty#Voice_gender http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitching_Betty#Voice_gender [2] http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-1950-postdays-0-postorder-asc.html http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-1950-postdays-0-p...

gavanwoolery 14y ago

Sex sells. Actually one of the more popular search terms associated with E3 was "booth babes." Are companies willing to sacrifice their "dignity" in order to have their brand appear in more searches? Absolutely. Some of the most visited sites on the internet are pornography sites. Lets not kid ourselves - we were genetically designed to reproduce and value sexual attraction. The problem is that every one treats women using their sexual attraction like it is a bad thing (or it somehow undervalues their intelligence -- which it does not; just because you value one thing does not mean you don't another). I don't think there is any shame in it. We have been promoting products with sexual appeal since the dawn of advertising. Everybody get off their high horse already and accept that we are beasts of nature. :)

Tichy 14y ago
I find it ironic if women fight against sexual attraction, effectively depriving themselves of one of their powers. The same pattern can be seen in lots of feminist positions, like deriding of housewives and thereby eroding the privilege of being able to take time off for family.

martinced 14y ago

My partner in life used to be a booth babe, wearing sexy clothes etc. (for energy drink stuff and all) because she preferred that to earn money than flipping burgers (not that there's anything wrong with flipping burgers). Nobody forced her to do such jobs and I can tell you one thing: beautiful slim women typically know the power they have on men. I can also tell you that not a single customer of any of the product she demo'ed / promoted did ever manage to get her out for a drink (I wasn't with her yet and she told about her exs, so I don't see why she would lie on that). Seriously: how many of you did you ever pick up a booth babe? Or even saw someone getting a booth babe's phone number? It's not as innocent as you think: they're not "food" or "dogs" or anything like that. They know they're good looking and they're using it as an advantage. It's not as if they were forced to have sex or something like that. I can also tell you that some women just like to dress sexy: you can be classy and sexy. Slim dress, Louboutin high heels, etc. Some women simply like to take time to put make-up on and dress well and do look beautiful and they know the power they have on men. And the hard truth is: most men don't stand a single chance with these women. So if you're a women and get mistaken for a booth babe, it's quite simple: simply tell gross guys coming at you that a) you're not a booth babe and they don't stand a chance and b) they don't stand a chance with the booth babes either ; ) Back to technical stuff instead of this crazy gender thing: what's next, women who want to dress sexy can't, like in some crazy countries applying the sharia!?

hackernewbie 14y ago

I feel like there was a time when gender politics wasn't so abrasive in computing. It wasn't healthy, but it didn't make you constantly feel mired in some swamp of unsolvable problems. I preferred the swamp of (un)solvable problems that is computing.

pekk 14y ago
Did the problem not exist before, or was it just invisible?
bluehat 14y ago
(Katy here) I would super appreciate feedback on how to be less abrasive.

jack-r-abbit 14y ago

Holy Shitsnacks! Did I really just read that? We can't fucking win. Last year: Holy mother of God we have so many hookers at this event. This has to stop! Now! This year: Holy mother of Dog... we have too many regular looking people. This has to stop. NOW! I can't keep it all straight. I'm pretty sure the only solution is for everyone to wear the same colored body suit that masks all indications of gender, a mask to cover the face and an auto-tune device to cover the voice. And everyone will just have a number badge so names are not a hint. I guess we should probably have a different color suit for the non-technicals?

jchrisa 14y ago

My solution is to (as much as possible) assume that women at technical conferences are technical. If they aren't, it's not awkward, generally. At least it's less awkward than the inverse. That is something that is in all of our power to do.

ikailan 14y ago

I went to GDC in 2011. I remember that there was a country trying to talk game companies into opening a branch in their country. It was Germany, I believe. They had a beauty pageant contestant dressed in full garb at their booth. It made absolutely no sense at all.