15 ms·

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 delibe

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.'
  - derleth 14y ago
    > I once tried to sell charity on the street for a single day. This sentence intrigues me. Were you working for a specific charitable organization or were you out there trying to sell one of the cardinal virtues as an abstract concept? > in most cases you're actually selling 'having an attractive person be very friendly to me for a while.' This is true, and it has been rediscovered over and over again in many industries in many ways. Some industries are really that and nothing else, and they have long, honored, and storied traditions in some cultures (so denigrating them means you're an ethnocentric swine, in case you missed my hint).
    - mtrimpe 14y ago
      I don't know if it exists everywhere in the world, but this was basically an organization that would run campaigns for specific charities. One week you'd try to get people to donate to a child cancer charity and the next to WWF and the sales company would get the first few months to half a year of that person's donations.
- unreal37 14y ago
  Its an interesting human trait that people who are attractive to us are able to sell us things easier than people who don't fit that quality. Heck, an attractive woman can stop more people on the street and ask directions, and the person they stop will spend more time talking to them and helping them than they would with an average person. And I think this behavior is true for men and women. It's not just a small segment of society that behaves that way, it's all of society. So yes, it's true in PR and Advertising in general.
- ojbyrne 14y ago
  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.
JulianMorrison 14y ago
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.
- blhack 14y ago
  Good luck with that first one. This isn't tech, this is every business since the beginning of business.
  - rada 14y ago
    They said the same thing about flight attendants.
    - theorique 14y ago
      Yeah, and now look at them - all middle aged hags and gay dudes. At least first class seems to skew toward the younger and hotter (but still competent). (Especially in Asian and Middle Eastern airlines where they haven't gone all PC yet.)
      - JulianMorrison 14y ago
        Because what you really need on an aircraft, is someone to leer at, who has been instructed to smile and be nice even when you're a sexist pig. Those were the days, huh?
        theorique 14y ago
        Not making it right or wrong. But mens' nature being what it is, we can expect that most (straight) men would rather have a flight attendant who's more female / younger / attractive and less male / older / unattractive.
- Tichy 14y ago
  Because it totally doesn't matter if the person trying to sell you something is good looking or not.
roc 14y ago
I agree that it's a hard problem, but I think you're looking at the wrong one. The problematic assumption here is that a given woman was paid to be there. This was a reasonable assumption on the part of the other attendees, only because there are so few women in the games industry. So rather than the problem-to-tackle being a cat-and-mouse with vendors trying to get the most-effective promotions' staff to the venue, the problem-to-tackle is women in gaming. If women could hit even a respectably-sized minority of the attendee audience, the assumption would no longer be safe.
- mattmaroon 14y ago
  I don't think that assumption is safe of the women who aren't in costume. I think they're just female employees in non-technical roles. They're not eye candy. That's what I find so strange about the original post. She's assuming they're there as eye candy and they sure don't seem to be. It's odd to hear a woman assume that other women (especially since they're pretty average) are there for their looks. The few I've talked to were far too knowledgeable to be some sort of incognito booth babes. Booth babes are usually given a few talking points and know little to nothing else about the product beyond that. They pass you off to the nerd the second you appear interested.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - mtoddh 14y ago
    The few I've talked to were far too knowledgeable to be some sort of incognito booth babes. Perhaps it's because of the negative stereotype that the more attractive a women is, the less intelligent she is, or at least less likely that she's a technical person. And perhaps it's not just men that make this assumption.
    - mattmaroon 14y ago
      I didn't say they were dumb, just that they aren't very knowledgeable about their product. They don't work for the companies they promote and don't get much training. They work for an agency that is hired by the company. They're given some talking points and then told who to point anyone to who needs to know more.
deleted 14y ago
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- deleted 14y ago
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- gojomo 14y ago
  You're addressing an issue -- 'booth babes' in 'sexualized' clothing -- different from the article and the comment to which you've replied. They're talking about a more subtle phenomenon, one which the PyCon policy doesn't address (and perhaps is too subtle and subjective to be addressed with any set policy). But maybe then, this isn't a 'problem' to be 'solved', just a thing that happens and should be understood, and the original article is more an impressionistic lament than call for solving-action.
  - bluehat 14y ago
    In a perfect world I would like to see this problem solved, and would have posted a solution if I knew one. I am super eager to hear solutions.
stcredzero 14y ago
> Seems like a hard problem to solve. How about: Highly visible conference badges that differentiate spokespersons from developers? There would be motivation for companies to game this, so that they could have spokespersons with "female geek cred." I think that this could be handled to within reason. Also, it might motivate companies to send their actual female employees, thus giving females more exposure at GDC.
- __--__ 14y ago
  This is a game developer conference, not a game programming conference. there are a dozen non-technical jobs between "spokesperson" and "developer." Game designer, level designer, UI artist, CGI artist, Producer, QA - these are just a few jobs that do not qualify as technical positions. I suppose you could have everybody wear a badge that lists their job title, except not everybody is there representing a company. Large buckets, then? Artists, engineers, management, product, technical other, non-technical other?
  - pacaro 14y ago
    Or just have a Geek Code[1] block on the badge... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Code
    - NickNameNick 14y ago
      Do people still use that? I only ever saw it on userfriendly profiles, and userfriendly has been limping along, very nearly dead for years now.
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      This is a meh protocol. It's not cleanly extensible and carries a lot of legacy.
Shivetya 14y ago
As was mentioned on this site before, burqa or bikini, there is always someone telling OTHER women how they must dress, how they must act, what they must be. It does not matter which sex the speaker is, they should respect the choice another makes.
- joe_the_user 14y ago
  Wow, you've distorted the situation considerably. These saleswomens' employers are giving them dress-code guidelines already - " telling OTHER women how they must dress". That was true with "booth babe" dress and presently. The woman's blog post was clearly addressed to GDC which seems to have set the tone for the companies at the booth who hired their saleswomen/demonstrators. There's no situation of a woman commenting about another woman's clothing choice on, say, her day off.
JPKab 14y ago
As a 31 year old male, here is my message to tech companies with products to sell: If you have "booth babes" (I think she did a great job in the article of defining what that term means), I'm not going to buy your product. I hate it and always have. Its trashy and demeaning, and I resent being grouped into the lowest common denominator when I go to view a product I actually care about. As demeaning as it is to women, I think a lot of men would agree that its demeaning to be treated like a dog who can be baited with a doggy treat. If you have a good product, you don't need to lure in knuckle draggers who let themselves be led around by their reproductive instincts.
- smackfu 14y ago
  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"?
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Problem is, you see an attractive woman at a booth, assuming she is wearing regular business or casual attire. How do you know if she was hired because she was attractive or because of other skills/attributes or a mixture of both?
  - waps 14y ago
    Talk to her. After the first sentence you will know the difference.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      Depends if you start with a technical question. Though that might be a good strategy to discourage "booth babes", just keep asking shit they can't answer.
      - sirclueless 14y ago
        That's not really good for the booth babes or the technical women. The booth babes all get thrown out of their depth repeatedly, while the technical women have to deal with every single conversation starting out by getting quizzed live to make sure they belong in the club, which sounds totally stressful.
rada 14y ago
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.
- zoidb 14y ago
  Think you are missing the point, the women in question are not "booth babes" but women dressed in street clothes doing promotional work. My gut tells me that the pool of applicants for these jobs skews attractive female.
  - rada 14y ago
    And my several years of experience that involved hiring actors and models tell me that there is an endless supply of pretty people of either gender happy to wear a variety of outfits.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Sure attractive males are cheaper to hire, but how does their ROR compare? I find it hard to believe they are not cheaper for a reason.
  - rada 14y ago
    Oh I agree on the ROR. I was addressing the silly notion that there is anything remotely hard about finding he-babes to do promotional work. If you are going to say, screw any moral considerations, I am just going to do what's best for my bottom line, that's fine... it's the dishonesty that I find distasteful.
WiseWeasel 14y ago
I think the problem is her T-shirt/hoodie wasn't geeky enough. I could see male booth attendants having similar issues.
- bluehat 14y ago
  Wasn't at a booth, and I'm not very comfortable with the solution to this problem being "dress differently." Also, lots of gentlemen are highly trained to keep their eyes up so they aren't accused of staring at boobs. I'm not sure if any of them would read my shirt anyway.
AJ007 14y ago
Let me suggest that this is an impossible problem to solve. Here are our options: 1. Require a strict dress code for booth babes as to not offend anyone with scantily clad women. Result: we can't tell booth babes from technical females. 2. Require everyone working at the conference to be an active and knowledgable employee of the company which has purchase the booth space. Result: number of females on the show floor drops precipitously. 3. Require a 1:1 ratio of males to females. Result: booths are understaffed or companies don't even bother showing up. 4. Wait until ratio of males to females in the given industry is 1:1. Result: conferences cancelled. If I was a female, and I'm not, I would be insulted that other females were trying to stop me from getting a job. I know a lot of girls who work as "booth babes" and they are busting their asses just as much as any of us are. It's not easy traveling around and standing all day long in uncomfortable shoes for pay that is slightly better than peanuts.
- rurounijones 14y ago
  This might sound bad but... I cannot actually see a problem with #2, it would be my preferred solution. When I go to trade shows / conferences it is to talk to brains, not bodies, the sex of the brain is immaterial to me. To me, making sure the bodies are 50% equal in gender means nothing if 80% of the female bodies are only there to make up a body quota but have no interest / knowledge of what is going on. Maybe change it slightly so that the rules state anyone at the booth must be a full-time employee or a contract employee with X months at the company. Could you go into a bit more detail about your reasoning for #2 not being suitable? [EDIT] Messed up my percentages
  - cdtwigg 14y ago
    Why assume that anyone who isn't deeply expert in the technical details of a product isn't a full-time employee of the company? Many companies hire sales/marketing people of both genders that may have a relatively superficial understanding of the inner details but are more enthusiastic and outgoing than the engineering staff.
    - pekk 14y ago

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.'
- derleth 14y ago
  > I once tried to sell charity on the street for a single day. This sentence intrigues me. Were you working for a specific charitable organization or were you out there trying to sell one of the cardinal virtues as an abstract concept? > in most cases you're actually selling 'having an attractive person be very friendly to me for a while.' This is true, and it has been rediscovered over and over again in many industries in many ways. Some industries are really that and nothing else, and they have long, honored, and storied traditions in some cultures (so denigrating them means you're an ethnocentric swine, in case you missed my hint).
  - mtrimpe 14y ago
    I don't know if it exists everywhere in the world, but this was basically an organization that would run campaigns for specific charities. One week you'd try to get people to donate to a child cancer charity and the next to WWF and the sales company would get the first few months to half a year of that person's donations.
unreal37 14y ago
Its an interesting human trait that people who are attractive to us are able to sell us things easier than people who don't fit that quality. Heck, an attractive woman can stop more people on the street and ask directions, and the person they stop will spend more time talking to them and helping them than they would with an average person. And I think this behavior is true for men and women. It's not just a small segment of society that behaves that way, it's all of society. So yes, it's true in PR and Advertising in general.
ojbyrne 14y ago
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.

JulianMorrison 14y ago

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.

blhack 14y ago
Good luck with that first one. This isn't tech, this is every business since the beginning of business.
- rada 14y ago
  They said the same thing about flight attendants.
  - theorique 14y ago
    Yeah, and now look at them - all middle aged hags and gay dudes. At least first class seems to skew toward the younger and hotter (but still competent). (Especially in Asian and Middle Eastern airlines where they haven't gone all PC yet.)
    - JulianMorrison 14y ago
      Because what you really need on an aircraft, is someone to leer at, who has been instructed to smile and be nice even when you're a sexist pig. Those were the days, huh?
      - theorique 14y ago
        Not making it right or wrong. But mens' nature being what it is, we can expect that most (straight) men would rather have a flight attendant who's more female / younger / attractive and less male / older / unattractive.
Tichy 14y ago
Because it totally doesn't matter if the person trying to sell you something is good looking or not.

roc 14y ago

I agree that it's a hard problem, but I think you're looking at the wrong one. The problematic assumption here is that a given woman was paid to be there. This was a reasonable assumption on the part of the other attendees, only because there are so few women in the games industry. So rather than the problem-to-tackle being a cat-and-mouse with vendors trying to get the most-effective promotions' staff to the venue, the problem-to-tackle is women in gaming. If women could hit even a respectably-sized minority of the attendee audience, the assumption would no longer be safe.

mattmaroon 14y ago
I don't think that assumption is safe of the women who aren't in costume. I think they're just female employees in non-technical roles. They're not eye candy. That's what I find so strange about the original post. She's assuming they're there as eye candy and they sure don't seem to be. It's odd to hear a woman assume that other women (especially since they're pretty average) are there for their looks. The few I've talked to were far too knowledgeable to be some sort of incognito booth babes. Booth babes are usually given a few talking points and know little to nothing else about the product beyond that. They pass you off to the nerd the second you appear interested.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- mtoddh 14y ago
  The few I've talked to were far too knowledgeable to be some sort of incognito booth babes. Perhaps it's because of the negative stereotype that the more attractive a women is, the less intelligent she is, or at least less likely that she's a technical person. And perhaps it's not just men that make this assumption.
  - mattmaroon 14y ago
    I didn't say they were dumb, just that they aren't very knowledgeable about their product. They don't work for the companies they promote and don't get much training. They work for an agency that is hired by the company. They're given some talking points and then told who to point anyone to who needs to know more.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
gojomo 14y ago
You're addressing an issue -- 'booth babes' in 'sexualized' clothing -- different from the article and the comment to which you've replied. They're talking about a more subtle phenomenon, one which the PyCon policy doesn't address (and perhaps is too subtle and subjective to be addressed with any set policy). But maybe then, this isn't a 'problem' to be 'solved', just a thing that happens and should be understood, and the original article is more an impressionistic lament than call for solving-action.
- bluehat 14y ago
  In a perfect world I would like to see this problem solved, and would have posted a solution if I knew one. I am super eager to hear solutions.

stcredzero 14y ago

> Seems like a hard problem to solve. How about: Highly visible conference badges that differentiate spokespersons from developers? There would be motivation for companies to game this, so that they could have spokespersons with "female geek cred." I think that this could be handled to within reason. Also, it might motivate companies to send their actual female employees, thus giving females more exposure at GDC.

__--__ 14y ago
This is a game developer conference, not a game programming conference. there are a dozen non-technical jobs between "spokesperson" and "developer." Game designer, level designer, UI artist, CGI artist, Producer, QA - these are just a few jobs that do not qualify as technical positions. I suppose you could have everybody wear a badge that lists their job title, except not everybody is there representing a company. Large buckets, then? Artists, engineers, management, product, technical other, non-technical other?
- pacaro 14y ago
  Or just have a Geek Code[1] block on the badge... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Code
  - NickNameNick 14y ago
    Do people still use that? I only ever saw it on userfriendly profiles, and userfriendly has been limping along, very nearly dead for years now.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    This is a meh protocol. It's not cleanly extensible and carries a lot of legacy.

Shivetya 14y ago

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

joe_the_user 14y ago
Wow, you've distorted the situation considerably. These saleswomens' employers are giving them dress-code guidelines already - " telling OTHER women how they must dress". That was true with "booth babe" dress and presently. The woman's blog post was clearly addressed to GDC which seems to have set the tone for the companies at the booth who hired their saleswomen/demonstrators. There's no situation of a woman commenting about another woman's clothing choice on, say, her day off.

JPKab 14y ago

As a 31 year old male, here is my message to tech companies with products to sell: If you have "booth babes" (I think she did a great job in the article of defining what that term means), I'm not going to buy your product. I hate it and always have. Its trashy and demeaning, and I resent being grouped into the lowest common denominator when I go to view a product I actually care about. As demeaning as it is to women, I think a lot of men would agree that its demeaning to be treated like a dog who can be baited with a doggy treat. If you have a good product, you don't need to lure in knuckle draggers who let themselves be led around by their reproductive instincts.

smackfu 14y ago
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"?
jiggy2011 14y ago
Problem is, you see an attractive woman at a booth, assuming she is wearing regular business or casual attire. How do you know if she was hired because she was attractive or because of other skills/attributes or a mixture of both?
- waps 14y ago
  Talk to her. After the first sentence you will know the difference.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Depends if you start with a technical question. Though that might be a good strategy to discourage "booth babes", just keep asking shit they can't answer.
    - sirclueless 14y ago
      That's not really good for the booth babes or the technical women. The booth babes all get thrown out of their depth repeatedly, while the technical women have to deal with every single conversation starting out by getting quizzed live to make sure they belong in the club, which sounds totally stressful.

rada 14y ago

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.

zoidb 14y ago
Think you are missing the point, the women in question are not "booth babes" but women dressed in street clothes doing promotional work. My gut tells me that the pool of applicants for these jobs skews attractive female.
- rada 14y ago
  And my several years of experience that involved hiring actors and models tell me that there is an endless supply of pretty people of either gender happy to wear a variety of outfits.
jlgreco 14y ago
Sure attractive males are cheaper to hire, but how does their ROR compare? I find it hard to believe they are not cheaper for a reason.
- rada 14y ago
  Oh I agree on the ROR. I was addressing the silly notion that there is anything remotely hard about finding he-babes to do promotional work. If you are going to say, screw any moral considerations, I am just going to do what's best for my bottom line, that's fine... it's the dishonesty that I find distasteful.

WiseWeasel 14y ago

I think the problem is her T-shirt/hoodie wasn't geeky enough. I could see male booth attendants having similar issues.

bluehat 14y ago
Wasn't at a booth, and I'm not very comfortable with the solution to this problem being "dress differently." Also, lots of gentlemen are highly trained to keep their eyes up so they aren't accused of staring at boobs. I'm not sure if any of them would read my shirt anyway.

AJ007 14y ago

Let me suggest that this is an impossible problem to solve. Here are our options: 1. Require a strict dress code for booth babes as to not offend anyone with scantily clad women. Result: we can't tell booth babes from technical females. 2. Require everyone working at the conference to be an active and knowledgable employee of the company which has purchase the booth space. Result: number of females on the show floor drops precipitously. 3. Require a 1:1 ratio of males to females. Result: booths are understaffed or companies don't even bother showing up. 4. Wait until ratio of males to females in the given industry is 1:1. Result: conferences cancelled. If I was a female, and I'm not, I would be insulted that other females were trying to stop me from getting a job. I know a lot of girls who work as "booth babes" and they are busting their asses just as much as any of us are. It's not easy traveling around and standing all day long in uncomfortable shoes for pay that is slightly better than peanuts.

rurounijones 14y ago
This might sound bad but... I cannot actually see a problem with #2, it would be my preferred solution. When I go to trade shows / conferences it is to talk to brains, not bodies, the sex of the brain is immaterial to me. To me, making sure the bodies are 50% equal in gender means nothing if 80% of the female bodies are only there to make up a body quota but have no interest / knowledge of what is going on. Maybe change it slightly so that the rules state anyone at the booth must be a full-time employee or a contract employee with X months at the company. Could you go into a bit more detail about your reasoning for #2 not being suitable? [EDIT] Messed up my percentages
- cdtwigg 14y ago
  Why assume that anyone who isn't deeply expert in the technical details of a product isn't a full-time employee of the company? Many companies hire sales/marketing people of both genders that may have a relatively superficial understanding of the inner details but are more enthusiastic and outgoing than the engineering staff.
  - pekk 14y ago