Booth babes – promotional models – are a mainstay of many conferences and trade fairs. In fact, called to task for hiring booth babes, one business owner insisted that he would lose business without them. If that’s true, then I must be an unusual man, because I have always found them little other than irritating.
Oh, I notice that booth babes are attractive and revealingly dressed. I am, after all, a straight male who grew up in a modern industrial culture where sex is a given in advertising, and I’m constantly invited to stare. But their sexual come-on seems more of a distraction than an enticement to me. They’re like people who insist on interjecting jokes into a serious conversation – an irrelevancy to my main purposes at a conference.
At best, they might hand me schwag or a product sheet, or answer questions from a limited script. Otherwise, few of them can actually answer my questions.
To complicate this basic reaction, I happen to be a male feminist. I know that at least some booth babes receive models’ wages, so they’re not being exploited financially, but I can’t help feeling embarrassed on their behalf. Can’t they do something with a little more dignity? I keep thinking. What’s happened to their self-respect?
Possibly, booth babes themselves would laugh at this reaction, and maybe claim that they’re the ones with the power. But, then, I would respond that they are only rationalizing to avoid thinking too much about their current gig.
If I’m being honest, though, I have to admit that my main reaction is personal. Basically, to me, a company that hires booth babes is saying to me, “You’re a man. You’re easily manipulated by your sexuality.” To me, that implication is so insulting as demolish any appeal that the booth babes might have.
I realize of course, that many women – seriously or half-seriously – like to say that men think of nothing but sex. Many men, too, like to believe that they are helpless to control their sexual instincts.
Yet, personally, I’ve always counted myself a person first and a man second. I hold myself to high levels of responsibility, and I’ve never cared for feeling manipulated. Consequently, when a company imagines that I’m going to be swayed by booth babes – as though I’m a boy just a few minutes into puberty who knows nothing about his own sexuality – I’m insulted. While the insult may not be aimed at me specifically, it’s no less strong for being general.
For all these reasons, far from being lured into lingering around the booth babes so that a real company representative can pounce on me, I keep walking. Any literature or freebies I might have already collected from the company with booth babes gets tossed. Unless the company is too big to ignore, I don’t write any stories about it – and, even then, I try not to. If a company can be so contemptuous of me, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be equally contemptuous of it.
To be honest, I’m surprised that booth babes have survived into the present era. They seem more a relic of the 1960s, when the end of repression confused people into thinking that all forms of sexuality should be encouraged.
But, for me, today, they have the opposite effect than what’s intended. Nor, I suspect, am I the only male who feels that way. Add we dissenting males to the growing number of women at conferences, and booth babes must be well on their way to becoming a liability.
At least, I hope so.
Off the Wall 
Feel free to have the booth babes direct their sexual come ons to me so you won’t have to be distracted.
I suppose if I were feeling kind, I’d delete this comment. But you did send it, so I’m approving it with out any other comment.
If you include all of the females who, like you, will simply roll their eyes and walk on, I would say that booth babes are indeed a liability. Simple-minded males can’t be much of a client base. (I’ll be drummed out of the Girl Club for saying that!)
Being in a mischevious mood this morning, I can’t resist pointing this out…
If you keep walking without even talking to a good looking woman in a booth, you are acting on prejudice. Maybe most such are just hired to be eye candy, but that doesn’t mean they all are. Is it any less unfair for you to assume they’re all just “booth babes” than it is for companies to assume all men will be swayed by cleavage?
You’re putting words in my mouth. I never said that I assumed that every good-looking woman was a booth babe. But the differences between a booth babe and a full-time female employee generally aren’t subtle.
You did say “I keep walking” … (third paragraph from the bottom there). Does this not mean you don’t stop at the booth at all? And if you don’t stop to talk to them, any impression you get is just an assumption based on past experience.
Granted, when you see a buxom babe in a skimpy costume at a convention, it’s statistically likely she’s there just for decoration. But still, you don’t *know* that. It’s also statistically likely that any given writer is at least a bit of a curmudgeon, but does that make it ok to avoid them all at parties on principle? 😛
What I find most interesting in thinking about all this is that nowadays there actually are a lot of attractive women who are geeks into gadgets and games (and probably many who like to show up at cons wearing costumes), so it should be easy to find some to staff booths who also know their stuff. And yet I’m also sure that most booth babes aren’t those people, too…
Thinking further, I see another way to look at this… I suppose you can also spot booth babes not by their attractiveness but by the role they play. A gorgeous woman dressed up as a space marine could be decoration or game expert, but if she’s just standing around waving a big honking space gun and not answering questions that pretty much settles the matter.
In that case the real objection is just a variant on the old story of companies promoting style over substance, with the extra obnoxious twist of degrading people in the bargain. Such types also annoy me enough to walk away, although I suppose I’d at least look around the booth a bit first.
It does seem a bit like carrying on a conversation with a developer who insists on wearing a purple wig while discussing kernel hacking.
Booth coffee is usually a winner, though.