Jimquisition: Booth Babes

Shiro No Uma

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Frasman said:
japlandweirdling said:
Booth Boys? Bro's?
Why not? Last time I was in Vegas, many of the hotels (Luxor, Caesars Palace, Excalibur, Imperal Palace) had buff, half nekkid male eye candy at prominent locations. Sprinkle some "Booth Bros" in a convention, and I'm sure many of the people complaining about the exploitation of women wouldn't half much ammunition.

Good job Jim about pointng out the employment factor. It's something I would never have thought of.
I'm not sure where I fall on this. I've worked several E3's as both a booth person with a very particular skill, not break dancing, and someone networking to get more work. I have to say that the "sex sales" aspect that developers and publishers alike bring to the show does ramp up every year almost to a fault. I would agree that it didn't seem very professional when masses of half naked or sexually suggestive dressed people were at a booth to promote a game. Most of the time they didn't even know what they were promoting, but that's not there job.

Socially I don't think that it would be acceptable AT ALL if a male in a banana-hammock was at one of these shows promoting a game. I think people would actually find it offensive because there is a bias about what is sexually acceptable and the show runner would have them removed.
 

Shiro No Uma

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Ishigami said:
I say ban them.

And what about the jobs? - How about getting a real one?!
I very interested, are you joking about getting a real job? If not, could you tell what a real job is? I very curious because as it happens I've worked many of these kinds of shows and I have to tell you, they are REAL PEOPLE who need REAL MONEY.
 

Ishigami

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Archangel357 said:
Ishigami said:
I say ban them.

And what about the jobs? - How about getting a real one?!
This comment is actually way more sexist than the skimpiest booth babe outfit could ever be.
Because I have no respect nor sympathy for someone being paid for staying around? - So be it.

Shiro No Uma said:
I very interested, are you joking about getting a real job? If not, could you tell what a real job is?
Construction site worker.

Shiro No Uma said:
I very curious because as it happens I've worked many of these kinds of shows and I have to tell you, they are REAL PEOPLE who need REAL MONEY.
Everyone needs money that does not mean you deserve it.
 

Ishigami

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Archangel357 said:
Just out of curiosity, may I ask which profession you are in?
Aviation maintenance technician.

Archangel357 said:
Oh, so a job requiring MALE physical attributes is worthy of respect, while a job requiring FEMALE physical attributes is not.

Yeah, you should probably stay out of this discussion. I'm not saying this for myself, I just think that the people on "your" side of the argument would like to keep up their pretense of feminism and not have it completely shot full of holes by such manifest and rampant misognyny.
You are making this a gender issue!
There are female construction site workers, there are female aviation maintenance technicians and there are male models.
I have a problem with people not producing or contributing to the production or maintenance of goods earning money thru said products.
 

sonofliber

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add guys in thonges and be done with it, this is the most stupid sexiest thing yet, the whole concept is: she is attractive and i dont like that, BAN IT.
 

sonofliber

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Ishigami said:
Archangel357 said:
Just out of curiosity, may I ask which profession you are in?
Aviation maintenance technician.

Archangel357 said:
Oh, so a job requiring MALE physical attributes is worthy of respect, while a job requiring FEMALE physical attributes is not.

Yeah, you should probably stay out of this discussion. I'm not saying this for myself, I just think that the people on "your" side of the argument would like to keep up their pretense of feminism and not have it completely shot full of holes by such manifest and rampant misognyny.
You are making this a gender issue!
There are female construction site workers, there are female aviation maintenance technicians and there are male models.
I have a problem with people not producing or contributing to the production or maintenance of goods earning money thru said products.
its call marketing
 

TheProfessor234

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Maybe they just need to have different conventions. As it was said, some conventions have out right banned booth babes while others still have them. Just designate which Cons can have them, which can not, and there. People can plan accordingly and they can't complain about them since they know if booth babes are going to be there or not.

I guess the problem there is that companies who want to use them to pull in customers will only participate in the allowing con.
 

masticina

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I am not against nor defending booth babes. Oh sure they are cute but lets be fair they are nothing to do with the actual games. And those that they attract attention off probably are not the best fans of the games either.

Unless it is a DOA2: E player but lets be fair... not to be negative to those that like boothbabes. Just hoping for publishers that booth babes are not the only reasons some people go to these shows.

And as some publishers [thing guild wars 2 at pax] show.. content is king.

So less booth babes or maybe a bit more intelligence there..hell it would put more energy in actually having content to offer. game related content. Maybe a free shirt now that is nice.. and has more effect on the long term. It would give some players a new favourite shirt.. others would hang it on the wall. Some would just wear it and when picking it out of the pile see the games name again.

And sometimes a shirt would be even physical more sticking... [ewww]
 

anthony87

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Ickorus said:
My problem with Booth Babes has nothing to do with feminism or discomfort for their presence.

I just don't like how immature it makes gamers look as a whole, especially at a time when we have to fight to get ourselves taken seriously.
"Fight to get ourselves taken seriously"?

Really?

Taken seriously by who?
 

Do4600

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Booth babes alienate me in a completely different way. They just seem dishonest. Everybody at the show is there for video games except the models, who are dressed up like video game characters more often than not. So they seem to be the biggest poseurs on the face of the planet. I feel like it would be as if you met somebody on the street dressed up like a furry who was really enthusiastic about telling you how great furries were but then they go home and laugh about how crazy you are for taking what they just told you as fact and getting paid for it.
Nasrin said:
It strikes me that people working in coal mines probably feel the same way. If you're saying that what they do for a job makes the world worse, not better, then losing their job as a consequence to your criticism seems fair, doesn't it?
The question is: "are these comparable worse-s?" The point about "booth babes" is that while fighting for the apparent good of women you may be putting many women out of work. I feel a better comparison would be fighting to make coal miners healthier by getting them laid off from their jobs and telling them they'd be better for it.
 

RobfromtheGulag

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May 18, 2010
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'You can't win when you do this kind of thing'

Agreed. People have spun sexism so much that someone will be upset no matter what.

My (perhaps conservative) take is that asking people to cover up isn't a huge deal. You want to wear a buffalo hide thong, do it out in public, not in a decidedly weighted environment (this goes for both genders, naturally).

Putting booth babes out of work doesn't seem like a real deal breaker to me either, because a (valid, in my opinion) argument has been made by the feminists that people should be hired for their skills. Standing in front of a booth is not a skill. It's not exactly gender neutral either -- how many of these booths have chip'n'dale dancers in front of them? Ideally if someone can't be a booth babe then they get a job that doesn't normalize objectification for them.
 

annoyinglizardvoice

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Jimothy Sterling said:
Booth Babes

The punditry of the videogame community have been chatting an awful lot about booth babes this past year or so.

Watch Video
Some very interesting and valid points there.

Personally I feel a little bit insulted that companies don't have enough respect for my attention span or their own product to assume that sex-appeal is needed to sell stuff to me.
I do however believe that booth-babes fulfil a very important function. The very presence of hot women drastically increases the chance that the ugly men at the convention will remember to wash, and I believe this alone justifies there presence.
 

Ishigami

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Archangel357 said:
You're damned right I am.
Then do it on your own. I will ignore everything related to that.

Archangel357 said:
My father is a retired foreign service officer. I used to be in the armed forces, now I am in academia. My fiancée used to work at conventions as a translator. By your yardstick, my old man and I are completely useless (since neither civil nor military service, let alone the humanities, "produce" anything tangible), while my fiancée had actually the closest to what you would describe as a "real job", since she helped the manufacturing companies she worked for attract and communicate with customers.
Ah yea right be an inch-picker.
If you want deliberately misunderstand people for your arguments sake then be my guest I won't argue any more. You know what I mean or you do not deserve to, either way is fine by me.

Archangel357 said:
My point is this. Booth babes are an "evolution", if you will, of the tried and true booth girls which exist at literally EVERY type of convention/expo/trade fair [...] - some are there purely as eye candy, some have actual skills, and most are a bit of both.
And rarely any of them are needed.

Archangel357 said:
There is no expression dumber than "real job", because usually, people saying that have no idea what the others' jobs entail. There are douches in academia who think that all manual labour could be done by apes or robots; by the same token, there are people who think that only manufacturing jobs are "real", forgetting the fact that those goods need to be marketed somehow.
You don't say.

If they are gone nothing of value will be lost. If that means I have to die from an infection gained through an unclean telephone headset so be it. I'll take that risk, my choice.