I don't want booth babes.

There’s a nice and very sensible post on The Loop regarding booth babes at trade shows (like CES and IAA). Peter Cohen quotes a Gizmodo piece by Mat Honan regarding the complaints about booth babes directed at the organiser of CES. Read it here.

A comment by a guest named ‘Coward Anonim’ rubbed me the wrong way, though:

If companies want to pay them and they want to get the job, then what is a problem?

Can’t adults (18+ years) make decisions for themselves? How the h… they are eligible to vote in a public election, then? Is not election more important???

(Let’s leave the elephant in the room — the degradation of women to sex objects — standing there for a minute. Let’s also make a distinction between normally clothed female sales staff and booth babes.)

When I go to a trade show I go there for the products. If companies need scantly clad women to get my attention, I immediately suspect that their product isn’t good enough to impress me on its own.

I like women as much as the next guy, but I find the practice of putting scantly clad women on display at such shows insulting. — Why?

Because what the people hiring them are telling me, is that I’m so controlled by primal urges to serve every female in sight, that I’ll flock to every booth with booth babes.

Good products don’t need booth babes to be sold. Modern men don’t need booth babes to find those products.

Alex Hoffmann @mangochutney