Thoughts on "Booth Babes" Part 1

Category: Tech Today

I'm not sure what the hullabaloo is about "sexism" in electronic shows. Fifteen minutes of TV shows like Game of Thrones or Pretty Little Liars and Kate Upton commercials have enough lovely ladies in questionable situations as it is. And no one really complains about auto shows with leggy models splayed over a convertible. There are just too many billboards, TV shows, web sites, and forms of media that advertise and promote using attractive women to be judgmental about electronic shows with young ladies holding a tablet or laptop. 

Manufacturers hire the so-called "booth babes" to attract visitors and consumers. For those who have never visited an electronics show, it's not free unless you're part of the staff of one of the companies. It's nothing special in the sense that electronic shows do not occur as often as auto shows, a new alcoholic drink, or a new lingerie collection. Companies such as Budweiser, Carlsberg and even Asian brewery companies like Tiger and San Miguel use sexy, scantily-clad women to sell their drinks regularly, going as far as sending them to bars to coax customers to drink a little bit more. Think Hsu Chi's beergirl role in Hong Kong's Confessions of Pain (2006). However, beer girls don't hit the headlines anymore unless some beer girl toppled over, said something silly, or ended up like Jodie Foster in The Accused (1988). But arguments abound online about electronic show models. If you've actually been to an electronics show, "booth babes" aren't nearly as pawed at and slobbered over as beer girls. They are viewed by many a bespectacled professional with reverence.

Yearly comic conventions get more press from forums and hobby sites than the new SSD or tablet being hocked in an electronics show. Cosplayers love the attention. It's their time to doll themselves up, maybe wear something a bit sexy, and get away from the doldrums of mundane boring days. Their costumes are over-the-top and sometimes more scandalous than any NVIDIA or AMD model can think up - it's seen as harmless fun. Comic book, sci-fi, and fantasy conventions have plenty of "sexy" ladies yet they are as much about advertising new and upcoming media (games, books, movies, and shows) as a community activity. In this light, electronic shows are the same though there's arguably more money at stake for the manufacturers to advertise their wares. Any industry insider would tell you the returns are fairly small for such a huge investment as renting space, paying for lovely models, building a stall, and attempting to reveal half-finished products that may not make it into the production line.

In this tech-savvy age we live in, there is one thing critics of "booth babes" should know - sex doesn't sell as much as they might like to think. Consumers are more concerned about price and technical specifications than the models that sport the latest Samsung phone or Lenovo laptop. The short-skirted presenters aren't expected to drum up sales. They're there to present the products and answer questions. Would you rather have some fat, sweaty, bearded engineer heft the latest hybrid tablet? They're definitely more knowledgeable than the Girls Generation look-alike Intel hired, but that same engineer can also smell funny, involuntary fart a few times, and can't stand up straight in front a booth for more than 5 minutes. A booth babe may not know the first thing about using RAID with an SSD, but she smells nice, entrances you with her voice, and can stand in front of a booth for 6 hours while wearing 4-inch heels - and look hotter than the sun while she's at it.

Photo credits: A big thanks to Alex and Bobby from the Taipei team for providing the fantastic photographs from Taipei Computex 2013.

Continued in Thoughts on "Booth Babes" Part 2