chargirlgenius (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chargirlgenius) wrote2008-09-05 12:39 pm
chargirlgenius) wrote2008-09-05 12:39 pm
A Sexism Post that’s NOT About Sarah Palin
If you think that sexism is dead in America, I’d like to tell you what I heard yesterday. I was sitting, working in a coffeeshop, and there were a couple of guys at the next table. The one was pitching to another an idea for event planning, telling him all of the services that they were going to provide. I was mildly amused, because the younger guy (the pitcher) was very enthusiastic, but the older fellow (the pitchee) was largely silent, and his body language made him look like he wanted to escape the conversation. Because of my amusement, I sat with my iPod headphones in, but the music turned off. (Ues, I’m bad).
As the younger guy is explaining how the day goes, he says, “And we’re going to have an attractive female at the door greeting attendees…”
I’m 95% certain that’s what he said. Had I been 100% I likely would have said something, but even with my iPod phones in, I don’t really doubt that he would have said that.
Not that it’s a surprise, but yes, female looks ARE more important than brains in getting some jobs in corporate America*. Lest I ever feel too confident in how far society has come, I’m quickly reminded how far we have yet to go.
(*I completely understand that for many jobs, a well-groomed appearance is a must, but I consider good grooming something that anybody can do, rather than inherently being “an attractive female.”)
As the younger guy is explaining how the day goes, he says, “And we’re going to have an attractive female at the door greeting attendees…”
I’m 95% certain that’s what he said. Had I been 100% I likely would have said something, but even with my iPod phones in, I don’t really doubt that he would have said that.
Not that it’s a surprise, but yes, female looks ARE more important than brains in getting some jobs in corporate America*. Lest I ever feel too confident in how far society has come, I’m quickly reminded how far we have yet to go.
(*I completely understand that for many jobs, a well-groomed appearance is a must, but I consider good grooming something that anybody can do, rather than inherently being “an attractive female.”)
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It was a scary, scary time. Fortunately, there was beer. LOTS of beer. Free beer. LOTS of free beer.
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I hate that.
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Electrical - check
tables - check
chairs - check
attractive female - check
That's about how it struck me.
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I worked for a corporate rock radio station for a year in my early 20s. I was the equivalent of a "booth babe" for most of that year, before I was promoted into working the board in studio. Very little phases me now, having lived through institutionalized sexual harassment on a daily basis... But it did turn me into a strictly Public Radio listener. ;)
Sex sells
Of course if it was me, I'd be reduced to a slobbering mess if the presenter was especially hot...but that's just me! ;-)
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;-)
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But it's true, and it's saddening. Our looks are what we're worth, still, apparently.
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This discussion of the use of the term "Female" has me musing about alien sociologists performing experiments on Humans (with inexplicably, German accents) "Observe Xephox, the reaction of zee male uv ze species, as ve place an attractif female in ze convention booth..."
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That doesn’t bother me as much for some reason…*grin*
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Perhaps if geeks and nerds got out of their mother's basements more often, had real social skills, and knew more about the average woman than that she, for some unknown reason, doesn't look like Laura Croft, perhaps then electronics conventions would be different. By this is not teh intarwebs you're looking for...
What I'd like to remind the women on the list is that, but the very nature of being one of the C-Genius's friends its obvious that though we have fine taste and breeding, the males here also appreciate a well equipped MIND as a womans finest organ.
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I'm a process engineer. And every time I go to any form of trade show, I'm routinely mistaken for "support staff"... as I get older it's rarer that I'm mistaken for a booth babe, now it's "Are you one of the wives? Are you lost?" But it's the whole "We're at a trade show so obviously women are here for our amusement... engineer? what? That can't be right..."
The ratio of women engineers to men is generally about 75 to 1 in my industry.
Didn't even put my finger on it or think about it until now.
No, I'm not one of the booth babes and I'm not one of the wives. Now get over your shock and explain your fucking product to me...
*sigh*
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It's interesting and sad.
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one in a suit, hair in a bun, glasses, no makeup.
the 2nd time she wore a low blouse (red), short skirt, hair down, makeup.
She was selling cell phones. Guess which focus group responded that they would be more willing to buy the product.
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It has taken me a long time to get over wishing I was a boy. I don't think women and men have to be treated the same to be equal (Although I would LOVE to have big sexy shirtless men enticing me to pay attention to products!) But the same argument was made about black people in the 1940s and 50s segregation was seperate, but it wasnt equal.
Mostly, I just want to be taken seriously no matter how big the flesh bags on my chest are. I also don't want to be expected to fetch coffe for guests in the office. If I was a guy NO One would ask me to get them coffee unless I was wearing a nametag.
However if you really want to get pissed off at the sexy women at conventions thing, look at craigs list help wanted sometime. They will get into details about how you should look. I saw one last week that specified "no Attitudes" It made me laugh becuase it seemed like they wanted manequins who breathed. Just put big pictures of boobies and vaginas, and save the rest of the woman for something valid.
Confession time...
True to my geek status, I was honestly more interested in bits, bytes, server capacity and latency than any of the booth babes (of whom there were many). This being 1990, the booth babe army did not yet include certain hot looking guys (that started happening post 1998, and they are still in the minority).
The sexiest thangs on the showroom floor were NeXT cubes, IBM AIX workstations (some running Nextstep as a demo), and some amazingly slick geographic workstations from Intergraph. Here's the confession part...
Most of the vendors had booth babes, and most of the both babes were completely clueless about the technology gadgets and servers and workstations they were pushing... That is factually true and thousands of attending engineers will back me up on this... However, it does not excuse my presumption that the exceptionally hot looking women pushing the Intergraph workstations were simply booth babes too.
In fact, Intergraph's booth was staffed by brilliant engineers; and they did not have a single clueless marketing type at the show at all.... The engineers just happened to be distractingly stunning, and gracious... they allowed me enough time to extract my foot, calf, knee and even thigh after I put them all in my own mouth asking for someone who could talk to me about the technical aspects of the Clipper chip and how CLIX (their OS) differed from AIX and HP-UX. The engineers were part of the team who'd just ported CLIX to Clipper from MIPS. Doh!
Guilty, but I learned a valuable lesson.
Re: Confession time...
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