What happened to the ‘booth babes’: why young girls with little clothing are still a draw at technology fairs | Technology

A group of gentlemen takes photos of Weihsin while he smiles and makes hearts with his hands. This 25-year-old girl is wearing a top, a miniskirt, boots with heels and a headband with blue ears. On her chest, she wears a sticker that reads DeepCool. She is the name of the company she is promoting at Computex 2024, Asia’s largest technology fair. While it is no longer common to see the calls booth babes At large technology fairs such as CES or MWC, at this event held in Taipei, several companies use them to attract the attention of the men who attend the event, a practice that is not exempt from criticism.

To some young boys waiting to take a photo with Weishin, it seems like a good strategy to resort to the booth babes. “They should do it more,” says one of them. Another adds: “You are definitely going to buy more products where there is a young girl than an older man.” They are 24 and 25 year old Taiwanese students interested in technology and they don’t see anything wrong with it. “Brands could use handsome men too,” says one of the boys, who prefers not to give his name to “preserve his privacy.”

But the reality is that at this fair, held between June 4 and 7 in Taipei, companies do not use sexy, scantily clad men to promote their products. “We’re not seeing guys in a leather top. “It would seem just as ridiculous to me,” he says. Carmen Ruiz Repullo, professor of Sociology at the University of Granada. This gender expert believes that women should be prohibited booth babes because it is an “exploitation of women’s bodies: They are not dressing them as hostesses to work in technology because they are great technologists, they are putting them there to please and because they have an increasingly infantilized profile, which is what they want see the male gaze.”

Weishin remains on a raised platform of the stand DeepCool from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon. “They take photos with me and I dance twice a day,” says this cheerleader for a team from Taiwan, who earns between 4,000 and 6,000 Taiwan dollars a day – between 110 and 170 euros. She doesn’t mind taking photos with attendees. But when they get too close, she feels uncomfortable: “Sometimes they want to take photos with me making a heart by joining our hands or high-fiving them. “I don’t like that, I prefer not to be touched.”

Like her, many other girls pose at Computex, the fair to which EL PAÍS has been invited by the Council for the Development of Foreign Trade of Taiwan (TAITRA). They are in stands from technology companies such as ASRock, Montech, FSP, Persona, Innio3D or Biwin. Kiki and Rainie, two 27-year-old Taiwanese models, have been hired for the fair by the latter company. “We greet, welcome and invite people to enter the standalthough we don’t know much about the company,” they acknowledge.

“Some men write to me on Instagram”

There are models like Tatiana Kovalchuk who are from other countries. This 26-year-old Ukrainian has been living in Taiwan for four months. “I found a job ad on Facebook and signed up,” she says. There are men who ask for her Instagram account and even send her messages: “They tell me that they liked meeting me and that they want to be my friends. “I don’t answer them.” Those who write to him “are not young.” “Here I am exotic and white. They are fetishists,” she adds.

Among the older men taking photos of these young girls is Allen Randolph Tsui. This 55-year-old amateur photographer from Taipei says he pays more attention to products when young women show them off. He doesn’t speak English, so he opens a translator on his phone and draws Chinese characters on the screen. “I think this is not harmful for girls,” he says. A few meters away from him is Anita Chung, a 50-year-old woman from Taipei, who does not believe it is necessary to “dress scantily or show a lot of skin to attract attention.”

Repullo asks a question: “Does this type of hostesses need something like this at a technology fair like this?” She is clear that not. Some companies like Cooler Master refuse to hire scantily clad girls to attract attention. “That is not the right approach. We are not here to sell physical items, we are here to sell products,” says Carlos Villanueva, head of global marketing for this company.

Among the companies that do hire these girls is Montech. Chris Chen, one of the workers at this company, does not consider that there is an objectification of women. He compares the situation to “a show”: “It’s like when a singer dresses sexy on stage. It doesn’t mean she’s doing anything sexual, it’s just the appearance. I don’t think it’s bad if she doesn’t look at herself in a negative way.” From DeepCool they claim to respect those who defend or reject their strategy: “We simply do our job. If someone doesn’t like it, they can say so and move on.”

A CEO signing a woman’s chest

When seeing photographs of these girls at Computex, pornsocialization comes to mind for Ruiz: “This phenomenon that is occurring in this neoliberal capitalism that wants to convey to girls that they have a little more capital than boys, which has to do with with sexual capital.” The expert refers to “that idea of ​​’exploit your erotic capital and be your own company with the body you have’”. This “false empowerment” places the girl in a single place: “That of brightening the male gaze and desire.”

“Hence, the erotic game that the CEO of Nvidia has played by making a signature on the chest of one of the girls in front of all the photographers, as if to say: ‘Well, I’m going to take the risk because I know that this is fun, press and headlines, right?’” It refers to Jensen Huang, an executive director who is causing a stir at Computex and on June 4 he signed on a woman’s chest in a crowded booth. “Is this a good idea?” he asked himself before doing it.

It seems to Repullo that all this places women as merchandise: “It makes us believe that the value we have has to do with the body, the physical and the sexual.” Some defenders of booth babes indicate that the woman freely chooses that function. This idea is used to delegitimize critical opinions. This is what it indicates Ana Dolores Verdú Delgado, university professor and researcher in the field of social sciences, who insists: “Freedom is very relative to an age in which there is not enough experience to know how to choose and in a precarious world in which we must make many sacrifices to survive. Some women also participate in their objectification, but it does not seem to me to be an act of freedom, but rather of inertia.”

There are fewer and fewer ‘booth babes’

The situation has changed in recent decades. Trade shows such as CES, held annually in Las Vegas, They have adjusted their dress code over the years. Currently, participants at the world’s largest consumer electronics show “should not wear clothing that is sexually revealing or that could be interpreted as underwear, regardless of gender.” “Clothing that shows excess bare skin, specifically genitals, chest or buttocks, should not be worn,” the company says.

Little by little some booth babes They have been disappearing. “At fairs like the IFA or the MWC you can see pretty hostesses, but they are not dressed like that,” says Christian Sanz, CEO of the Toro Tocho Reviews channel, which indicates that where there is most, without a doubt, is in Computex. This newspaper has contacted TAITRA, the organizing entity of this event, to find out its position and to find out if at any time they have considered prohibiting the booth babes. The organization has declined to comment on the matter.

At Computex there are also fewer models than before and they are “less insistent,” according to Sanz. Remember that before they were in “every stands” and they approached him to tell him “in a romantic tone” to come see them. “I was hesitant, but you saw the Taiwanese audience and they even touched them and grabbed them by the waist. We all know in Spain that you shouldn’t do that, but they have it normalized,” she says.

Luis Rosales, Dr. Hoodman on YouTube, has been to multiple events in Asia, where he claims they are “more traditional.” To explain, he mentions a business trip he made years ago to Taichung, a city in Taiwan, in which he was taken to karaoke: “I was sitting, they played music and suddenly a woman sat next to me. She brought me a beer, started serving me and she helped herself. I had never seen her before and for her to be so friendly was very strange. So, I asked a girl from the company and she told me that she was a service lady who came to cheer you up and flirt with you.”

Is using young girls to attract men really a strategy that makes brands profitable or can it be counterproductive? Verdú, who is an expert in gender studies, believes that it is not effective because many people may feel uncomfortable. For Ruiz, it is something that “depends on the male audience and where we place society.” “If this had happened in Spain in 2016 or 2017, after the phenomenon of Me Too or the case of the Pack, it would surely have been rejected because the context allowed it. But now we are in a context of patriarchal reaction towards feminism and equality policies, where the neoliberal system has a great interest in placing this story of erotic capital on girls. It worries me,” she concludes.

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