As Detroit’s struggles prove, life is a fight for resources. If you can’t get enough resources, you die. Well, in Motown’s case, you receive massive taxpayer subsidies and then you die. Taking it down to the personal level, the resources needed for survival form what Abraham Maslow called “a hierarchy of needs.” The most basic of these are lumped together: air, water, food and sex. Yup, sex is at the bottom of the pyramid. So it’s no wonder that exhibitors at The North American International Show (NAIAS) pay young, attractive females to pose next to their vehicles. It appeals to the mostly male jobbing journos’ most basic needs (after securing shrimp), drawing their attention to the automakers’ vehicles. It’s effective, morally reprehensible and now, self-defeating.
The worldwide auto industry is undergoing a major makeover. For the last few years, government regulation, economics, media fashion and (arguably) public opinion have led to the de-Luztification of the business. In other words, the horsepower uber alles halo cars worshiped by GM’s septuagenarian head of product development as a young man are no longer the sine qua non of vehicular excellence. These days, environmental responsibility is the name of the game.
High gas prices or low, good times or bad, green is the new black. Imagine this year’s don’t call it The Detroit Auto Show without the new Toyota Prius and Honda Insight hybrids vying for primacy. Today’s auto shows are all about the mpgs and alt power. To wit: would NAIAS have welcomed former coach-builder (i.e. Mercedes SL and BMW 8-Series reskinner) Henrik Fisker on center stage if his sports sedan holstered a V12 engine rather than a hybrid “Q-Drive”? Clearly not.
Sure, sheetmetal queens like the Fisker Karma still get attention, regardless of their fuel efficiency. But again, these days, even the sleekest of the sleek are swathed in the mantle of federally-mandated planet protection. If the Cadillac Converj concept car has an engine underneath its stunning creases– which I highly doubt– it’s supposed to be GM’s forthcoming if not theoretical Voltec electric – gas hybrid powerplant.
“Time was the big auto show in Detroit was all about glamorous gas guzzlers on turntables,” NPR’s intro to an interview with Car Czar Bob Lutz interview pronounces. “and models pointing suggestively at fins and fenders. Not this year…”
Yes, this year. While the gas guzzlers are conspicuous by their absence, the booth babes are still there, undermining the automakers’ credibility. The media talk about NAIAS’ new found “austerity” and “de-glamorization.” The shrimp may be smaller, but the booth babes’ dresses are just as tight and revealing. And their presence reveals the truth about these taxpayer-funded cutbacks: the carmakers still don’t “get it.”
While I’m no fan of political correctness (hence the name of the website), the debate over the morality of using women to sell goods and services was fought over forty years ago. The “sexual objectification” of women was roundly, stridently and publicly denounced. The practice was defeated. Depicting women as mindless eye candy more-or-less whoring for a product joined racial stereotyping as one of those things you just don’t do.
In practice, society reached a compromise: women can be objects of sexual desire in sexual situations. A flexible concept to be sure, but easy enough to identify. Victoria’s Secret models, OK. Booth babes, no. (Beauty pageants, as always, lost in the middle.) In other words, draping nubile women over automobiles is a throwback to– and a carry-over from– an earlier, less sensitive time.
Whether they’re hawking EVs or SUVs (God forbid), booth babery illustrates and symbolizes the auto industry’s arrogant refusal to adapt to society’s needs. Well, norms.
As I’ve pointed out in previous years, booth babes are also self-defeating. They intimidate the average showgoer and discourage female attendance (for obvious reasons). By adorning cars with attractive girls who know little to nothing about the vehicle nearby, women who don’t work for the company producing the product, the manufacturer inhibits serious discussions about the car itself. In fact, the carmaker is showing an active disregard for anything other than the vehicles’ surface.
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that TTAC fell into this same trap with a spate of cheerleader pictures, whose ironic intent– illustrating the automotive media’s attempt to “sex up” bad news– offended our audience. Commentators rightly pointed-out that the tits and ass snaps had nothing to do with TTAC’s core mission. It lowered the site’s tone and robbed us of the one thing we depend on for survival: our reputation. We admitted our mistake, ceased the practice and moved on.
It’s time for the “serious” car shows to lose the titillation. Not because it isn’t a welcome distraction from the hype, hot air and hypocrisy that surrounds the event. But because it is.
I hardly think the “booth babes” are scaring away people from the Lambo display.
It would have been refreshing had the Big 3 had some real employees stand next to their vehicles instead of models. Imagine a passionate line worker standing next to the vehicle he/she builds, extolling the virtues. Of course, the UAW would have required a re-write of the labor agreement and probably double time and free food, so never mind..
From the pictures that I saw on another site, the booth babes at the Detroit Auto Show seemed rather classy to me. They were wearing very nice evening dresses, it’s not like these were HIN women who barely have any clothes on.
On a side note: Leave it to the Italians to bring the goods in terms of booth babes ;)
Viceroy_Fizzlebottom :
I think you missed the point.
Quote dwford: “It would have been refreshing had the Big 3 had some real employees stand next to their vehicles instead of models. Imagine a passionate line worker standing next to the vehicle he/she builds, extolling the virtues. Of course, the UAW would have required a re-write of the labor agreement and probably double time and free food, so never mind..”
I think Ford tried this a few years ago…they had Engineers, Plant folks and R&D Staff walking around in white lab coats with name tags…I thought it was a good idea but I guess they didn’t continue the practice for one reason or another.
The sexiest booth babe I have ever encountered ran the Nissan GT-R exhibit last year in Detroit… whether she had just memorized the speech, or knew her stuff, she went into great detail about Godzilla’s heritage and future. To say I was smitten, is an understatement. And she was wearing the classiest 3 piece business suit in COBO hall
No one can accuse TTAC of glossing over even the most mundane aspects of the auto industry. It is now official, if it wasn’t before.
“These days, environmental responsibility is the name of the game.”
As evidenced by the Prius clogged Toyota Dealerships and US ports.
I think you are making something of nothing, the audience appreciates it, mostly, and the girls are receiving a paycheck for dressing in evening wear or something no more revealing than they might wear on a hot summer day. Certainly, some auto shows have lower standards for a dress codes, but not the big glitzy international shows.
I submit that it may actually be more cost effective to have these young models adorn the cars rahter than execs from automakers. I also suspect that most of my auto loving peers enjoy the booth babes very much.
Robert Farago wrote:
“It lowered the site’s tone and robbed us of the one thing we depend on for survival: our reputation.”
The booth babes are there because they appeal to the media whores that can be influenced to write positive stories about the automakers with free shrimp, free beer, free test drives of new models, and advertising dollars.
The babes at the Lamborghini booth make sense because shallow superficial people are attracted to other equally shallow and superficial people. If it wasn’t for single and divorced doctors and lawyers companies like Porsche wouldn’t have a customer base.
Hey, remember the time you wrote an article against the practice of using attractive women as a marketing tool and then put a clickable image of attractive women twice in the same article?
“The “sexual objectification” of women was roundly, stridently and publicly denounced. The practice was defeated. Depicting women as mindless eye candy more-or-less whoring for a product joined racial stereotyping as one of those things you just don’t do.”
Hm. Seems that someone forgot to mention this to the guys who organize SEMA.
I love the pics of the booth babes, but in real life situations I generally don’t want to see cleavage, etc. It’s too much effort not to stare. I hate to say it, but it is difficult to believe that car shows haven’t really gotten past this yet:
Slare :
As I’ve said, mea culpa. Although I think it’s appropriate to use the autoblog image here.
It’s not exclusive to the auto industry. At any trade show you are going to see T&A promotional people. I was at a building industry trade show and you wouldn’t believe the women hawking sump pumps and aluminum siding.
And lest you think this is only the case in male-dominated industries, have you ever seen the women at a fashion industry event?!
etardedSparks :
And lest you think this is only the case in male-dominated industries, have you ever seen the women at a fashion industry event?!
I do think it’s the case of male-dominated industries appealing to their customers’ basest instincts. And a fashion event is one of those places where society says it’s OK to sex it up. And rightly so.
They intimidate the average showgoer and discourage female attendance (for obvious reasons).
While I wholeheartedly agree with the larger point – which I take to be that if you’re still putting out cookies just so Santa shows, you’re living in the past – I would make the following observations…
Do the demographics on auto show attendees. Last time I checked, overwhelmingly a “boy’s day out”.
Journos are (relatively) underpaid, they live for the fringes. Last journo I hung with took full advantage.
Do you really think that anybody that buys an Xcalade really gives two good flyin’s about this year’s new grill? Really? They wanna see some chrome and some babes. It’s sorta like going to Hooters. With cars. That’s enough ‘naughtiness’ for some folks.
(God, how I wish I wasn’t a very jaded bastard sometimes, life would be so much simpler…)
I humbly submit that anybody who really lives cars knows everything that will happen at the DET show long before the show happens. You saw the cars in advance. Do a coupla concepts that will be completely cluster-f’d before they hit the showrooms really matter?
Those who are really into mods might slum it in LV for the aftermarket hoochie-fest for a couple of days. Lots of Asian hotties. Way too much floor space to traverse. Way too many purveyors of 30″ dopeman-wheel-du-jour.
Those who actually care about the leading/bleeding edge are at PRI, where those who supply almost everybody everything are. Almost no booth ‘tang. Some of the small fry who sell directly will have some, but mostly just a meet-n-greet with people who matter.
Micro point: As far as scaring off female attendees, it really depends on whether your significant other is limited to playing for one team.
Just a thought…
I often hang out on French and Italian web car mags, and they have special sections for booth babes galleries. Different place, different attitude. I agree with the substance of the article, but let’s not forget that cars are powerful phallic symbols, and displays of wealth, all serving the atavistic goal of mating more. Booth babes are a part of this just like horsepower is.
And to relate to Jonny’s entry about what kids want, young males are at a stage where they need to establish themselves and spread their seeds, thus the inflated infatuation for powerful cars….
I don’t really care about the text of this article or the comments above, I just want to say: what a great photo!
I disagree. Cars are sexy and, consiously or subconciously, we attach sex to cars because of what they have represented since you were old enough to want a license: freedom. Freedom to go out, full of hormones, and meet girls. The booth babes just bring the IDEA that a car is sexy together with the REALITY that a car is sexy. Almost all of lifes indulgances come back to sex: chocolate – what does good chocolate remind you of? sex. Alcohol – makes it easier to have sex. Fast cars – sex. I personally, do my best to buy ‘practical’ cars, but I cannot buy a box on wheels, I want something sexy, that I can confidently use to get to my end goal of having sex with attractive woemen. As a commenter said above, SEMA is notorious for its booth babes, but to me, a girl standing infront of a display of exhausts or giant rims isn’t sexy, but a girl draped over an entire package…a car, is sexy.
I do totally agree wtih your comment that having these girls as ornaments instead of educated instruments of sales, does hurt the appeal. If the girl draped across the Lambo knew some specs about the car…that would a complete package make.
Can you estimate the percentage of booth workers that were female? As long as the clothing is professional, and there is some attempt at gender equality, I’m OK with having a pretty face at the booth. That’s not what I’m looking at when I go to car shows anyway.
Also, hiring local talent must be cheaper than paying an engineer to work a booth (which would also require hotel and airfare costs). And frankly, most engineers (that I know) aren’t much to look at or too good with people.
Unfortunately, car companies are selling an image as much as they’re selling anything else. And yes, it’s all superficial. But that’s what a car show is. It’s a show.
If it wasn’t for single and divorced doctors and lawyers companies like Porsche wouldn’t have a customer base.
@UstaBee,
Hey now. Maybe in LA. Most of my clientele (especially the UberBeetleEvo drivers) are happily married. Sure, the guy with the 951 is prolly single, but he’s 25-30 and likes to go fast.
How does a booth babe intimidate a show go-er? Apart from possibly an over hyped 40 year old virgin who’ll get excited over anything female and smiling at him, (i guess thats why they coral the lambo girls in every year for their own safety!), most are pretty articulate, (apart from one on the Chrysler stand last year) but they know their stuff as that is what they are paid to do at the shows. I’m sure they’d be offended by your comments, did you think of them with all the technical details they are paid to learn and help provide you with. Times have changed the girls are dressed generally more professionally and to a higher level of style and taste than of yester year (yes the maufacturers do understand i guess) but where do they reduce female attendees at shows? Every motor show i’ve been to there are a good mix of folks there, yes you’ll always get more blokes turning up but i’ve never heard of women not turning up because of the designer dressed girls at the ferrari or lambo stand. How does their reduction compare to overall attendance figures, is there are general reduction in attendances? I’d understand more with women not wanting to take a family out to a show, i’ve done it with a stroller and its no fun playing ankle hockey with a bugaboo through the teaming crowds.
RF: I didn’t mean to imply I disagree with your point, I concur. However, I find it somewhat ironic that women market to women with the same technique.
As for car shows, or any other trade show, if I’m there due to a genuine interest in the products, I’d much prefer talking to the engineer who designed it than a rent-a-babe who memorized a marketing speech.
Specific to auto shows, they are a rather schizophrenic event – half an exclusive, industry-only, self-congratulatory love in; and half a public drool-fest which has a lot in common with the look-but-dont-touch policies of your average “gentleman’s club.”
The “product specialists” on most displays are well clad. Those on the Ford display look like they stepped out of an Orvis catalog. The girls on the Lambo display are the exception rather than the rule.
Would you rather drive a Ferrari for a day or have one of those booth babes for 1 night? Between you and me, I’ll take the Ferrari.
I guess growing up in Montreal, I’m blasé about “babes”…
Michael Karesh :
With all due respect Michael (I love that expression), perhaps that’s your own personal perspective. Click here for another.
But, the dealers don’t learn either. Most dealer advertising is in the sports section of your local paper and yet, 70% of all auto buying decisions are made, or influenced, by ladies.
How dare car companies use beautiful, young women to show off their beautiful cars and hand out brochures! We need ugly women too! Just yesterday I saw a “woman” driving a PT Cruiser that had man hating stickers on her bumper. She would be perfect to bring in equality to car shows! (wink wink)
No really, putting a beautiful woman next to car is not “whoring” her. The truth is that beauty sells and that ugly people hate to admit it. Men are usually the ones that want to buy new cars for other then just for getting from point A to B. So the two just go together.
Plus, my wife has no problem with beautiful, young women at car shows. I have never once heard her once say that she hates car shows because of them (she just hates my obsession with cars… lol).
RF,
The GF now wants to go to the DET autoshow. This is ALL your fault.
Ugh.
austinseven :
January 13th, 2009 at 9:51 am
But, the dealers don’t learn either. Most dealer advertising is in the sports section of your local paper and yet, 70% of all auto buying decisions are made, or influenced, by ladies.
Yes, I’ll agree with the final decision most of the time (as no man can be happy if his woman is not), however men are the ones that generally start the process. No woman I know looks at a car the same way that my buddies do. I’m going to spend thousands of dollars lifting a Jeep this year, and my wife doesn’t get it. The only thing that she will like about it is getting to be scene riding with me in it afterwards. Maybe too getting to drive it off-road.
Screw political correctness
Obviously trade shows like SEMA that devolve into cheap “gentleman’s clubs” (I’m intentionally not using the baser name for such establishments) on a convention center floor are demeaning, and actually make me less likely to attend. I was at the last convention in the Las Vegas convention center before SEMA this year, work for an automotive supplier, and still decided to get the hell out of town before that whole vibe got ramped up (Vegas is crass enough anyway on its own).
However, female presenters, like the young ladies in the Maserati booth this year, are appropriate. If they actually make a factual presentation, like the previous commenter mentioned with the GT-R example, even better.
It’s all in the setting and how tastefully it’s done, and you can’t legislate taste. To be blunt, it’s the difference between art and porn, you know it when you see it, and I’m not going to legislate art out of existence.
Booth Babes?!? Morally reprehensible?!? Are you kidding me?
No.
Buying a business to strip and flip it, regardless what happens to the people that work there, refusing to cough up your own money when things don’t quite work out as planned and instead steal from the hard working people who already said no, you can’t have any, and then publicly humiliating them by spending the money to thank them in phoney ads. That’s morally reprehensible.
Any questions?
Re: Engineers at marketing events.
Few more passionate advocates exist for a product than the engineer(s) who designed it. But having engineers talk to the public all day is a double-edged proposition. Few people know the weaknesses of a product more intimately than the engineer(s) who designed it. :)
If GM and Chrysler were using our tax dollars on booth babes, I’d be pissed. But from what I can see of the pictures (and I confess to a more than casual glance), they appear to be hired by the Italian supercar companies, which doesn’t phase me.
I mean, what do you think a carmaker that names its best known vehicle the “Countach” is really selling?
RF – no disrespect intended but this very website also sometimes uses “eye catching” images of women along with sometimes unrelated content. It doesn’t matter if you’re at a electronics expo like CES or any auto show – booth babes are a fact of life driven by human nature.
Cars are all about sex appeal. If they weren’t, we would all be driving a Pelosi Sti or whatever. Pretty much every choice we make, somewhere in the back of our mind we think about how the opposite sex would view us if we bought this. ( food, clothes, schooling, cars, boats, housing ) it’s not the only reason, but it’s considered by most of us, for most of our life. If sex were not a major human obsession, would there really be six and a half billion of us? I think attractive women standing next to a car, effectively “vouching” for it, is not the worst thing in the world. And I think women understand this too. Look at most women obsession with convertibles: all the better to display themselves in while dressed up, made up, and on the go.
How many car show attendees would be happy to see a 250 lb. soccer mom in sweat pants hawking their favorite car? That’s what I thought.
How many car show attendees would be happy to see a 250 lb. soccer mom in sweat pants hawking their favorite car? That’s what I thought.
Eeech. Nobody wants to see that kind of reality. Ever.
Cars, car shows and glam all go together. You car is a projection to the public of who you are – or would be if you can afford the right projectile.
If it were not so we would all be driving one of a few basic cars:
A Golf
A van (windows if for kids, panels if for parts)
Some four-door saloon for long-ish trips…a Zil! http://digilander.libero.it/cuoccimix/zil117(71-85).jpg
RF, you need a trip to the West Coast to warm up. It’s so cold here you’ve sunk into a heterothermic torpor.
Robert,
Advertisers have studied this issue very carefully, and discovered that women and their voices are better at attracting the attention of both men AND women than men are.
Attractive people are seen as more credible and are more likely to hold the attention of the audience than average-looking (or worse) people are.
You can quibble about the mode of dress – if you think this is shocking, you apparently haven’t seen how the women contestants are dressing on shows like The Bachelor – but women are going to be working these booths for the foreseeable future.
Well I am just glad the Prius/Fit crowd didn’t give us some dirty hippy chick with dreds and smelling of patchulli (sp).
Of course I want equality amongst the sexes – that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the better looking of the better half.
Most of the booth babes at the Chicago and Detroit shows really aren’t very attractive. Chrysler needs to buy out Lamborghini again, if only to pick up their supplier of booth babes (beautiful and informed). Either have the type of women that Maserati has, or stay with the sales/marketing/dealership personnel that can actually be helpful. Don’t put (what I suspect is) some mid-level manager’s daughter out there in black boots, screaming or shrieking at me from behind the cordon random facts from a placard. If I did, I’d be your friend and come over to your house and pick up your Preferred Employee Friends and Family XYZ Plan Discount Code for a shiny new Jeepster Sport. Or not.
RF apparently doesn’t like booth babes. I don’t like cordons, placards, or shrill women in pointy black boots, especially when mixed together in some godforsaken convention hall with no drinking fountains and overpriced parking. Even, Steven.
If Volvo really believes that well-dressed metrosexual men help them present their brand image, that’s fine. Keep it classy. I’ll be over at the Maserati exhibit. I figure this way. There’s a difference between what guys actually drive and what women they actually have, and the dream Italian car and (Italian?) woman. Somewhere in the middle, there’s probably an Acura, Audi, or Saab with Melissa Lee [or insert your favorite TV personality here] in it. For ten bucks, you can upgrade from the Chevrolet and Pat Benatar [Stevie Nicks?] for at least a few hours.
@ TreyV :
But having engineers talk to the public all day is a double-edged proposition. Few people know the weaknesses of a product more intimately than the engineer(s) who designed it. :)
I agree, as an engineer, I don’t really think about what works. My job is to focus on what is broken, and how to fix it. Plus, if you ask me what doesn’t work, I’ll honestly tell you.
That’s probably not what you want at an event like this.
Have you ever looked at the covers of so called women’s magazines? They generally feature good looking women.
Talk to accomplished professional women today and you might be surprised at their attitude towards the topic of using good looking women to attract attention. The battle of 40 years ago might be over, but the outcome isn’t what many of us over the hill types seem to think. Check out the demographics of who watched the Hefner eye candy show “The Girls Next Door” and you will be shocked to find it is popular amongst young professional women.
Recently we had dinner with some family friends, and the thirty something professional woman there was saying how surprised she was that nearly all of her many female co-workers are plastic surgery devotees. Using your six figure income to buy a stripper’s figure is all the rage.
The objectification battle might be over, but the peace is turning out to be more complicated than the war was.
I am usually in agreement with this site when it is pointing out the stupid, not thought out, and moronic stuff the Domestic Auto Industry does. However, in this case I have to say “RF, you got it all wrong.”
Putting engineers in front on anyone to explain just about anything is a disaster in the making. Engineers suck at selling stuff because they care too much about details no one else cares about. They. Are. Boring.
So, thankfully, the carmakers haven’t done that. Instead, they have hired “product specialists” (as Michael Karesh so correctly pointed out) to talk about their cars. A product specialist does know a lot of details about the car they are representing. And they have gone through training for their job. They’re not “just models” at all.
Seriously, go to the F-150 display and chat up one of these girls. She’ll surprise you, I guarantee it. I remember when they launched the last F-150, I was very surprised to have my ear talked off by one of these girls.
RF,
I think your pc notions about “babes” are now in fact outmoded. Gregg Easterbrook immediately came to mind while TTAC was going through the occasional post-a-babe phase. I enjoyed the variety and the tacit admission that cars have developed in part along the lines of a sexual status symbol.
The fact is, most well adjusted women accept and adapt to the fact that men are visually stimulated and manipulated. It’s nice however, that we now live in a free market society in which one woman’s silverback is another woman’s punchline. Car preference is to some degree an indicator/predictor of what sort of person you might settle down with–or not…
A personal anecdote: I met a booth babe at the Detroit show a couple of years back. She considered it a sweet gig. She worked for one of the upscale marques, had occasional television acting gigs, and ran her own promotional staffing company. She was well briefed on the product, in spite of living in NYC and having no car of her own. There is no question that her appearance was one of the tools in her arsenal, that it played a part in her career choices. Were I in charge of staffing a show, I would hire her in a heartbeat, it would have been a no brainer.
So that’s one vote for bringing back the babes. I can think of two or three instances where they would be appreciated. One, where absolutely appropriate, such as a story about booth babes. Two, where wildly out of context, such as might spice up bailout watch 701. Finally in place of a photo of a long in the tooth model, such as the Focus–who needs to see that?
Some great comments here and guess what.
Women – in general – like to be thought of as attractive. Men too! Attractiveness helps you gain a mate and procreate. No amount of social conditioning will wash that out of our genes – until, I guess, it is time for our species to vanish.
Placing value judgment on men’s attraction to women, womens’ attraction to men and all the permutations therein is the game of folks who have it too easy and can spend time worrying about such poppycock.
Live, love, laugh
and drive fast cars that turn well and have good brakes.
Robert, I thought that was a very good editorial.
And I agree. They don’t add anything to the car’s display; they can be awkward for the guys in attendance; and they can be awkward for the ladies in attendance. Most of all their presence is condescending. Do they not think the attendees are serious enough about cars? Now, I don’t think this applies to a well-informed presenter who might be quite attractive, that’s different.
My friends tell me the video game industry is moving away from booth babes. Maybe the intimidation factor is stronger in that sector, but my friends do report a more relaxed and technically-focused atmosphere without the models present.
The Autoblog pictures confirm a trend I noticed at the Los Angeles Auto Show this past November:
The higher the price of the car, the more cheesecake-y the women flaunting themselves the car.
Mainstream manufacturers, such as Toyota and Volvo, employ women who could plausibly pass as salespeople (some of them even are salespeople). They dress in company polo shirts, khaki pants and sensible shoes.
Upper-end manufacturers (e.g. Porsche), have women who are clearly fashion models, but they are dressed in ‘power suits’, knee-length skirts and fashionable (but still business-appropriate) shoes.
Exotic manufacturers (e.g. Ferrari, Lamborghini, etc.). Now the “gentleman’s club” look comes out. The women are almost universally blond (natural or artificial), extremely skinny, have ‘bolt-on’ busts, and are dressed in little black dresses and ‘Do me!’ pumps.
I guess the auto companies know which kind of woman goes with which kind of automotive fantasy…:-D..
3 Cheers, RF!
I rather dislike the use of women as eye-candy and simple sex objects. It is demeaning and makes car lovers look like stupid meatheads. I rather like and respect women, I like them so much I married one. It would be nice if I could go to a car show without her rolling her eyes, imagining me drooling from booth to booth, ogling boobs rather than automobiles.
Leave sexual objectification out of cars, please and thank you. Women make up 50% of the car buying public and deserve to be treated with the same respect as the men who buy the glossy mags.
Talk about over analyzing every freaking automotive related event,issue…etc. Classy looking women have been used in a whole lot of other places, from trade shows for other product, to co-hosting game shows. Hell a woman has to be attractive to be a news anchor, now that is sexist. As long as the ladies are dressed well and not looking like SEMA or NOPI girls this shouldn’t be an issue. And I mean a nice suit or some other class looking outfit. [But I don’t doubt that the male press would in some but not all cases be whoring around the ladies and the shrimp and beer]
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in it!
William Shakespeare
The Tempest
Act V Scene 1.
I hope this article was a joke. Or perhaps the gender Nazis have Farago’s testicles in a vise grip, and are forcing him to write this (but then he could never get away with the term Booth Babes).
Desirable cars without desirable women are like ham without eggs, fries without ketchup, rappers without bling, TTAC without titillation.
They belong together. It is so ordained.
Expunge this article from the archives and give us more cheerleaders.
Farago — is this a joke?
Sure, the auto companies don’t get it, just like pharmaceutical companies don’t get it and seem to be doing reasonably well in selling their wares. Have you ever seen a pharma rep? These people aren’t even just for one-time trade shows, they are full time employees. This is common and perfectly normal practice, whether it is PC or not it works. If you want to put a negative name on it, go ahead, I’ll call it effective advertising.
<3 bewbies!!
RF,
Did you ever consider that maybe the carmakers feature attractive booth babes as an ironic attempt to ‘sex up’ their product?
Booth babes?
Funny, the NY show has plenty of MALE spokespeople. (Yeah, I called them spokespeople, since they do speak on behalf of the manufacturer and field questions)
If the Detroit show fizzles, maybe the state of Maine will want to pick it up and re-title it “The Booth Babe Harbor”
Of course,…
since the Big 2.8 already got my “car money” (the part not going to Subaru for #6) I guess I’d be a bit PO’d if they didn’t do some marketing with it.
And, if you ain’t got quality to sell, best try some sizzle.
The luxo and sport marques here don’t count – especially the Italians. Hell anyone who goes to Italy and doesn’t get that life’s about art, wine, pasta, the birds and bees should be driving…a Buick (see above).
As a person who has done a few trade shows, and in more than one industry, here is the deal on “booth babes”.
If you are going to try to win over the customer on value and service, then you don’t hire a model to distract them. OTOH, you can still have booth babes. They come in different styles. They are not all wannabe super models dressed in fancy dresses.
Most times they are still cheesy, but you can reduce the level of cheesiness. The bottom line is that you can’t sell anything to someone who walks by without stopping.
The system I wanted to try, but could never get support for, was to hire one or two to be interested customers. Yes, completely dishonest, but also completely benign. At an airplane fly in, I had a friend come by to say hello. He is both an MD and a psychologist. Because I was busy, he waited around, walked around, and talked to me when I was slow. It took him no time at all to figure out that the mostly male attendees would ALL stop when there was an attractive customer there. He said it was obvious because it didn’t happen that often. After he pointed it out, I realized he was correct. So, it pays to have some attractive women to show up whenever your area slows down. Why not just pay them?
Guys often use nice cars and boats to attract women, but airplanes don’t really work that way. There simply are very few women wandering around the hangars at the airport. You have to FIRST attract the woman some other way, then invite her out for a flight to impress her with your ridiculous display of wealth.
Lets have more booth babes! Why not allow beautiful young women to earn a living as a model. Why deny them the income? The only reason to go to the Indianapolis auto show is to talk to them. They are always, intelligent, nice to talk to, and well dressed. Yes, the Japanese excel in the models they hire as well as the cars they design.
Why take all fun out of life.
Uh….RF? Is the blonde Lambo booth babe in the picture wearing a leather dress?
Cue the animal exploitation rant?
(Actually, if she is in fact wearing a leather dress, the only appropriate action would be to:
a. Ask her if it is the same leather as the seat upholstery. If the answer is yes,
b. Tell her you are a serious buyer but that you must feel the leather grain before you decide to buy.)
Aren’t we always saying that great design and style sells cars? The Booth Babes contribute style (and sometimes artificial designs) to the car shows. Beautiful cars are complemented by beautiful surroundings.
In my experiences both Men and Women are appreciative of beautiful women. Hence the reason that male models do not abound in these circumstances. Not everyone hangs on the vehicles at the shows. Some people go for the experience of it. And the Booth Babes add to the experience.
I did notice when TTAC was using Cheeleader pictures. I wondered briefly but then decided I was getting the best of both worlds. Automotive information and, well you know what.
OK, call me shallow and superficial but I’m not with you on this one, RF.
@charleywhiskey:
[Joke Mode On]
You, sir, are shallow and superficial…;-D…
(Hey, you asked for it…..)
[Joke Mode Off]
And if that’s what it takes to land a ‘booth babe’, maybe I should consider it….
f*ck the whales, save the booth bimbos!
Robert – “I do think it’s the case of male-dominated industries appealing to their customers’ basest instincts. ”
But does it WORK?
– Are the women being paid fairly even if it only for being attractive?
– Are the women working against their will?
– Does paying the women to represent the company bring in more revenue than they lose to people who believe as you do, and may be put off by the practice?
If you want to argue the merits of the legal, widespread business practice of using attractive people to help sell products then it should be argued in the language of a business practice. Cost/Benefit
Also at the risk of being thought of as shallow, I too am not with you on this one, RF.
“Truth” is “what is”, not what “we wish” it may be. I’m a red-blooded American male with Euro-Latin roots; which makes that red blod run HOT sometimes. I like cars and I like girls, dammit!
Certain things catch my eye; many others do not.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with pretty ladies playing on their assets. Believe it or not, some of them are smart, and more than a few are just doing the gig part time while they work through school in a related field (engineering, management, communications, accounting, etc).
One last parting thought, and please don’t take this as an attempt on my part to increase needless titillation on TTAC:
Everything is related to everything else.
If these basic differences (between the genders) didn’t exist, then we might as well all be of one gender. We might as well all drive the same car; live in the same cookie-cutter house. Have the same bland food every day, and have the same boring conversations (or none at all, since none would be necessary).
And that would be a dull, purposeless existence. Thank God that’s not the case, and thank God that He started with the differences between women and men!
If the Detroit automakers think that Booth Babes are going to save them then they definitely haven’t done their research on Barney Frank.
Oh, and BTW, thanks for nice pic. I will put it up on my desktop to replace the other one I got from here of the female wrestler (TNA?). I renamed it BoothBabes.
the auto industry isn’t the only one continuing this practice. it’s even more blatant & much more pathetic at geek trade shows. i once worked a linux trade show for a deluded outfit selling the freely downloadable apache webserver. our “enlightened” marketing director hired a gorgeous young woman to pull the nerds into our booth. sorta worked, as nerds are the most unattractive & therefore most vulnerable to being faked out by that whoring pitch, but it sure seemed to put off the female nerds …
Excellent piece, RF!
I am with you 100% on this one. As a matter of fact, I have always wanted to write an article about this myself.
Being contra booth babes has nothing to do with being PC. It’s about business. Part of the car business is in a 1980s mindset: it imagines car buyers are beer-can toting dudes who are influenced in their purchasing decisions by pretty girls. But all that is over. For every guy who enjoys ogling the tits, there are a few grownups who find the atmosphere silly, a few women who find it irksome, and a few gays who can’t see the point.
(I say this as a mainly heterosexual person who likes to ogle tits).
A sexy French, Italian or Japanese movie should be sexy. A lapdancing club has to be sexy. A car show that is supposed to appeal to all kinds of people should not be booth-babe sexy. It narrows the appeal of any brand, therefore it is bad business.
“Booth Babes” are a part of the trade show industry period…
After spending about 20 years in the auto industry, I spent 22 years in the food industry and the big food trade shows are the same, plenty of “Booth Babes”.
There are probably hundreds of gals out there who do the trade show circuit all over the world and make some pretty good $$$ doing it.
When I was a kid in my late teens around 1960, I used to go to the NY Auto Show with my Dad every year I always came home from the show with some good pictures of the curvy sheet metal as well as the curvy accoutrements. I’ll have to go through my boxes, if I can find a few of the pics, I’ll post them.
Maximum Bob of course is the star of the show
The 6 people in the Lincoln concept is a pretty neat pic.
@Martin,
I find your comments mildly offensive.
Pretty girls can influence my purchasing decision and I am not a beer-can toting anything! I think that your profiling here is a bit beyond the pale!
I think sexy American movies should be sexy also – as should sexy movies from the Middle East (perhaps that’s beyond your realm of fantasy).
Finally, I don’t imagine that Ferraris or Maseratis or Hummers or Dodge vans are all supposed to appeal to all kinds of people. Ergo, matching the model(s) to the segment the vehicle targets would be acceptable. Yes? Therefore, we should have stunning babes and boyz over by the Italian marques, moms in strollers with the vans, well heeled-types with large lexicons on the Jaguar stand and what type of model(s) would you put over on the Forester stand?
Apparently, the power-suit-wearing women at the Porsche display have to be dumpable, I mean, divorceable, right?
You can tell I am not a lawyer and/or do not care for Porsches.
dgduris, I mostly agree with you. My point is exactly that the booth babe is a one-size-fits-all stereotype. A regular visitor to car shows myself, I noticed with appreciation that Ford in Paris used a Surfer Dude to promote the Kuga, and that Fiat employed pornoish models for Abarth. Jaguar in Geneva last year featured mature and attractive women who could talk automotive too. But pray tell, which was the last sexy American movie you saw? I can’t remember any one (but I admit I’m getting old). And Middle East, do they even do movies?
Well RF, I must admit you have cleaned up your trash in this area, but hammering others there is weak.
Yes, you are right that it is a bit of a sign that Debtroit still is in the past.
And that blonde is…impressive.
Bunter
I can’t remember a time when I thought a booth babe could answer any questions about the car. They memorize speeches. That’s it. Same goes for the ladies behind the brochure booth.
I get the primordial instinct argument for having them there, but I’d be more impressed if Nissan, BMW, Audi, etc had engineers talking about why they designed aspects of the car or truck the way they did.
THAT would be impressive. Really, how cool would it be if GM had flown over a Holden guy to talk about the G8? Or someone from the Vette team to talk about suspension changes.
@Martin,
But they only show us the booth babes they show us. And what they show us may or may not be representative of the actual make-up of the population of models working the show. Media is biased and hasn’t the ability to not be so. What media present can only ever be partially representative of the truth…even on Fox…even at car shows.
I never watch “sexy” American movies. There’s no romance in them. just bad plots, poor dialogue and porn. I don’t like porn. Maybe “Pretty Woman.”
Sex(y) movies are part of every culture as sex is part of almost every organism. It’s just a question of the level at which each culture accepts or denies that they exist.
Be well, sir!
Martin is spot-on. Booth babes narrow the appeal of auto shows and are thus bad marketing. Again, women make up 50% of the car buying public – I’m not saying auto shows should turn into Oprah-style stupidathons, but neither should they be meathead hubba-hubba bikini shows. Car shows should be about cars, dammit, and just as most men wouldn’t probably go to a car show or spend much time looking at a car surrounded by Chippendale dancers, neither should we expect female customers to endure such disrespect.
I have nothing against booth babes; what bothers me is the shocking lack of diversity. The spokesfemales are always good looking women in flattering clothes.
There is hope, however, that this regrettable situation will be rectified when Iranian and Saudi Arabian automobile companies begin participating in car shows.
WTF??? You are against these hotties at the Auto Show? Bad move TTAC. But you are still shooting 90% positive so no worries. Heck, I bought a new Nikon D90 when I head to Detroit for the “Dont call it Detroit” Auto Show to hopefully get a few pics of beautiful Chelsey Smith!
http://multimedia.detnews.com/pix/autos/2009/2009NAIASLAMBOFASHIONDAY2/2fas.jpg
Oh yeah, and some of the “non-green” superficials 0-60 in 3.5-4.8 sec cars that I just love cuz that’s me – Mr. Superficial and Materialistic :)
kazoomaloo – “Booth babes narrow the appeal of auto shows and are thus bad marketing.”
I could say that “Booth babes enlarge the appeal of auto shows and thus are great marketing.”
Nobody knows which statement is true (unless you have seen direct marketing research on the subject for each brand involved). Each company determines a value gained or lost by utilizing these women as a face for their company.
By their use (or non-use) the companies demonstrate their opinion of the “badness” or “greatness” of their marketing effect.
Robert gave his opionion, you gave your’s, I gave mine, and many others have given their’s . The market will return a final result. I suspect the resulting effect will be minor in either direction and thus not really worth discussing.
So…..RF…pokin’ the bear or what?
My MBA program, very first class, I wrote business plan, stereo store staffed by at least SOME moderately attractive women. No bikinis, just attractive women. Would pay $2 an hour extra to get them, right by university. Plenty of people looking for part time jobs, figured one out of 1,00 on campus would fit bill of both wanting to do it and meeting the test of interesting the average stereo geek.
Prof thought plan was a B paper given my documentation skills but the concept was worth asking me if I was serious, he would help arrange financing and be in on it.
Yeah, RF.
You need to be the Chairman Chairperson of the Board here and make the final comment. It has been a pretty rollicking discussion.
Good stuff!
RD
AND – a – it looks like the “Buick Tagline” Post has garnered more comments than has this Booth Babes post, which means TTAC is still a car site.
In the recent Boston car show where I had a practical interest in seeing what is in pipeline, I avoided the women walkers in their red dresses and hip high black boots, and their booths. They looked like hired for show with no other involvement with the cars. Wont comment on their sex appeal. I now regret veering 180 back out of Mazda booth cause of them.
Only really talked to a good Mini guy. Sales staff from Peabody. He added lots of value for that 20 minute talk.
The women, not being car people, what good are they at a car show if you are supposed to have to talk to them?
Well most of the guys were not what I wanted to talk to, from the few seconds I did. Pontiac sales. Ouch.
Keep the bling.
PS. the VW Passat CC, which is beautiful, had dead battery with a fumbled connection to 120v supply underneath. No, I cant operate power seat. HAHAHAHAHA.
Samir…a lot of nights at Chez Paris?
I respectfully disagree Robert. People are mammals. They, and every other genera, are drawn to members of the opposite sex by appearance. If having someone attractive at a booth catches people’s attention, so be it. The girls aren’t there to provide sexual favours are any gratification other than visual (and may olfactory and aural…that’s A-U-R-A-L). The girls get some cash, the guys see some pretty girls…big deal. Someone has to hand out the flyers, they may as well be pretty. If you want to be fair, hire some good looking guys too, I am always available.
You’d think that with the amount of purchasing that women do, that there would be just as much ‘Booth Beef’ draped over the crossovers and SUVs (in yesteryear) as there are Booth Babes.
I’m shocked and appalled…do you have any more pictures?
Due to the economic climate the auto industry has had to make some cutbacks in the booth babe part of their budgets. This is the new socialist inspired booth babe of 2009:
Having had a long marketing career in a few industries, I’ll say the matter of “booth babes” isn’t nearly as resolved as you posit, Robert. Further, as for the “battles” waged 40 years ago, well…
…The “sexual objectification” of women was roundly, stridently and publicly denounced. The practice was defeated. Depicting women as mindless eye candy more-or-less whoring for a product joined racial stereotyping as one of those things you just don’t do….
…not even. That battle turned out to be inconsequential. Today, most women don’t agree with it and their disagreement is increasingly vehement. Women in their 20s today almost completely reject the artificial denial of sex appeal advocated by their feminist forebearers, and yet they are emphatically feminist. The artifice of denying the advantages of beauty, presence and communication in commercial life barely disturbed a continuing elemental truth: in social selling, attractive women are devastatingly effective.
Build a marketing organization and you’re going to employ women for 70% of your staff needs. Why? Because communications skills and social affinity are areas of high incidence of competence in the female population. Many sharp women with those skills also happen to be attractive as well as professionally disciplined. Every industry has gone through short periods of political correctness, artificially denying commerce of its rightful application of feminine charm to public commerce, and the results always come back the same. Even the women working in marketing think it’s stupid not to have a few booth babes around a trade show exhibit, regardless of a show’s attendee composition. Some female employees even put themselves out front, unasked, by dressing up more than required.
The “booth babe” has evolved from decades past. Go to SEMA or NAMM, where the outfits are more outlandish and the projected eroticism is willful, and even there the girls have made much more effort to communicate real information than not many years ago. Go to a more mainstream show with global participants and sure, the Italians, the French and the Japanese put a more assertive spin on their feminine presence, but for the most part mainstream shows are lubricated by attractive women dressed well within the tastes for reveal that mainstream culture accepts in the show location. I haven’t been to the Detroit show, but I haven’t seen any marketing models at the L.A. or other auto shows that were out of culturally-accepted bounds for dress, reveal, behavior or suggestion.
Moreover, the women in question, when questioned, invariably welcome the work. The competition to get hired is tough, and there is a certain personality type that endures the physical demand of being on one’s feet, feigning cheer and tolerance for a long day in order to be socially out front, projecting, performing. This is not ever going to go away.
In the shows I go to, it’s plainly evident that the “booth babes” are social ice-breakers. Far from intimidation, they draw people in, improve engagement with prospective customers and make it easier for product and sales personnel to engage the group around them. The “booth babes” also keep audiences longer during their microphone narratives, than engineers or most sales employees would. It’s a reality all over the world that attractive women command attention and create a context for assimilation of messaging, brand attributes and even product features. And it will remain so.
My own experiences in consumer electronics, software and media have proven time and again that eschewing the practice of putting the most attractive women on the front line of social engagement and messaging in group commerce only penalized everyone who would have been behind them, including the female employees otherwise working hard for the same objectives when a more “politically correct” tack was taken.
There are boundaries of taste to be determined and observed, and they inevitably drift with the prevailing social context. But overall, well-dressed, attractive women on the front lines of social selling are *an* indicator that marketing is doing its job and correctly managing the the receptivity of their intended audience. In other words, “booth babe” is today a professional function. If you don’t think so, just you try getting chosen for the gig.
Phil
BTW, Booth Beef is more subtle, but it is used. We had a marketing guy that women seemed to really like. We would very often ensure that he came to charm any important prospects of the female persuasion. We also sent him off to make sure we got invited to all the right after show parties that the vendors with deeper pockets would throw.
So, I haven’t seen anyone hire booth beef in particular, but similar manipulations are played on the fairer sex. Just with a smaller budget.
Good article with some great points, but the car buying process ends with an emotional decision. What better way to generate an initial positive response than to use a basic human need is there?
Phil Ressler makes some good points. When I worked for DuPont, our DuPont Refinish Calenders were a very effective marketing tool, incredibly popular with the folks who ran and worked at body shops. Nothing as risque as a Pirelli calender (the girl in the 1973 Pirelli calender on my wall in college had absolutely perfect teardrop breasts), the calenders had models in bikinis. Then a female chemist or engineer visited a body shop, saw the calenders and raised holy hell. DuPont had an ultraPC human resources department and the calenders were killed. Sales went down.
As far as I could tell, there were no shrimp, large or small, at any of the displays at this year’s NAIAS (to be consistent, I also call the Toronto show the CIAS). I keep kosher so it’s possible that I missed the shellfish, but I think I would have noticed. The domestics really cut back. Ford had some booze upstairs, and if you looked here and there you could find some beer and some food, but it was the Germans who acted as though nothing was different – though VW did forego their usual Lufthansa catering crew from Munich. The domestics were clearly trying to appear to be frugal in both how they feted the journalists and how they ran their product introductions. Certainly on the show floor the domestics had little more than bottled water and soft drinks.
As far as booth babes are concerned, I didn’t see any working the GM stand, though that may change during the Industry preview and the public days. Ford had some nice looking women, but about the same number of male models. They were, as far as I could tell, “product specialists”, not just eye candy. Chrysler didn’t have anyone of that sort at their display. I think GM has been cutting back on the eye candy since Cadillac brought in some models who were rather immodestly dressed about 4 or 5 years ago and they got some negative feedback. In terms of straight up models, this year it was Audi and Lamborghini – Lamborghini put on a fashion show the second day of the preview. BMW also hires a lot of good looking women.
Feminine pulchritude at the NAIAS is more the province of the foreign manufacturers than the domestics. Of course, Europe has more nudity in commercials and advertisements too. The best looking woman at this year’s show, an Audi model (you can see her in the pic Jalopnik published of the R8), used to work at Nissan as a product specialist. Nissan has always hired some of the best looking women to work the show. You can almost get an idea of the tastes of whoever does the hiring for each manufacturer. Bentley likes blondes. BMW likes cleavage. Lamborghini likes women that are model attractive but not very pretty to my tastes. Someone at Nissan likes redheads.
I’m no more offended by booth babes than I am by the fact that pharma sales reps tend to be attractive, both male and female. The same goes for marketing types. I’ve long said that besides the models there are tons of pretty women at the auto shows. Marketing people are good looking, as Phil said, and there’s also on air talent from all the tv stations. The Spanish language stations and networks all seem to have at least one hot woman for on-camera work.
Frankly, women today want to have it both ways. They want to be feminists while retaining the option of using their sex appeal to get ahead. The vast majority of women are perfectly willing to use their feminine wiles to get their way, whether it’s flirting with a traffic cop or putting on a “don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ babies” routine to get a man to do something for them. They want men to hold doors open for them, while reserving the right to call that a sexist practice.
Like Phil said, the women who work the auto show booths aren’t slaves. They chose this line of work, they are very well compensated, and they make valuable business connections with some fairly powerful people. According to one of the models I spoke with, she got paid more to just stand there than she did when working an information booth.
Ronnie Schreiber: I’m no more offended by booth babes than I am by the fact that pharma sales reps tend to be attractive
RS are you a physician? I worked in pharma sales many years ago and being hot was practically a prerequisite for the females reps. One company in particular Nordic(now since absorbed into bigger firms) had the most remarkable collection of women you’d ever encounter in one place at one time.
And I agree, women now definitely want it both ways and it’s really quite aggravating.
Anyways, I think that there are some companies that should go balls out and go to the extreme. I mean, seriously, doesn’t a Viper stand practically beg for booth babes?
RS are you a physician? I worked in pharma sales many years ago and being hot was practically a prerequisite for the females reps. One company in particular Nordic(now since absorbed into bigger firms) had the most remarkable collection of women you’d ever encounter in one place at one time.
Not a physician but have many friends who are and have met a couple of female pharma reps. Going by a doctor’s office if you see a good looking woman parking and then retrieving something from the trunk, chances are good she’s a pharma rep.
BTW, was at the plumber today and he did the old “turn your head and cough” routine. Know why they have you turn your head? It has nothing to do with hernias, the docs just don’t like getting coughed upon. What’s more undignified, a women getting into the stirrups (cue: Back In The Saddle Again), or a guy having to bend over and lean on his elbows?
E3 and the video game industry gave up minimally dressed booth babes. Seems like the auto industry has yet to make that step.
To be fair, if Lambo is going to sell cars by “sexyness”, they should provide beefcake as well as cheesecake.
On other hand, I’ve absolutely no objection to woman representing show cars in an intelligent manner. I’ve found Subaru seems to do this better than most vendors.
Engineers are engineers, not marketing mavens.
The company that retains the intelligent booth babes that can speak in complete sentences and pull in the right company execs to answer questions — they are the big winners.
Sorry, Robert, I respect your opinions about cars and the Big 2.8, but I can’t abide this blasphemy ! Car shows without these gifted women ? That’s like Stars without Stripes. America without The Beautiful. Baseball without diamonds. It’s just not right. You are entitled yo your opinion, of course, but this is from another time-space realm. I can’t accept it. No freaking way !
E3 and the video game industry gave up minimally dressed booth babes. Seems like the auto industry has yet to make that step.
I haven’t seen any “minimally dressed” models at an auto show in years.
“I worked in pharma sales many years ago and being hot was practically a prerequisite for the females reps.”
Just sit in a clinic waiting room waiting your turn. The fat ones with goiters are the patients. The Pharma Reps stick out like sore thumbs.
@Ronnie Schreiber: Good news you can see the 1973 Pirelli calendar again. They have most of them from 1964 on. Link
I went to the 31st auto show in Tokyo back in 1995. Too many hotties to count. Made the show more interesting, didn’t detract from the cars. I mean, sports cars are designed primarily for Men so hanging a 5’3″ 100 lb model on the hood is part of the marketing, right?
PLus they loved meeting American guys and talking up cars. Nothing like english practice.
The Moscow 2009 show does not believe the premise of the editorial.
http://englishrussia.com/?p=2205#more-2205
Moscow 2009 seems to be the place to be. Lot’s of variety, right down to the school girl uniforms.
keep the booth babes and bring back the cheerleaders.
The last time I had this argument with someone, his retort was simply “Man, are you ever gay.”