Not all booth babes are created equal. The people you see slaving away at the auto show often have different roles and responsibilities, and sometimes different levels of knowledge. I’m often shocked when people comment here and on my blog that they spoke to a booth babe that didn’t know anything about the car because I always relate their experience to my role, which is an informational one. Most of us are there to tell you what you want and need to know, but here is what we’re all dong there.
Booth babe number one: The Pure Eye Candy
Pure eye candy is a rare occurrence at consumer auto shows in the US, or at least it was until Fiat decided they needed to bring sexy back to the Chrysler brands. These models are purely there as models. They look beautiful in their expensive outfits, stand next to the vehicles and provide great photo ops if you’re into that sort of thing (as opposed to “Hey chicky, get out of the way, you’re blocking my shot of the car.” Please don’t call her chicky, honey, baby or anything of the sort.)
Pure eye candy does not talk about the vehicle, is not trained on the vehicle and her role is not to be a source of information. She is there for the sole purpose of looking good next to the car so you’ll take a photo and hopefully post it on the internet, preferably in a Hot Babes of the Whatever City Auto Show blog post where it will become that week’s spank material for a good 70 percent of readers, go viral and garner lots of brand impressions for the manufacturer.
Booth babe number two: The Lead Generator
Companies desperately want your email address. Give them your phone number and they’ve struck gold. Mailing address, they can take it or leave it – email marketing is faster, cheaper and often more effective than mass mailings. They have to get your contact information somehow, and that’s where the lead generators come in. Want a chance to win a new car? Give me your email address. Want to win a tour of this European factory? Give me your email address. Want a simple brochure? Give me your email address. Want to design your own car? Give me your email address.
Lead generators fulfill an important role at the auto show. They provide sales leads directly to corporate and dealerships. They also help all of us booth babes keep our jobs by showing the bigwigs what kind of a return on investment they are getting from the millions of dollars they plunk down on auto show marketing, because leads turn into dealer visits which turn into sales. Every single manufacturer has some sort of lead generation program going on.
Do lead generators know about the cars? Sometimes. Not always, but often. Sometimes lead generators are temporary local hires. Sometimes they are people who normally rep other manufacturers but weren’t staffed for that show, so the agency threw them a bone and some work as a lead generator. Sometimes they know just as much as the person on the turntable.
Booth babe number three: The Product Specialist
Here it is, boys and girls: the mother lode of car knowledge. The product specialist is the end all, be all of all the news that’s fit to print on the car you’re looking at. These are the people that get the super in-depth training – in fact, these are the people who often train the dealer staff when they aren’t at the auto show. These are the people on the microphone telling you all the nifty new features, who answer your questions on the show floor and humor you as long as they can possibly stand when you want to play Stump the Booth Babe.
Product specialists pride themselves on being the epitome of the modern day auto show model: yes, we look a certain way and are dressed a certain way, but we have a depth of knowledge that booth babes of yore never had, or if they did were never allowed to discuss with visitors. Do you know what makes my day? When I see a look of total shock on a man’s face because I know the answer to some arcane automotive question or drop the name and news on an F1 driver. I love it.
Booth babe number four: The Triple Threat
Most manufacturers realized long ago that they could kill three birds (and three paychecks) with one stone and hire people who could be eye candy, lead generators and product specialists all in one. We know our cars inside out, know how to wheedle your email address and phone number out of you with a well-placed hand on your arm, and we look good doing it. Manufacturers save a boatload of money and show visitors gain a one-stop shop for all their marketing purposes.
So, my dear readers, if perchance you are at a consumer auto show here in the grand ol’ U.S. of A and the booth babe you’re talking to gets a blank look on her face when you ask her to explain the difference between an Atkinson cycle and Miller cycle engines, chances are you’re just talking to the wrong kind of booth babe. Ask for a product specialist. Not only will we tell you that a Miller cycle engine has a supercharger to make up for the loss of density caused by the smaller portion of the compression stroke dedicated to the compressing the air intake, but we’ll do it with a beautiful smile in a pair of amazing shoes. And no, you’re not getting pictures of the shoes, Pervy McPerverson.
The Booth Babe is an anonymous auto show model who dishes about what really goes on behind the scenes. Read her blog at http://doyoucomewiththecar.blogspot.com. And if you treat her nicely, read her each Sunday at Thetruthaboutcars.com
Just take your top off, you’d get more traffic.
Less text, more pictures please.
The beautiful dark-haired vixen — can I have her email address?
Thanks!
Twotone
I too studied closely the picture of the beautiful dark-haired vixen. Something about the woman captured my interest. I was captivated.
Then I realized what it was. Her hair. The physics of it. On the left side of her face, her hair should hang down. But it doesn’t. It kinda sticks out. Strange.
Must be hair spray. With that realization, I of course lost all interest in the picture. Nothing else to look at there. Nothing at all.
No. And you are a bad boy.
If you are looking for women at the shows who are knowledgeable about cars, see the ones that look like Hilary Clinton.
Careful, don’t give Government Motors any ideas. Or else they’ll assume all we want are women who know jack about cars, and stick Docherty up on the stand.
Or better yet, the governor of Arizona.
I was just going to say that I wasn’t interested in the shoes. But I can tell from that last comment you must have to do a lot of deflecting. I haven’t been to anything but classic car shows in at least five years, and they generally don’t have booth babes, although when they do, they are of the strictly eye candy variety in my experience. On the other hand, often you get women showing their cars and they are certainly as knowledgeable as the men.
my name is Roxer, not Pervy McPervson. k? thanks :)
What a coincidence! My name is Pervy McPerverson.
I guess there really ARE people who will do anything for money. When I go to a car show, I go to see the cars. When I want to see vapid women, I go to a strip club.This type of marketing is only going to appeal to hoardes of Japanese businessmen that have changed their middle name to “rejection” I like to see an attractive women in a suit that knows and can discuss her product, but the days of a “Price is right” model adding to a products appeal are over. In my opinion, (and we all know what that’s worth) this is one step above pole dancing. Now I know the flames are coming, but before you do, ask yourself this one question, and think a little
before you answer. “Would I want my Daughter doing this?”
Remember what Chris Rock said about judging your success as the father of a daughter; “Did I keep her off the pole?” If my daughter turned out to be beautiful and intelligent enough to be a product specialist and eye candy, then I assume she takes after her mother.
So BMWfan, (thinking of some of our previous interactions) once again, I agree with you.
Next thing you’ll tell us that 1/3 of Playboy readers buy it for the articles. I think you must have real mixed feelings about your “booth babe” job and doth protest too much. If you find this line of work demeaning, don’t do it any more. Otherwise, accept that part of why you are there is because most male customers are more attracted to nice looking females than they are to nerdy guys or just a pile of steel and glass. Think of yourself as Vanna White. This does not make you some kind of prostitute. Just looking good is a respectable job by itself and nobody really expects you to be an engineer. If you can be helpful and generate sales leads and answer complicated questions, all the better, but don’t kid yourself that you’re there because of your automotive expertise. Otherwise they would have nerdy looking Asian engineers with thick glasses and pocket protectors there to mumble answers to technical questions instead of you. Any modern expectation that you have product knowledge is just a PC overlay on the original and long standing role of booth babes as eye candy – not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I don’t think she’s saying her job is demeaning – she’s saying that people are incorrectly assuming that all booth babes are ignorant. And she gives you insight to the contrary.
But it seems some people here would prefer their auto babes to be ignorant ninnies. If they all remain dumb and shameful then the self-proclaimed pundits with zero influence on the industry get to mock the booth babes on internet forums and blogs.
I believe the more important takeaway from this article is to glean additional insight into the auto industry. Very few people understand the entire industry from top to bottom (the profitable exeuction of exterior design, content planning, engineering, manufacturing, marketing, and finally selling).
Oftentimes the specialist in a given area believes his or her area is the most important part of the chain and doesn’t really give a rats behind about the other areas. They will actually seek out to demean the other parts of the business as being negative.
For example, many people can’t fathom why a brilliant car design gets butchered by the time it hits the market. That’s because they don’t care to understand things in the engineering and selling part of the business (you can’t sell a car to millions of drivers if they feel like they’re sitting in a coffin while driving it). Similarly you have designers telling people that Toyota won’t be able to sell cars well since their vehicles are bland jelly beans and lack a soul. I guess that hasn’t stopped Toyota so far.
Then you have the people who want to put $20,000 worth of content into a vehicle that has a transaction price in the market of $18,000. These critics judge everything in the budget ride as being subpar because they believe improved content can drive up both transaction prices and volume simultaneously (I wonder if they were paying attention in econ 101). Of course they still believe this even though the car’s purpose in the marketplace was to provide a purchase option at the $18,000 price point.
The worst scenario is when people incorrectly attribute blame of failure to the other parts of the business because their own area can never be responsible for failure. I suppose that’s why everyone always defaults to blaming management/Lutz since he’s actually in a position to unite the entire channel of business units.
You should be taking in the info about how the auto show circuit works and how it affects the marketing and sales side of the business – instead of finding reason to find fault with the author. Marketers are measured by foot traffic to their displays at the autoshow. The alternative is to be Nissan and pull corporate dollars out of the show circuit and rely on the regional dealers to fund the marketing presence. The most valuable auto show employees are the ones that can maximize marketing dollars spent at the auto show. Simply assuming girls in dresses are all ignorant eye candy is a way to intentionally shun knowledge of how the industry works.
It seems that if she feels that she (the author) is being personally and directly identified as mere eye candy, which the tone of the article suggests, then she either is too concerned about what other people might think or she has an overinflated ego and expectation of her own importance. If, on the other hand, she has been lumped into the vapid category based on interactions and comments by auto show guests, it may simply be because of how she carries herself or how she dresses. If it looks, talks and acts like eye candy, well… In conclusion, sex sells. If she doesn’t like the way things are, blame the marketing department and horny dudes everywhere! :)
Jack Denver, you have a point. If you go on her website and read her numerous blogs, she comes across as the world’s ultimate victim and the world’s ultimate judge. She writes as if it’s the public’s job to gain her personal approval, all the while complaining about perverts, men in general, mothers, kids (she obviously has no kids of her own), fat people, stupid people, nasty people, ugly people, loud obnoxious people, etc. She goes on about building her personal financial empire all the while flaming the public that directly or indirectly makes her job financially rewarding. In other words, she doesn’t like people (potential customers). No one forced her to take the job (and no one forced me to read her blogs, which is why I stopped). Would a job at McDonalds be more to her liking?
As a former regional airline captain, I will acknowledge that dealing with the public can be difficult. Yet, as frustrating as it could get, I didn’t complain about it (publicly) because I understood that these people bought tickets that kept food on my table and a roof over my head (when I could actually get home once in a while).
holydonut:
For example, many people can’t fathom why a brilliant car design gets butchered by the time it hits the market.
After leaving the engineering phase and passing through a gauntlet of designers, marketeers, and bean counters, its a wonder that an automobile functions at all once it hits the showroom floor.
The last thing I think is that my job is demeaning – in fact, I find the job very empowering, especially when sharing my knowledge helps break down a stereotype that women don’t know anything about cars. What I find demeaning is the assumption that I am only there to look pretty, that I’m too dumb to know anything about my product and that my purpose in life is to be hit on by creeps. The job isn’t demeaning, but a small percentage of auto show attendees certainly are. The vast majority of attendees are great and make my job a joy!
I have a question: What percentage of booth babes used to be dudes?
When I was at the San Francisco auto show the male-booth-stud in the Mini display was getting hit on quite aggressively. He had a bunch of fans wondering if he would come with the car as well… with emphasis placed on a key verb.
It seems to me she is a little put out because she assumes most guys identify her as being nothing more than a vapid booth babe that has a low IQ and knows nothing about the product. Of course, if you are putting the company assets on display (and I don’t mean the cars) then don’t get upset if we get confused.
Interesting thread. I’ve been looking at that picture for a while now, and trying to figure out what kind of car that it is. White wraparound bucket seats? Just can’t place it. The steering wheel looks pre-airbag to me, too.
There’s a new strategy for Curbside Classics, Paul just needs to find a hot chick to drape over the car and then see if we can look past her to figure out what it is. :P
I bow to your superior wisdom educatordan! Also, the picture at the top of the page can be found here: http://www.nitrobahn.com/nitro-barn/best-of-them/2009s-best-auto-show-booth-babes/ Makes me wonder who the author of the article is. I think that TTAC should require an author to post their real (first and last) name and a small bio with links to qualify and show where they got the source information they used in their (the authors) articles. I mean, who is the booth babe? how do we know Jack or Paul aren’t messing with us? Maybe Paul is putting a babe in front of the car to make it harder (pun!) to focus on his Curbside Classics! It’s a conspiracy I say! Not that I mind, of course! ;)
TTAC allows “Ken Elias” to post insights, I don’t see why there would be a different standard for the author of the “Do You Come with the Car” blog:
http://doyoucomewiththecar.blogspot.com/
Where in my comment did you understand me to say or imply I was trying to single out this author?
“I think that TTAC should require an author to post their real (first and last) name and a small bio with links to qualify and show where they got the source information they used in their (the authors) articles.”
Also, my comment was mostly ‘tongue in cheek’ and not meant to be taken seriously. I do feel that TTAC should have higher standards for people they allow to write/post articles on this site, not just some anonymous person. I for one fail to understand why someone who feels that their opinion is so important that they feel that they should have a major media outlet display it should want to remain anonymous. I would think notoriety would be desirable since the author went to the trouble to write/post their opinion here. Like all opinions, this is mine! Don’t take me too serious. ;)
You conveniently left this out when you quoted your own previous post:
“I mean, who is the booth babe? how do we know Jack or Paul aren’t messing with us?”
Perhaps you are not reading my whole comment. I did not conveniently leave anything out. Read the whole comment, not just the parts that you feel support your point. If you fail to understand what I wrote, it is a failure on your part, not mine. I have explained my point of view and intent clearly.
I hereby certify that The Booth Babe is a real Booth Babe of the #3 or #4 (just to keep you guessing) variety. The Booth Babe is not a pseudonym for Paul, Ed, Ken Elias, Jack Baruth or myself. Any attempts to penetrate her anonymity are doomed.
Damn! I have failed to penetrate the target…
Hard crowd.
Booth babes are the four wheeled version of the umbrella girl.
Eye candy and bikes (some cars) go well together.
Other then that I already know long before what I will buy (or not), so the “type” is pretty irrelevant. If the marketing girl is good looking give her the e mail address and unsubscribe later. Everyone has to make a living.
Booth Babe, how much do most people who attend car shows already know about cars before they go to the show? Do likely buyers not know basic things like trim levels and engine options? Hard for me to imagine anyone spending tens of thousands of dollars on anything without doing some internet research first. I like watching beautiful women talking about cars, but I can’t remember actually hearing anything a serious customer wouldn’t already know. Even product specialist booth babes just sound like talking brochures to me.
I don’t get the concept of lead generator. Can’t imagine getting calls or email from some random car salesman making someone more likely to buy a car. I’ll talk to a sales manager to get valuable information like what cars are on order but haven’t arrived yet, but the commissioned sales robots are worse than useless.
On lead generators, some dealers and manufacturers think that the pressure will help. What ever.
I think booth babes at shows like the North American International Auto Show need to be product experts just cause hopefully the products on display have lots of new features to showcase. I want the girl to know if I ask about a new models power train or something like that.
George, it often depends. A lot of people come to a consumer auto show as their last stop before heading into the dealership. While they may have read everything they could get their hands on about it, they still have questions or want to chat with someone about what they’ve learned before putting themselves in an intensive sales environment. Sometimes they came to look at another car, come into a different display and after chatting with us decide they like this car better than the one they had come to see. Other people just came to look at all the cars without the intention of buying in the next six months, but that still gives us the opportunity to make a strong brand impression so when they do decide to buy, our brand (or whichever they liked the most) is already on their mind.
This strategy works amazingly well in other product areas too.
When I worked in marketing for a large, well-known computer company, we hired product specialist booth babes to do our every-half-hour booth presentations as well as handle some of the one-on-one demos at the computer. They were paired up with our best sales people to make sure the best prospects got all the information they needed. We hired the lead generators at the front of the booth to get the cards and give out the tchotkes.
In case you’re wondering, it was generally more cost-effective to hire booth personnel locally, and give them the training necessary than to fly corporate people in to do it. The booth babes generally did a better job too.
Actually, hot women and computers go together better than hot women and cars. Can you look up hot women on a car? I think not (yet!).
@ educatordan
Thanks! I like your new avatar! I too am a Chris Rock fan, and I remember the line well. IMO he is the best comedian since Richard Pryor. Be well!
Ok, boys.
Daddy is home. Behave now. If you don’t, I’ll change the picture.
What’s dis about shoes? I need data.
+10 to BMW Fan and Educatordan for your early comments.
Bertel:
Re: Keeping the boys in line.
The paradox is that the very same thing that drives traffic also results in responses that repel the traffic generator. Wash, rinse, repeat.
It’s not very obvious to the general show-goer, since most men really are only there for the eye-candy. Both the ones who are there for the cars might be pleasantly surprised…
As for the argument of product specialists vis a vis engineers… I think that was covered pretty well in the previous column… look… while cars guys will be able to relate to each other on matters of boost pressure, twin-scroll turbochargers, camber, caster, ackerman angle, polar moment of inertia and all that, most car buyers can’t… which is why product specialists are needed at these shows, to explain these things in layman’s terms. And it works better if that’s the way they understand them, too.
It’s something those of us in the education biz know only too well… the best teachers are those who had a hard time as students… because they understand how difficult a subject is to comprehend.
An engineer (with no teaching expertise) explaining common-rail direct injection to a mixed crowd from the general public? Snooze-fest.
While I’ve thankfully met my fair share of product specialists, thanks to my passes at media events, I have to say, sadly, that most of the booth babes in our area (frankly, 99.9%) are of the “eye-candy” type. Hired on the spot simply for sex appeal and nothing more. A few of my friends got through College that way. Interesting enough, if you develop your speaking skills while you’re at it, you can move up into events hosting and eventually up into TV. It’s not as dead-end a job as you may think.
The guys who claim that Booth Babes distract from the car, and that the author protests too much, probably have wives at home who monitor their on-line activities. We understand, you have to say that, and on request, we’ll write a note to be presented at home.
Our access logs don’t lie: For the third time in a row, the Booth Babe Chronicles lead other articles by a wide margin.
Booth Babe beats The Cars of Bob Lutz nearly 2:1. (Hush, don’t tell Bob.) The story of the world’s most expensive cars getting snapped up by the Chinese received less than 1/3 of the Booth Babe traffic.
Also, tons of incoming links are coming from Autopsies to the Booth Babe Chronicles …
A smart, good-looking female, who is one hell of a writer with a sharp pen might not fit into some cromagnonian worldview, but according to the access logs, she’s doing something right.
I’d ask how many hits the article would get if there weren’t pictures of hot girls and the word “babe” plastered all over it, but i suppose that would take away from the author’s point of the article and booth babes in general, in a sense.
While I do throughly enjoy cynicism, it can get tiresome when coupled with a touch of arrogance. These articles, however, do give me a different sense of perspective that I normally wouldn’t consider, so I do appreciate them.
I just like to bitch.
Bertel,
Perhaps we should follow this out to it’s logical pinnacle.
Were the money there, I’d be happy to introduce a couple of my Mensa+ stripper/former stripper friends who love cars. As a function of their intellectual curiousity, they have learned the basics of fluid dynamics because that’s how you flow heads and build the most effective force-inducted engines. Which makes cars go faster. Which they enjoy.
(I’ve found naked chicks driving 170 MPH with the t-tops off are rather fun. Especially when the highway patrol gets involved. And their brother is on the force. But I digress…)
While not quite prurient as the ‘booth babe’ claims to be, they’re rather interesting. But that’s me.
Just a thought…
Give me the pictures. I’ll review them.
Thanks Bertel!
@”Booth Babe”, do tell , what are you thanking Bertel for? Just curious…
As the ‘friends’ I am referencing are in the USD10K+ per evening of ‘companionship’ (depending on your requirements) category, I’m hardly posting any pics without a big pile of cash as they would get rather pissed at me. Let alone sending you any vids.
(But if you have the desire, let me know, as I would get a percentage. I’m rather sure you and your wife would have a good time, most of them love Asian girls. Besides, I haven’t had a good business reason to go to Japan in a while… )
Though it ‘plays in Peoria’ to be innocent Bertel, I’m rather sure you are certainly as familiar as I am with the world of Ivy League educated escorts, and the fun/leverage that is gained from an upper-level corporate expense account. I just call it for what it is, this is not a site where I do biz…
I think that women looks like Mini Driver’s buxom sister.
http://www.glamourvanity.com/images/mini-driver.jpg
any relation to Mini Driver???
Since more women these days are attending college over men, colleges need to offer courses on cars to create more chicks that can be considered “The Product Specialist”.
Think how happy their future husbands would be!
I like how only Chrysler/Fiat were mentioned by name. Business as usual. Boothbabe is nothing but a shrill shill wrapped to look like a thrill.
To differentiate oneself from the crowd is a gorgeous thing. To educate that self, helping to place it above it’s roots– well, it’s a dream for everyone, and their offspring. The facet that strikes me as disingenuous is: with all these madd writing skillz, all this ‘style,’ all this education(product and formal) Boothbabe still comes across as a fishwife with an agenda.
One can’t be genuinely different if they’re only feigning that difference.
I like this series and the BB’s perspective. But please, keep the pictures PG-rated or cleaner – I need TTAC to get through my day at work!
“Please don’t call the Pure Eye Candy chicky, honey, baby or anything of the sort”
Why on earth not? Remember the man who stepped up to the woman and said “Would you sleep with me for twenty million dollars?”, and the woman said “Yes, of course!”, and the man said “How about for two million dollars?” and the woman said “Yes, okay”, and the man said “How about for twenty dollars?” and the woman said “What do you think I am?!”, and the man said “We’ve already established what you are, now we’re just haggling over price.”? Y’remember that? Well, I don’t see much of any difference between that and this.
You cannot have it both ways. If she’s bubbleheaded, know-nothing pure eye candy, then she’s getting called chicky, honey, baby, and everything of the sort.
So then it’s okay to call a heavy person Fatso because they are overweight? Can I refer to your grandmother as an old hag? Can I call your daughter a hot slut when she wears an above-the-knee skirt? There’s a few things that are supposed to separate civilized society from heathens, and one of those is respect for each other regardless of one’s external appearance.
I pity the females in OMG’s life. If there are any.
Booth Babe, I think you might have missed OMG_Shoes point. If you don’t want to be ogled or thought of as sexy and are offended by what you feel men/women might be thinking when they look at you, then you might be in the wrong job. If you are good looking and dress in a manner that exemplifies your figure, then you should expect some may be misled into thinking of you as ‘eye candy.’ What about the women that are ‘eye candy’ and are simply there to look good? Men look at them and rightly figure they have no product knowledge. How do you identify yourself in relation to these other women? I’m being serious with my questions. I’m not just asking for the sake of argument and I am really interested in what you think. In fact, why not make your next article about the questions I posed? That would be interesting, in my humble opinion. :-)
OMG: Would you say something like that into the face of a woman? And if yes, how many times did you get slapped? Do you like to get slapped? That’s ok, to each his own.
‘Tis interesting propaganda for someone in the skin trade, to pretend it isn’t, in fact, the skin trade.
We can all get a nice chuckle out of the duplicity of saying that ‘although I was hired for my appearance, I want you to appreciate me for my extensive intellectual prowess’.
Sorry. Long ago, my HS sweetheart was on a LUK calendar, and later, a Hooters calendar. Smart? She wasn’t stupid, but would freely admit those shoots weren’t about her ability to discuss particle physics – they were about T&A. Much akin to her shoot with Suze Randall…
After well over a dozen SEMAs and PRIs, I have a slightly different perspective.
I’m honestly fascinated that BB is (supposedly) Mother Theresa. I’ve also never met a BB like her. (Especially at SEMA. Great place to bring your bi, Asian loving stripper GF, but I digress…)
While her come hither look is down pat…
Im still trying to figure out the wheel.
I believe Ive got it down to FIAT or anything under that European umbrella.. or a VW / Seat.
She’s cute.
But the car turns me on more.
Yep, Booth Babe and srogers missed my point so completely it looks deliberate (et tu, Bertel? Schade…). Newcarscostalot kind of almost understood it a little.
Booth Babe, aside from your use of the term “booth babe” costing you all reasonable grounds for carping about the terms “honey”, “chicky”, and so on, what you’re doing is hypocritical. You’ve described a category of booth babe whose only job is to stand there and look sexy — to arouse (ahem) the reptile brain of heterosexual males and attract them to the general vicinity of a car. These “pure eye candy” booth babes are hired sex objects; you freely admit this. That being so, you simply have no room to complain when they’re treated as sex objects. That will entail catcalls of “chicky-poo”, “honey”, and the like from the less-thoughtful, less-well-behaved amongst a crowd of car show attendees. Don’t like it? Then work to end the craven use of knownothing booth babes qua sex objects to sell cars.
I try! I Don’t always succeed, however… :-)
Just because I put on boxing gloves or get into a ring and wrestle or pound other men into submission, doesn’t mean I want random guys coming up to me in a bar and punching me in the face.
Just because I drive a race car doesn’t mean I want other drivers gunning their engines at me at stoplights looking for a race.
Undoubtedly, it happens, and it comes with the territory, but it doesn’t mean they have to put up with it or have no right to complain when people do it. There’s a reason such behavior is called “anti-social”.
The idea that they have no right to complain is almost as bad as the idea that a woman who gets raped for wearing a miniskirt was just “asking for it.” Undoubtedly, who you are and what you do influences how others see you, but sexist, boorish behavior from show-goers isn’t the fault of the girls.
Some gentlemen enjoy seeing beautiful women next to beautiful cars, and are intelligent enough to realize that if you spook or threaten the one, you’re liable to get kicked out of the show and not get to see the other.
I agree that how you approach someone is just as important what you say. Consider: If a woman wears a shirt that shows some cleavage what should her expectation be about the responses she might get? A good analogy might be this: A waitress works at a bar and complains because the cigarette smoke bothers her. Should the waitress have a right to complain? Absolutely. Is her complaint realistic? I would say no, considering her environment and the fact that she does have a choice not to work there. No one here has said that a person should not have a right to complain, merely that the persons actions and environment should be taken into consideration when analyzing their complaint. Booth Babe is obviously successful and enjoys her job, and she has made a name for herself by writing about the positives and negatives with this column and her blog. I just happen not to agree about her expectations considering her work environment.
Booth Babe,
I hope you will pass this along to other Booth Babes. Presenting oneself as professional and With knowledge of the product is perceived as respectable. No one can refer to you in a rude manner if you dress well and your conduct is beyond reproach. THIS IS KEY!!
My fiancé and I were at the Auto Show in Austin, Tx this past weekend. This is a great way to really look and compare a large number of vehicles in a short span of time. We each own a Lexus, and eagerly headed over to view what was new. While my fiancé was closing the hood on the car we were looking at, the
female Lexus Representative came swanking over to present herself (not the car). While her attire was professional, her demeanor was not. I was shocked at her behavior right down to her finale of bending over to touch her toes to display her assets. Needless to say, what she was showing was a true picture of what she was.
In my eyes, she left bad marks all over Lexus. I can not believe Lexus would want a person of this caliber representing their
product. It looks bad and leaves one with a “cheap” feel surrounding the car.