I’m a part of the Systers mailing list, and we had a discussion about the booth babes at CES.  Systers doesn’t make its mailing list archives public, but does have a Best of Systers blog wherein someone will write a blog article and use (with permission) quotes from the discussion.  I was one of the quotes in Dear CES, Objectification is Calling:

I think it’s also important for us… who work for companies who have booths at conventions and conferences to remind our companies that we don’t want to be represented by booth babes.  If our companies sponsor their own conferences, I think that we should raise the concern about booth babes.  In this case, it’s not enough to just make sure that our showcase booths not have booth babes, we should also figure out how to keep vendors who have booths at our conferences from having booth babes.

One of the things that I have to admit that bothered me about my quote in that article is seeing it in context.  Of the five quotes there, I’m the only one who consented to have my full name used.  Two were completely anonymous.  I understand why someone would make the decision to either only use their first name¹ or be fully anonymous.  I’m just sad that those Systers felt that they needed to be anonymous.

Thankfully, booth babes weren’t the only women at CES.  Meet the women of CES 2013, nary a booth babe in sight.