It's one step short of holding your holiday party at a strip club. Not quite as crass, but uncomfortable and marginalizing for the women for similar reasons.
Unfortunately, it was my limited recollection of the event that's prompted some replies about it marginalizing female employees. To clarify, it was a vendor conference and not a company party. Employees from different companies would attend. (Think of it like Google I/O or Apple WWDC Developers Conference).
There were very likely male models there as well for the female attendees to interact with. I just happened to be standing with a group of all males so understandably, the only models that skated up to us were female. My single-gender sample set distorts what I remember and how I tell the story which then gives you, the reader, the wrong impression that it was quasi strip club event.
I'd have to seek out some female colleagues who went to the same 2000 conference and ask them what they thought of it. I'm curious if they'd reply that they were disgusted and outraged by the male models there. I really don't know. (Or similarly, we can ask today's female employees at SV companies what they thought of male models at recent corporate parties.)
And if my company hired a bunch of gorgeous models - most female but a few male - for our holiday party, I would be outraged. The male models would probably make me uncomfortable first off for the same reasons some male commenters here say they're demeaned by the assumption that their company needs to hire people to speak to them.
But I'd also interpret the presence of the male models not as a way to make the female attendees happy directly (unless it was a horribly tone-deaf attempt by a man) - I'd probably interpret the choice to have them present as a way to excuse the presence of the female models in an attempt to titillate the men. "Oh, no, we're not objectifying women for the sake of our male employees! See? We have male models here too!"
1) ">It's one step short of holding your holiday party at a strip club."
2) ">I'm not suggesting it's [...] nearly as egregious a violation as taking employees to a strip club."
The "one step" looks like "nearly" to me which is why I tried to clarify the nature of the interactions.
If any _hint_ of "strip club" is even mentioned in the replies to my anecdote about the software conference party, that's my fault for describing it poorly.
See my other comment about this.[1] Are female guests at Disney describing Gaston as "one step" removed from a "male strip club"? I don't think so and that's the type of platonic vibe I was trying to portray in my conference anecdote. Nevertheless, people still get the wrong impression that the party models were there to act as a sexual tease. (The "fake friends" models mentioned in the Bloomberg article may be instructed to act in a more sexually provocative manner but my anecdote wasn't about them.)
If the intent were solely to entertain rather than to titillate, they would be hiring comedians rather than models.
Is it explicitly sexualized and objectifying like a strip club? No. Is it implicitly sexualized and objectifying? Hell yes.
I don't think it clarifies the discussion by labeling them "comedians" XOR "models". It's impossible to disentangle the gender/beauty or its effects from the role being played. It's an unavoidable blend of multiple roles.
In other words, it would be naive to think there is zero sexual objectification of Disney Gaston models at the park. Disney is not hiring androgynous robots so we have to be realistic here. The men have to be "eye candy" to some degree to get the job.
Likewise, even if a company tried to hire "entertainers" for a work party and those entertainers happened to also look beautiful, you will still have objectification. Is the model hired for a corporaty party to hang coats a "coat valet" or a "model"? It's not what you label them; it's the effects.
Why? That's super judgemental of you. There is no "clear" angle that a young and attractive person is necessarily an object of sexual attraction, except in your own imagination.
All attractive people are objects of sexual attraction. It's what you do with that that separates the creeps from everybody else.
So its _my_ fault for _not_ stereotyping? Amazing.
The article just mentions being attractive. It also mentions other clients who hire models to dress up in costumes, and among other things to create a "fun" (whatever that means) atmosphere. The article also mentions an agency which insists on having the models be assigned specific tasks (coat checkers, servers), etc. People strongly associate attractive people with parties/partying/celebrity culture/fun/etc for various reasons. Its sort of like using a person with spectacles/drab clothes/British accent to signal intelligence. In any event, introducing models into an audience filled with programmers, would greatly increase the diversity of the party. Maybe the models who themselves had negative stereotypes about "nerds" would see that they were fun people too. It cuts both ways.
>Because someone thinks that speaking to a sexually attractive woman will be gratifying to young males, especially those stereotyped as socially awkward.
Neither the article, nor the comment you replied to has put forth this idea.
My logical brain says "it's not 1950 anymore; the PR blow-black has the potential to be truly brutal."
My emotional brain says "This is horridly objectifying and super awkward."
For that particular party, there definitely wasn't blowback because the next morning, everybody talked about how amazing it was. I think it caught everyone off guard because it was unexpected and it gave attendees happy memories. (Yes, maybe the attendees should have been morally outraged but I can only report how they actually responded and at that time, they thought it was a huge hit.)
It's been 17 years so maybe that company doesn't hire party models anymore.
>"This is horridly objectifying and super awkward."
That's a valid opinion but just to paint the picture better, the women were not dressed up as "Playboy bunnies". They were wearing regular shorts and a themed tshirt showing no cleavage. The interactions with the models would be similar to a kid interacting with Mickey Mouse at Disney. Also, there probably were male models on roller skates as well but I don't remember them for obvious reasons.
Seeing so many people defending this practice is really worrisome with regards to the lack of morals in SV.
> For that particular party, there definitely wasn't blowback
PR is bigger than just internal opinion. Witness: this article.
> The interactions with the models would be similar to a kid interacting with Mickey Mouse at Disney
Oy
> the women were not dressed up as "Playboy bunnies". They were wearing regular shorts and a themed tshirt showing no cleavage... Also, there probably were male models on roller skates as well but I don't remember them for obvious reasons.
At least we all eventually agree that the obvious is obvious.
This particular article has an extra angle about models pretending to be friends of employees at a company party. I wasn't endorsing that.
I was relating a somewhat related story about models at a software conference. However, they were not pretending to be in relationships with anybody. They were there to be hosts with bubbly personalities and to schmooze the crowd.
>Oy
I was not exaggerating. The conference models were not there to show skin; they were there to socialize. The conversations (regardless of it being artificial and scripted from the models) are not of a sexual nature. It's lightweight platonic chatting designed to loosen up the crowd.
Here are some videos showing the Disney character Garcon at the park. Not every Disney actor's face is hidden behind a mask:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=disney+gaston
Clicking on some of those videos should give an idea of how the models interact with guests. The men that Disney hires for that work are all beautiful male specimens. (Women would typically categorize them as "hunks" or "beefcakes".) However, the purpose is not for girls/daughters/mothers/women to grab their crotch or act out Magic Mike[1] fantasies. The Garcon actor is there to be funny and provide smiles.
The Garcon models are not allowed to exchange phone numbers with the park guests. There is no "let's meet up at Cinderella's castle" secret rendezvous after they show off their one arm pushups. So, if the women at the park don't get to engage with sexual foreplay at the park with Garcon, why does Disney only hire attractive men? Oy indeed.
The models at the software conference did similar work to the Garcon actors at Disney theme parks.
The reason you don't see public-relations blowback about the beautiful models at Disney is the same reason you don't see it about models at industry conferences.
On the other hand, the Bloomberg article about "models pretending to be friends of employees" is a whole different level of weirdness.
I take it there were no women on your team?
I bet these women are getting paid a pretty penny to go to some stupid party and mingle with the patrons. Probably get drinks and food on the house too. Lucky bastards!
There's a plethora of well paid jobs out there that they could be doing instead but, for reasons unknown, they prefer to be under-dressed roller skating companions.
On a high end they are walking away with a few thousand dollars.
On a really high end they just made your yearly salary in a day - there was if I recall correctly a bank in Russia that flew a dozen of currently reasonably well known models for its New Year's party.
I can imagine some harm comes from this - e.g. an employee is mistaken for a model, or perhaps an employee is never mistaken for a model, but the magnitude of the harm doesn't seem so severe, and seems comparable to the benefit - the party is more fun.
I know why people have an intuitive dislike for this, it calls to mind paying for sex, sounds pathetic, and feels possibly misogynistic, but logically, I can't defend any of those positions myself.
This doesn't seem that complicated to me. I am not sure how I could possibly make what I am saying any clearer.
As a possible diagnosis of the problem you are having, if you believe my first sentence says or is equivalent to "I don't have a problem with this", you have a fairly common reading comprehension problem where you read what you expect to have read, rather than what was actually said, and the problem you are having with what I wrote is your difficulty in fitting such a short point into your framework of what you expect to have read. I suggest spending some more time learning how to read what is there, rather than what you think is there, as you are missing out on one of the primary benefits of reading. That's not the only possible problem you've having with understanding such short, simple sentences, but it is likely enough to be worth calling out.
My point is that employees should not be subjected to employers hiring models to attend company events.
When my wife shows up as a part of the sales team the company always sells out of the product that they bring.
> At this year’s holiday parties, however, there’ll be a surprising influx of attractive women, and a few pretty men, mingling with the engineers. They’re being paid to.
Talk about a nightmare.
Because they are on 'roller skates' they are differentiated, and basically identifiable as 'hosts/hostesses'.
There's nothing wrong with hiring hosts for a party.
It's when they are mixed-in as guests it's cheezball.
This happens in every industry where people make serious money. During the finance boom it happened in finance. Right the biotech boom it happened in biotech. Right now it is a tech boom, so it is happening in tech.
In this specific case the "models" are not the likes of Karolina Kurkova or the woman in the photo. At best they would be commercial models i.e. the ones that pose in clothes inside J.C. Penny during the holiday season.
It is also extremely unfortunate that the author of the piece allowed the agency owner to get away with a total puff piece - owners do not reject bookings from existing reasonably vetted clients because the clients request short skirts or plunging necklines ( of course it would be rejected if the client is hookers-and-blow.com ). If a legitimate company wanted two dwarfs to wrestle in jello for a holiday party, they would be found -- it just a matter of price. The price now is just higher. Most of the 'low-rent' market is in China (all over) where they are booked daily for nightclub appearances, 'high rent' in mostly in Moscow, RU.
P.S. Do notice that the agency CEO has a Russian name.
[Edit after the downvotes]: Here, let me google this for you:
http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/34811/1/my-life-...
http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/fashion-luxury/article/2120857...
https://www.thespec.com/news-story/7741206-questions-anger-a...
It's very strange how a logical brain processes what's happening. One the one hand, your rational brain says they're just paid to be there to loosen up the crowd and their smiles and questions to the attendees are fake. On the other hand, your emotional brain doesn't care and you smile and laugh back anyway. It's like the Disney World effect. You know it's a facade but enjoy yourself anyway!