"Pretty young women sell stuff"

[HollyMiamiFLA]

I mean it's pretty obvious. I have done a search for conference display stands as I hope to exhibit at a conference soon. I would say 50% of the images showed a stand with a pretty young women posing.

No men. No old women. No "plain" women. Just pretty young women.

That's just the way it is. Eye candy. I remember watching the Apprentice and one of the blokes suggested having one of the women on his section of the exhibition as it would attract more blokes.

Will this ever change? Or do people only want to see young women to sell stuff?

Older males are even more likely to ogle young women stands, I'm afraid.

The thing is, there's no useful equivalent for women even if we did want to approach equality like that.

I've never met a woman who genuinely wants to get to perving distance from a hired 'himbo'. Male 'hunks' offer women little fantasy potential. Ask on here for fantasy shags and you'll get a litany of strong, intelligent actors who are revered for their charisma as much as their looks. So unless Benedict Cumberbatch can be enticed to turn up to events marketing mainly to women, and fire off some smart one liners, then there's little in it for us.

They hired 'hunks in trunks' to stand outside Abercrombie and Fitch in London, personally I find it so cringey. As for further downmarket offerings such as dreamboat stripper types, I can't think of anything more off putting.

The diet coke guy did fuck all for me, though I'm sure he's a nice person. My friend attended a hen party where they had hired a young guy to serve drinks naked with an apron on. She said she was just so embarrassed and felt sorry for him. I just can't see any real marketing capital to be had from showing women naked male arses. Mostly we'd either laugh or look away.

Well isn't that the definition of objectification?

Women just don't do it, it seems.

'Looks are important to men, they're visual, women are attracted by personality'

Isn't that what is being said there?

I guess so. But I don't offer it in mitigation. I'm saying the emphasis should absolutely be on removing the objectification, not adding to it an a misplaced attempt at equality.

yeah I see that, my tone was rather accusatory, was just something that came to mind and didn't really edit it.

Thing is though, I am pretty visual. I can see a good-looking man and appreciate him, without hearing him speak. However, I'm perfectly happy to see him accidentally as I pass or whatever. The idea of men specifically placed for me to ogle makes me uncomfortable. I think it would take a lot of the attraction, for want of a better word, out of the situation.

I think that women being uncomfortable with males acting in an objectified fashion is social.

Teenaged girls go crazy for boys with cheekbones and abs.
Grown women go crazy for whotsit coming out of a pond all wet in that thing (not a BBC costume drama fan you know the one I mean!) and daniel craig also emerging from sea in pants.

I don;'t buy it. Not least because I am a woman and am very visual and always have been. I accidentally objectified a young man while channel surfing last night. I don't normally watch ITV

But clearly equal objectification on both sides is a poor aim.

I just don;t buy that heterosexual men are more aroused by images of hot women, than gay men or heterosexual women are by images of hot men.

And that;s part of it isn;t it. Patriarchy means that heterosexual men are the only ones catered for, and they are catered for everywhere. And fuck everyone else...

Next time you look at a website with a picture of one of "their operatives just waiting to take your call", look at what the operative looks like.

Chances are it's just a stock picture from a website and not a real picture of one of their actual operatives.

From a stock photo agency:

Images of phone operator

I was about to link the techcrunch article too.

A man in that video mentioned the word "sleazy" and would not want to be associated with that company.

That's it. The women in that clip were being used as objects to sell a product.

Can you just imagine the reverse? Scantily clad men at booths posing with their product?

It would never ever happen.

I couldn't actually imagine what a show would look like with men being used as objects.

That clip from Las Vegas was awful. I wish someone had asked the "booth babes" how they thought their actions affected the way other women are seen - either in the tech industry or in real life.

As people or objects?

They all look like they're having so much fun Holly! Who knew 'phone operator' was such a joyful occupation!

There's a gym advert currently driving me insane down the road - headshot of two pretty young girls (one busty brunette, one slim blonde) smiling coyly. In office wear. Not a free weight or running machine in sight.

Which just screams 'fitness'

I'm sure showing the actual phone operators in a line looking really hacked off after a hard day being hassled wouldn't work as well!!!

Or someone after a hard day at the office desperately trying to lose weight at the gym

I would argue that this is far from universal however.

For example, I recently went to the London Boat Show and, before that, the Dusseldorf boat show and there was a huge mixture of types of people - both men and women.

Yes, there were young attractive women - and some really cute young men as well - but there were also lots of pretty average looking people as well.

I've also been to various other exhibitions before, for example in house building, and found the same thing.

I am sure that there are certain industries that do act like this but it is far from being universal.

YY and that's great! Clearly it's not universal at expo type events.

That doesn't make it OK at the ones it does happen though.

And there are plenty of events / imagery across the board which are disparate in terms of male/female objectification.

Most show type things I've been to haven't really gone in for having "hot" people posing around. Some have though - motorcycle shows and stuff at tracks on race days for example. Having said that it's been 10 years since I went to bike stuff so maybe they don't have scantily clad women around the place any more...

In a similar vein, the Winter Olympic medals ceremonies piss me off.

OK the young women aren't scantily dressed, but they are perfectly dressed and made up acting as totally subservient tray and flower carrying servants to the male officials handing out the medals.

I presume no men are carrying flowers. I presume the women are all young and attractive.

Usually at the Olympics lately they have made the effort to mix it up a bit. At summer olympics for a while there have been male and female supporting actors as it were. Is that not the case at the winter olympics?

And yes obv the people bestowing the prizes are a bunch of old white men.

yada yada boring.

They all got accused of corruption didnt they? And FIFA. Corrupt old boys networks a-go-go.

Can you just imagine for a day when everything was reversed and men were used as objects?

Maybe scantily clad men parading around a boxing ring to an audience full of men?

What would men think?

I saw yet another "call us" website image today. Young, attractive, happy woman as the image.

YY that's what I always say!

They would not like it, not one little bit.

I probably would like it, from a selfish POV. But I know that it is not a good thing to objectify a whole enormous group of people and so on that basis obviously in real life the aim is not to objectify men, as women are objectified now.

How would straight average men react if people on the tube around them (women, girls and gay men) were casually perusing pics of desirable young men in extremely sexualised poses?

I can't get across how much they would utterly hate it.

If a man sat next to a schoolboy on the tube, with his leg pressed up against him, and eyeing him, while looking at a softcore gay porn mag, how would people react to that? I think he'd be in danger of getting arrested. Yet if you are a schoolgirl, the equivalent is something to put up with / be polite about / smile and hope he goes away. etc.

To be fair, looking back at London 2012 pictures we seem to have had women in respectable dresses and young men in purple suits.

So far the Russians have only had women and make officials. I'm sure they're are female IOC etc. bigwigs and one will appear sooner or later, but the tray bearing women will still be there looking subservient.

I would have thought that the olympics had rules about this sort of thing given the sort of equality vibe it likes to have? Clearly not. Interesting.