MSFT Sorry for Having Bikini Girls at Conference
Oh dear, Microsoft has found itself at the center of a wee bit of controversy for hiring women in gold bikinis to man its recent TechEd event in Australia.
Beautiful women are practically part of the furniture at technology, sports and car shows. The rule of thumb is that if the target demographic is predominantly male, there will be booth babes there to brighten the place up and maybe talk about what they happen to be promoting. At a recent TechEd conference, Microsoft decided to keep things local by hiring some of Gold Coast's Meter Maids. The Meter Maids launched themselves in the sixties as a way to combat the bad image created by parking meters that had been installed on the tourist strip. The girls would stroll up and down the strip, feeding meters with coins and leaving calling cards under drivers' windshield wipers. This would all be done wearing a shiny gold bikini and a tiara.
So, a crowd of these girls was present at TechEd, as Microsoft no doubt tried to bring a little of the Gold Coast to the conference. Unfortunately, not everyone at TechEd was delighted to see the girls and some of the 2,700 attendees at the event complained that their presence was objectifying women. This may or may not have had something to do with the fact that one of the key conferences at TechEd was on 'Women in IT'.
"It seems that there are still marketing and promotional folks in the IT world who consider objectification of women to be ok," the Sydney Morning Herald quotes IT worker Kate Carruthers as saying.
"Sadly this issue has detracted from Microsoft's long history of supporting and encouraging women in IT and from their workshop that is part of the conference today."
While apologizing to attendees and indeed its own staff, Microsoft initially tried to pass off the blunder as ignorance, claiming they didn't know what the girls would be wearing until the day. However, chief meter maid, Roberta Aitchison said this was not the case. In fact, she says Microsoft spent as much as three weeks choosing what outfits they wanted the girls to wear.
"The garments were chosen specifically by them over a period of 2-3 weeks of them looking at photographs of the girls," she told the Sydney Mo.
"They came back to me by email stating which garments they would like the girls to be wearing."
Aitchison added that she didn't know what all the fuss was about, as the Meter Maids were just as attentive to the women as they were the men.
"The meter maids are an icon of Surfer's Paradise and I believe Microsoft knew what they were doing. It would be a very small minority of women I would say that had anything negative to say, because my girls are so polite and attentive towards the females."
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Non-issue.
^+1
, booth babes for all!
Notice how the complainer was a woman. If they fought the bad image of parking meters successfully they can combat the (supposedly) bad image of MSFT too.
i bet the complainer applied job, but couldn't fit into the bikinis
i bet the complainer applied job, but couldn't fit into the bikinis
You mean she was fat and jealous. Lol.
Microsoft, ignore the fatty and please have twice as many gold bikini girls at next year's Tech-ed, thank you.
Why does woman always have to complain of a chick just for being hotter than them? Envy.... pure envy... I bet that if all those complainers had the same kind of "attributes" as the booth babes they would keep their mouths shut.
Objectifying women? If they are so objectified why are women doing it?
As long as women continue to take jobs like these the feminists can choke on it.
If a woman chooses to become an "object" out of her own freewill then there's no problem with that.
Now if the industry was fueled by slave labor that didn't give these women a choice in the matter then there's a problem.
"This may or may not have had something to do with the fact that one of the key conferences at TechEd was on 'Women in IT'..."
I can see where people would come from with this, if they were talking about the role of Women in IT and then all this happened. Still, probably not a big deal as it is made out to be.
Non-issue.
Agreed.. +1
Clearly a bunch of ugly old hags complaining because they're jealous. No one forced these girls to come to the event or dress the way they did, it's how they dress everyday for work.
I bet the complainer was an Apple fanboy, has an iMac, iPhone, iPod and iPad, and he probably didn't like girls, anyway.
Aye aye aye...sad sad bunch of fools we geeks are...
+1 to all the above
The Australian Classification Board has deemed gold bikinis to be Refused Classification material. Filter these women, please!
I wish a bunch of chicks objectified me.
Man! I missed this!
Yep, +1 to all the above...
Succubus...
If they had a couple of men models there dressed in hardly anything, I bet the women wouldn't have complained against that!
I'd like to apply for the Microsoft job of spending 2-3 weeks looking at photos of girls to choose the most appropriate bikinis. It's an important job and I think I'm well qualified for it!
"It seems that there are still marketing and promotional folks in the IT world who consider objectification of women to be ok," the Sydney Morning Herald quotes IT worker Kate Carruthers as saying."
haha, or their marketing and promotional folks still know how to bring in more money
I guess we wont have the Tom'sHardware photo service of the Conference for this one.
"Choosing" a profession that puts you in an objectified position, such as sex work, stripping, porn or booth-babe is hardly ever a consequence of "free will". Many of the (in this case) girls would probably proudly present their occupation as a result of their own preference. However, an established demand-and-supply chain, a culture of objectifying women, huge differences in what self-images are created when girls and boys are raised, a job-market skewed towards promoting men, all these aspects of society leaves the "free will" to be vastly filtered towards the underlying cultural themes. I'm amazed that the commenters so far lack this basic understanding of underlying rules in society today.. Not that these are unchangeable things of course, we're moving towards more equality of genders, but those of you who think that becoming a "booth babe" is just a matter of free choice and results in no harm should really begin questioning your views..
Umm it's the girls job to wear bikini. The ones that are complaining are rude; it's like like mocking a prostitute in Amsterdam.
in what universe are those bikinis?? further more, people who constantly point out these things are deriously deranged (as are people who drool on them). Have you noticed a trend in today's world: the normal poepl who filter out the social conventions, because they are adults and handle these things like adults never speak out. Those who have a problem, because they have no education or can't understand and circumvent the adverts bark about it the loudest. FFS go read some psycology, go get some sort of basic understanding of socail interactions and stop making silly remarks about a bit of clothing.GET SOME LOVE, GET A LIFE!
huggs - ME!
They want to make money, and I want to see a beautiful woman.
Is there really a problem with that? I would have rather been a male stripper over my last job. i would have made more money too.
Some people just need to get over themselves already.
If it were ugly and fat women wearing bikinis, then it's a horrible thing!!! People can puke all over the place... lol
Microsoft should apologize by including a few (we don't care about) Dudes so that the ladies on IT have something to look at.