Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
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!
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."
When my wife shows up as a part of the sales team the company always sells out of the product that they bring.
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.
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.
I take it there were no women on your team?
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 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.
> 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 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.
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.
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.
If you want more women at the event, hire more women at the company and create a culture that encourages that.
This has nothing to do with equality. They aren't hiring these models as equals, but for the misogynistic dynamic (while removing the organic nature of opposite-sex interaction)
Interesting, my mind goes straight to this being incredibly demeaning toward the legitimate male attendees of the party. Didn't even occur to me that somebody would have the opposite interpretation.
That'd be my only thought at the party. "They had to pay this good-looking person to pretend to talk to me." I don't see how this is misogynistic? I just see this as an extreme degradation of the males involved.
A programmer spent a lot of time honing their craft, faces every day challenges, has growth opportunities, can aspire to higher salaries through tough work, has growth opportunities, can influence the world around them and create new things. Coding yields power.
While modelling may require difficult labour, it's mostly just "congratulations for your face".
Now do it for 12 hours straight. Yes, it's just a pretty face, no skill required.
It's not about whether it is difficult or not, it is more about what type of culture do such things foster and what values does it signal (referring to "SV roller skate models").
Men having polite conversations with women is 'wrong' only in a dystopian future.
I personally think it's a little ridiculous and would not want to attend, nor would I put together a party like that, but it's a matter of social taste, not morality.
Male appreciation of female company is utterly and absolutely in not 'misogynistic'.
Not only that - it's also very normal, and frankly good.
If people are treated as sexual objects, then you can complain.
One needs to be absolutely insane to organically interact with a co-worker of opposite sex at a company social events considering the popularity of all kinds of sexual harassment claims.
Well hold on now, this may be the solution to that. Include some male models on rollerskates and the female hiring rate should climb in response.
For me, I don't mind anyone being hired or contracted for skills in guest relations, marketing or any position or work need. This bothers me though, because it's a contrivance being used to not only help their employees have fun, but to mask a systemic flaw, which is just too much in the SV culture of always killing it, everything is amazing, fake it till you make it, false value creation and other cultural negatives that prevent true growth and benefits to the part of their society they are primarily responsible for: their work force.
This is really generalized, though, but it would apply to more than a handful of SV companies.
But I do think that they're living up to the letter of what you're saying, but definitely not the spirit of it.
The issue is the gender disparity in _software_engineering_, which is actually made worse by this, because hiring someone because they look pretty (they're not asking agencies for, like, conversationalists with master's degree, and if they were, they'd still have to be attractive) is straight-up objectification, which is bad for women everywhere - and men.
The other part is that I don't think it's wrong to allow the GUI of a person to be the initial draw towards someone else. If that's all someone wants, then they're shallow and objectifying someone.
But for as many guys in SV who are pervs only out for one thing, I'm willing to wager that there are just as many, if not more, introverted SE's who actually don't mind a more personal connection, however momentary, than to just get their rocks off. Sometimes it's nice to have a short, if meaningful, or at least interesting conversation with someone so far out of your league in traditional social contexts.
I'm not trying to be an apologist for this practice, I just feel that while it has its own innocent value, it could be implemented in a way that is a bit more transparent and helpful long-term to what is behind some of the motivations for this.
> " made them sign nondisclosure agreements, and given them names of employees to pretend they’re friends with, in case anyone asks why he’s never seen them around the foosball table. > “The companies don’t want their staff to be talking to someone and think, Oh, this person was hired to socialize with me,” says Kermaani, who’s sending models to seven tech parties in the same weekend.
They are pretenders and I would feel betrayed. By my company. They hire people to betray me. Really? No. They shall just be honest about it and I can deal with it. But this? No. I don't want to waste my time with those pretenders.
-- Yes, some magic wand will solve it?
If they are tech companies and engineers are the primary value drivers, and only 16% of CS grads are female, what kind of rock will they find balanced workforce?
Companies hire because they need people to feel a role, (eg. engineers, marketing, sales, hr... etc). If they need more engineers they have to deal with the workforce supply issues, where only 16% of applicants are female.
They are a business that need to build and sale products, and not a charity.
I live in NYC, and they have the opposite is here, most PR or fashion firms are more female dominated...
It is, what it is. Not sure it justifies hiring models to balance the gender ratio in a party, but the workforce imbalance is there to stay as long as there is such an imbalance ratio in CS grads.
It often comes back to this "pipeline" problem, but we need to think of our companies as being part of the pipeline. I don't have a CS degree -- I came out of college with a BA -- but I landed a firmware programming job, 2 jobs and 7 years later I am experience and "senior". If you're willing to train smart people, you can sideline the pipeline issue.
If you are hiring 100s, or even thousands of engineers you are bound to the supply of the market. Unless you do some straight out hiring discrimination, and refuse to hire males. Similar to some Vegas clubs (they wont let males unless they have a female with them). Good luck building a successful business with those values.
It is Econ 101 dude... or dudette (not sure you are guy or a girl)
P.s. I personally would love to have seen balanced genders (working for tech companies sometimes it feels like you are in the army), but that's probably a utopian ideal that is not going to be fixed in my lifetime.
Which is leagues above the vast majority of engineering companies, as well as the overall population within the software engineering community at large. Yours is an outlier, and an obvious one at that.
So I'm boasting a bit, not claiming this is normal, but just to say... come on guys, think bigger.
The pipeline isn't sufficient to explain the gender ratio.
I just don't see any data that supports what you're saying. 20% is the _upper_ bound.
I'd be happy if I found a company that was that balanced, instead of more like 1-2%...
In NYC the tech companies are also diverse. They solve problems of other industries with tech and hire for many different roles besides engineers. Tech companies in NYC generally have significantly more women compared to Silicon Valley.
The fact that a lot of women simply don't like programming, don't find it interesting, find it hard to learn and understand is meaningful.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger... (read from "So if it happens before middle school, and it’s not stereotypes, what might it be?")
It seems that there is a things-people distinction in sexes and it shows.
Not really, that's more a 'New Years' thing.
Christmas 'party' is just really a Christmas season gathering.
It really isn't even a party.
Imagine 100 years ago, your grandad owns a printing press in town. December 20th he brings in Egg Nog, a cake, everyone stops working. Maybe a local musician sings a few songs. Maybe some people drink a little too much.
Or maybe he pays for a nice dinner at the local restaurant and people show up and 'give thanks'. Light a candle.
That's it.
We are so 'de-culturalized' in North America we don't even know how to do something normal.
Of course a 'holiday party' could technically be anything people want it to be, but there's no reason to go to this level.
When in doubt: just go out for dinner. :)
'non mandatory employee engagement' is generally how HR describes these sterile lifeless get-togethers. This inevitably gets translated into "i strongly encourage my team to attend" by management, which in turn results in every H1B employee showing up in cringing terror of being fired while every salaried non-exempt engineer and programmer brace for the inevitable "so, i didnt see you at the party last week!" from their manager.
Save the time and effort. split the budget for this dumpster fire masquerading as a social event, and add it to my raise.
1) make it super interesting but excuse the family-types who instead take time off.
2) remove the party bit and make it an extra-curricular commitment perhaps giving-oriented like community service.
Mandatory Happiness belongs in one of the circles of hell.
* I'm a software engineer. I'm already highly-paid, so the marginal hedonic impact of a nice party is relatively small compared to its monetary cost.
* I'm nerdy, and prefer quiet, small, get-togethers centered around an activity, compared to large, loud, alcohol-fueled parties.
* Holiday parties are often in the evening, requiring me to schedule time for a work activity in typical non-work time. Community Service is often most reasonably performed in the day, making it an alternative activity during the workday.
* As a highly-paid engineer, I'm aware of differences in luck and circumstance that led to my current good fortune - giving back to the community has a relatively notable hedonic impact.
* As a software engineer, most of my work is non-tangible and abstract - I basically talk to a non-person, all day. Many types of community service involve physical labor, repairing or constructing a physical thing/place. This taps in to some core desire of humans, and thus also has notable hedonic impact.
* Community Service is good PR, for both the company and employee. Holiday parties risk negative PR, either for drunken scandals, visions of gilded-age excess, or both.
* The money that _could_ be spent on alcohol, catering, venue, DJs, and apparently modeling talent, I'd rather see spent on more direct benefits for employees - snacks, educational materials/career development, or just plain raises.
So, yeah, I would definitely consider the perks of working for a company that advertised that it did _not_ host large holiday parties, spent the budget elsewhere, and organized community service events.
Models are loads of fun
Today I work for a different company, and we had one of these events you are talking about. I actually had just as much fun, if not more fun, than the previous lavish parties I was used to. I feel like I have a much more personable relationship to at least a half-hour other people I normally don't interact with on a day-to-day basis.
It's what you make of it. If not showing up for you is working, rock on man. If enjoy an opportunity to get to know everyone I work with and find out what we have in common.
Any issue there? I mean, I rather enjoy talking to a model (female, or male in fact) -- it's not a business I understand, they are professionals with possibly quite interesting lifestyles and stories. Wildly different from the 'colleague' grade. I used to hang out with ballet dancers in a different lifetime, it was fascinating.
Likewise, it's entirely possibly that models will be happy to work on their acting skills and so on to play that game. Perhaps the nerds can take a clue or two...
It's not a strip club, it's no more degrading for the models as it is to the employees, who still have to put up and suck up to their managements -sometime abusive, in more subtle ways- for the sake of appearance (just not physical), so how different is it?
Oh and remember, some models also like parties. In the wild days of the 90's at computer shows, most 'parties' ended up in 'afters' with a whole bunch of the show models, because if you throw a bunch of (then) young people from different backgrounds together with a corporate credit card, stuff is going to happen, after business hours.
It's gross that a company would hire women and have them pretend to be employees solely for the gratification of the men. And no, it doesn't matter if there were a few male models. That's not appropriate either, but it's very clear that this is a practice aimed at men at male-dominated companies.
The employer is not in the business of getting you off. Practices that try to do that inherently create an exclusionary environment.
And if your defense against the blatant objectification of women described in this article is some variant of "oh but look at both sides" then I suggest that you look at human interaction in the context of history and not as a blank Jupyter notebook that you put numbers into.
Yea. True. But they have to pretend they are friends of employees. They lie to you. The company pays people to come and lie.
It would be whole 'nother story if they would be upright about it.
the simplest method is to make known our displeasure and just call them out. it can be stopped. the culture of men will be men and women will be quiet will end in SV but only by going after the problem directly, not indirectly through hiring practices
You can't just wave a magical wand and suddenly make more women engineers.
Most tech companies genuinely want to have balanced gender ratio in their workforce, but they can't as there are just not enough women that graduate on CS.
"By dividing the school's number of female graduates by this overall average, we discovered the average percentage of women in computer science programs; 16%."
I heard somewhere that there are just as many women in undergrad math as men, but the ratio dramatically decreases in graduate math because so many women leave... to teach.
Also, I find it weird that while I’ve met many Russian developers, I’ve never met a female Russian developer. That is just anecdata of course, take it with a grain of salt.
I do wish there was more research on how the gender gap arose in the first place, e.g. why that drop occurred in the mid/late 80s.
Where is the "In SV we're supposed to be innovators, why aren't we leading the way towards a more equal society?" narrative grounded?
Mostly in the minds of people who are still trying to convince themselves that their advertising and surveillance code or "social" skinner box is "making the world a better place".
Perhaps companies are hiring based on performance at work, rather than performance at parties?
I was once invited to a recruiting event by palantir (it was in Israel) where I noticed a bunch of good looking women talking up other people. The weird thing was they were all dressed practically the same, wearimg a small black dress. Now, this event wasn't formal or anything, so I gathered that they were 'atmosphere models'. That was a very weird experience , to think that someone paid for pretty women to have human interaction with me. I don't get how this passes as a good idea. It's just awful and sad.
They will also be entertaining to the guests.
Many models are equally as excited about your tech company and the tech sector. You might find a few of them more interesting than your coworkers.
Then you're "doing it wrong". Pay them to bring their art. Include them in the party (whatever degree of free drinks / food / access everyone else gets). Tell them that if someone's being a dick, they can feel free to be a dick right back.
Teach your people that no-one else is responsible for their happiness.
This is fair!
> convoluted impractical version.
I don't understand.
I doubt that would even remotely pass today. Just because some practices were "acceptable" over a prior timeframe doesn't exactly render it acceptable today.
Know your customer and their representative(s) tastes.
So much so that local tech company - Yelp's - employee manual says its not an appropriate place for meetings
But to act like this is part of days gone by.... well Washington Post chooses to try and shame the tech industry in different ways.
You have to realize that these articles are comedy, a trope, a meme, and unhinged from people's actual perspectives, including the model's themselves, many of which are also women with rational opinions and interest in the tech sector.
No, this reality isn't inclusive to all people, and many women, who are working hard on a career devoid of these distractions. They are not capable of unilaterally being the voice of the women that are just as thrilled to cater to the tech sector but using just their bodies.
This is “journalism” ladies and gentlemen...
It's a good time, enjoy yourself and don't take it too seriously. This really isn't the end of the World.
Moreover, it's standard practice in a lot of big industries. Particularly advertising, finance, automobiles, and others.
However, that aside, the lack of disclosure is unethical.
Im trying to figure out what your argument rests upon.
lol at lack of disclosure, call the FTC
> “The companies don’t want their staff to be talking to someone and think, Oh, this person was hired to socialize with me,” says Kermaani, who’s sending models to seven tech parties in the same weekend.
It's just accurate.
And where in the article is there any implication that this is an entirely new thing?
> say a record number of tech companies are quietly paying [..] it’s part of an older trend. Tech companies have long used models to run their booths at trade shows such as CES in Las Vegas, hype up crowds at product launches, and direct foot traffic at conferences. That said, this year’s record-setting requests for the minglers, known as “ambiance and atmosphere models,” are a step beyond what the industry has seen before, says Chris Hanna, who’s run TSM Agency since 2004 and counts among his clients “one of the largest search engines in the world.”
The agencies themselves seem to say it's reaching a new level in both number and now becoming about a generic fun-ness, rather than more specific tasks, like sit in this booth and be pretty. But other than that, the article outright says it's not new.
The record numbers are not up for debate anyway I guess, but as for the "type" of engagement, if you imply this has always been so generic and fake, what's your source for making that claim?
> that perfectly dove tails with current events about sexual harassment or lack of company diversity.
So you are you saying it doesn't? Can you eloborate on how sexism has nothing to do with it, then?
Tradeshow models, booth models, and atmosphere models are also not the same. Tradeshow models must at least know about the product they are representing to discuss it with a potential customer. Atmosphere models must be very sociable and capable of carrying good conversation with anyone, you cannot just turn a cold shoulder to someone you don't find interesting. Booth models are mostly there to look pretty and maybe help with generic marketing tasks like passing out flyers.
Pointing out that the practice isn't new in the article doesn't mean the article itself transforms into something new and becomes a breath of fresh air. It's still a rehash of old ideas made to feed off current events to produce a bit of ad revenue from people looking to keep their outrage up to date.
So yes, I'm saying this does perfectly fit into current events. It was designed to.
No, it's simply accurate:
> Most models’ contracts say they won’t exchange contact information with party guests, and that gets tougher to handle with grace when they’re legally bound to pretend they’re guests, too.
Legally bound ro pretend. Are booth and trade show girls also legally bound to pretend they're not hired? Of course not. So again, you claimed this isn't new, do and I asked you to back it up. Simply because I'm not aware of this practice having a long history and the article doesn't give info on that either. You pretend you know something, now show you know something. But instead you talk again only what nobody can prove or refute, the motivations of the author of the piece (nevermind how much of the article is straight quotes from people running such agencies, but I guess those just want to foster "outrage", too).
> Pointing out that the practice isn't new in the article doesn't mean the article itself transforms into something new and becomes a breath of fresh air.
Who said any of that? The article says the general practice to hire models isn't new, but the practice of faking it becoming common at such scale is. You seem to disagree, because you said how the article "makes it seem" as if any of it is new. That's implying it's not new. You have not managed to back up that implied claim so far, not in in the slightest. Talking about what nobody can prove or disprove, the motivations of the author, is like adding another level below the lowest level of disagreement: you're not even disagreeing with the tone, you're disagreeing with what you make up in your head.
> So yes, I'm saying this does perfectly fit into current events. It was designed to.
What does that even mean? That the journalist Jedi mind tricked these companies to hire atmosphere models at unprecedented levels so they can write about it? If you get upset at the word "sneaking" in this context, like it's some solar system sized alien mothership of clickbait, you're not making a point, you're designing a straw man. Look no further for "design".
Should we continue to just gawk at those models too? Or do something about it?
It's 2017, not an episode of Mad Men.
Its great
Who is it?
As soon as I finished the paragraph, Kixeye popped into my head automatically. I will caveat that I'm very possibly wrong, but I'm just sharing my guess.
The article specifically mentions that male models are also employed, so all of the knee-jerk ranting about sexism and misogyny is misplaced.
I'm reminded of a story a couple years ago when all incoming Duke freshman had to read Alison Bechdel's Fun House, a graphic novel with slightly gay themes. Yes, a few were offended by this, and one person made the news for publicly refusing to read it. But I don't think it ended up as a PR loss for Duke. They said if you are coming into an elite liberal arts college, these are the type of things that are consumed and debated.
Everything makes someone uncomfortable, mine's Karaoke - if they have a machine there people will be like, "stillsut come up and sing Tom Petty with me". But we need to be firm about our desires and not let the heckler's veto erode the culture.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2014/03/04/the-d...
They’ve been flying women to San Francisco for dates.
Models at parties are actors, pretending to be real people.
If consenting adults are being treated fairly, I don't see any moral problem here.
But you chose to accept that job. The actor on TV isn't being treated unfairly because he/she has to lie and say they're a detective, or whatever. I don't see why the model is being mistreated because her role is software company employee.
If anyone is being mistreated by the lie, it's the person being lied to, who is, you know, being lied to. That said, this is a balance between having a fun party, and possibly feeling dumb when it turns out the girl you thought you were flirting with is actually a model hired to entertain you. I think it's up to those companies, the employees, and the models, to strike the right balance.
Apparently female-dominated environments suffer from social awkwardness as much as male-dominated ones.
The models in this case really are performing a valuable job.
/s
People learn enough social niceties to get by, even if they never become the life of the party. Women start caring less about how cool the guy is and and start caring more about "Do I actually get along with this person?" Somewhere in the middle of those lowered expectations for coolness and increased social competence, nerds do just fine.
The models might be really upset if they don't get that job where they make $200 an hour. That might be the difference between presents under a tree and no Christmas for their kids.
From the outside, it looks silly. I think it would be a shame to see their personal embarrassment and bruised egos ruin an easy job opportunity for a few people who would like to make $200/hr attending a party. That sounds like a pie job. Professional party attender.