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Comment by Cowen | Hacker News Reader

Do you see nude, painted models at a trade event as being inherently dehumanizing? Because that would be a separate issue from what's being discussed here.

The problem -- at least as it seems to me -- is not that there were nude, painted people hired for the event, but that there were only nude, painted women hired for the event for no apparent reason other than their presumed sex appeal to the predominantly male attendees.

That's where the objectification argument comes in, at least in my eyes. Like I said from the start, I don't have an inherent issue with using nude, painted models for a display.

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No, but I didn't see the display as being degrading to women, which is why I'm looking for other people's perspectives. You make it sound like someone hijacked these women and used them in a degrading way. I don't see any evidence of that. Also I see no basis for presuming that they were hired only for sex appeal.

I have no idea where or how I made it sound like someone hijacked these women. That's obviously not the case. They were paid models who likely have no qualms with this work, and again, that's perfectly fine.

My issue with the display is it that HyperMac only hired female models when males would have sufficed just as well. That's the only real basis for claiming objectification of women in my eyes. Because the CEO gave absolutely no answers -- refusing to acknowledge that could even be a concern -- Occam's razor suggests going with the simplest explanation of why only nude female models were chosen to represent HyperMac, and the simplest explanation (at least in my eyes) is their sex appeal.

Models are chosen primarily for their looks, so why was the look of the nude female body the only one HyperMac had representing them at the show?

OK, actually to me the nude models did not seem to me to be for sex appeal, but the 8 women with "HyperMac" on their breasts convinced me. Given that women were hired for their sex appeal: why is that a problem?

Edited to add: at least the CEO claims they were knowledgeable, which takes care of the main problem with booth babes. Both men and women had been trained to ignore women at the conferences, as a kind of mental spam filter just because many of the booth babes were clueless about the products.

About the depth thing: click the "link" button if you want to reply. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5154055

Thanks for asking. This is a huge topic of research for decades. Here are a few starting points.

http://www.netmagazine.com/features/primer-sexism-tech-indus... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_objectification

Sorry, I asked the wrong question. Given that they were hired for sex appeal, how would hiring more men have helped?

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