Hacker News Reader

Comment by crindy | Hacker News Reader

The problem isn't that women are being degraded. The problem is that women are being presented as bodies that can help sell laptop batteries.

View on HN

Women are bodies, among other things. They can pose for a display for tech junk without giving up other aspects of their humanity. In other words they are not reduced to being bodies, they are just choosing to express that facet of themselves. Tomorrow they'll show off some other aspect.

Edited to add: I'm good friends with a model. She does stuff like this for fun.

Hi there. I wrote the post and just wanted to let you and the models know that I fully support them and their right to do whatever kind of work they want to do. I don't see them as victims and I didn't write the article to be a voice for them. I wrote it for myself, as a woman in tech. It's awkward when women are used at a tech trade show to attract men to the booth. And it's offensive when a company like HyperMac calls us crazy for pointing it out.

Thank you for writing that post. You're not crazy, you're right. Hell, I would feel awkward too if some painted up butt-naked guys became the norm at tech conferences. Unfortunately some people just don't get it, because they fail to see outside themselves. Keep writing more about this. People need the perspective.

That's not what I got from your article. I saw HyperMac responding to the people who said the display was degrading and dehumanizing, not to the ones who "passed it around the twitter-verse, rolling our eyes and having a good laugh." This part especially seemed odd: "What HyperMac failed to realize was that all the community wanted from them was acknowledgment and support." Really? Then why did the community boycott and attack them instead of asking for acknowledgement and support?

Because they got an apathetic, arrogant, selfish, shitty response, that's why. You respond to people like shit, you get shit back. It's not rocket science.

That is exactly my point. People started jumping all over HyperMac, and HyperMac dismissed the twitter pile-on as an uninformed mob.

Which was exactly the wrong way to go about things. You don't dismiss a large demographic's concerns by trying to throw it back at them.

The alternative being... what, sitting down, listening to what they want to say, and then giving them what they want?

Bear in mind that there's nothing more frustrating that someone apparently taking you seriously and listening to you and then flat-out refusing to give you any of what you want from them. It makes you feel like you were tricked by someone who never took you seriously at all.

Fundamentally, this is about a company facing off against an angry group of people who want to force the company to action that pleases them. No CEO is going to enjoy that.

Also, if the demographic in question isn't your customer base you're likely to treat them somewhat less seriously.

As far as I can tell, HyperMac's customer base is people who own macs.

Miss Rep is a bay area non-profit so I'm sure they have a very large base here. And a lot of macs.

Not to mention all the techies, not at all affiliated with Miss Rep, who were tweeting about this event.

Many tweeters and posters stated specifically that they were former or potential customers who will now look elsewhere.

Well, I too was part of their customer base, but not anymore. If this is what the company stands for, consider me out. I'd much prefer purchasing products on their merits than some played out douchey marketing scheme.

This is a point of contention for a lot of people. For myself, reduction of a women to their body in order to sell a product is objectification that appeals to a message that women are commodities. The majority of objectifying advertising has this implicit message built it. You might enjoy Killing Us Softly for more information about women and advertising (this link is trailer only, I'm afraid): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTlmho_RovY

I'm not sure I like that explanation. If the laptop batteries were sold using women's brains, we'd be celebrating how far women's rights have come, despite completely ignoring that women are human and also have bodies.

The real issue here seems to just be a puritanical view of nakedness/sexiness.

Women most certainly do deal with problems in the workplace, but having the ability to choose to stand mostly naked to sell batteries doesn't seem like one of them.

I'm comfortable with nakedness and sexiness. I doubt the booth would have hit my radar at all if they'd included male models too. Honestly, this wouldn't be a blog post if the CEO had responded in a thoughtful way. It's his response that is most offensive.

>I doubt the booth would have hit my radar at all if they'd included male models too.

I'm sorry but this was not at all clear from what you had written. Or any of the tweets you quoted. I tried to be pretty careful, thoughtful, and understanding but apparently I failed badly. After all this discussion I have no idea what your objection actually is. Sorry for wasting everyone's time, I wish there was something I could actually take away from this but I just feel defeated by this whole conversation.

Thank you for reading and trying to understand. I really mean that. I hope some of my other comments will help explain it better.

Here is a link to one of them: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5157470

I appreciate the response. It was actually the original tweet that made me feel it was about the generally negative view of bodies, and not any kind of women's rights issue. It mentions appropriateness, which is usually associated with people, of all sexes, needing to covering up to be appropriate.

Obviously the whole thing runs much deeper and I agree that things could be handled much more effectively.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com