Thanks to Sallie Goetsch for John Geoghegan's tongue-in-cheek gem on the dissing of "booth babes" at E3. In particular, we all remember this kerfuffle with E3 banning scantily-clad women on the floor:
Now to recap for those of you living in Basra, there was a dust up earlier this year when the ESA announced it was cracking down on inappropriately dressed booth babes by threatening to fine companies $5,000 for employing women of the female persuasion sporting anything less than what Britney Spears might wear to a human sacrifice.
This was immediately followed by the ESA revoking Janet Jackson's invitation to give E3's keynote and Christina Aguilera having to look up what "clothing" meant in the dictionary.
Ah, yes. The demise of the "booth babe." He goes on to blame E3's demise on the lack of "booth babes." But wait... what of this new E3? How are they going to "create a more intimate climate for personalized meetings"? Could it be the return of the scantily-clad women?
Not unless some Princeton professor finds a correlation between a lack of inappropriately dressed women and this year's decline in video game sales. (But don't worry, somebody's working on it.) But hey, maybe we should cut the ESA some slack. After all, it can't be easy policing an industry that makes it anatomically impossible to defibrillate a female video game character.
And besides, who am I to poke fun? I'm from Connecticut. We take showers with our clothes on.
But before you get to feeling too sympathetic, there's one important thing the ESA hasn't told you. No, there won't be booth babes in the traditional sense at next year's E3.
However, there has been a slight bending of the rules.
Next year, publishers and developers will be required to wear booth babe outfits. And the booth babes? They'll be running the ESA.
John, thanks for bringing a giggle to my weekend. The very idea of code monkeys dressed like Britney Spears had me rolling around laughing!
And if you'll recall, I wrote about this earlier--that while sex usually actually doesn't sell, at shows like E3 where the exhibitors ARE selling sex in the form of video games laden with sexual content, hey, it IS appropriate to use scantily-clad women to sell it. Truth in advertising, yes?
Now, using scantily-clad women to sell, say, can openers at the Home and Garden Show... hmmm. Not so much.