The world of the booth babe, it is fair to say, has been rent asunder by recent events in Los Angeles. Midriffs have been covered, skin-tight tops have been loosened and hem lines have plummeted.
The annual E3 fair at the hulking LA Convention Centre decided this year to enforce a long-standing, much-ignored rule: exhibitors must abide by the norms of common, adult decency. It was time, the show’s organisers, the Electronic Software Association, had evidently decided, for the electronic games industry to move beyond the pimply puberty stage and ascend to full-blown family life.
Organisers issued a handbook stressing the rules of the game to would-be exhibitors. ”Material, including live models, conduct that is sexually explicit and/or sexually provocative, including but not limited to nudity, partial nudity and bathing suit bottoms, are prohibited on the show floor, all common areas, and at any access points to the show.” The booth babes — or more accurately, their employers – had been warned: fines of $5 000 awaited transgressors.
A booth babe, for the uninitiated, is a typically scantily-clad actress-waitress-whatever employed to loiter near a booth at a trade exhibition. Upon spying or being approached by a typically young male showing advanced signs of geekdom, the booth babe will engage the geek in conversation, normally of a flirtatious nature. Almost immediately, the relationship will be consummated with a photograph of geek and babe entwined, before the geek hands over large amounts of money for something produced by the booth babe’s employer. Sex, you see, sells.
Los Angeles games tester Channa DeSilva, for one, was unimpressed by the new regulation. ”Honestly, this is exactly what I’m here for,” he told Cnet. ”I would not be able to do this conference without pretty females to talk to.”
Lana Call, a real-life booth babe, told the Toronto Star that the enforcement of the rules was overdue. ”It’s a little more conservative, a lot less T&A,” she said. ”This isn’t a car show. It’s a show that attracts children as well as adults. It has to be held to a higher standard.”
Outside the convention centre — which is closed to under-18s for the duration of E3 — two disenfranchised booth babes expressed their disapproval of the new puritanism sweeping gameland. Dressed in short skirts and rule-defying, belly-button exposing tops, Roisin Taylor and Niki Nicholson held a banner declaring: ”Booth Babe Protest: I’m Rated ‘E’ for Everyone.” Inside, skirts were being altered and carefully proportioned costumes ruined by the seemingly random addition of scraps of tablecloth to satisfy the enforcers.
Some, however, found ways around the new regime. Scanty clothing — showing belly buttons and more — was permitted if models were embodying a character from a game. Which meant that Anna Wainscoat felt quite at home constrained in the restrictive bikini worn by Queen Antonia Bayle, a character in EverQuest II, and Dionne Hudson was permitted to wear an off-the-shoulder number, black mini skirt and fishnet tights. Far from being an exploitative and exploited booth babe, she was actually playing the part of ”a hooker” in the Saints Row game.
Booth babe, writing in to geek.com, had the last word. ”Not one of you nerds would ever have a chance with me,” she wrote — assuming, of course, that ”booth babe” is really a booth babe and is really a woman. ”Money will not help you when you speak and act like Bill Gates.” – Guardian Unlimited Â