Babes in tech land: expo labor as capitalist technology’s erotic body

Abstract

This article investigates the tech industry practice of hiring “booth babes”—female models costumed in erotic outfits—to introduce new technologies at expos. My research identifies a gendered industrial logic that simultaneously sexualizes promotional spectacles while undervaluing women who create them. Challenging industrial ideologies that view booth babe labor as outside of the tech industry, I engage first in a discourse analysis of job calls for tradeshow modeling gigs, gray literature that evidences not only their industrial presence but also the values that tech companies place on their work. I then turn to their labor conditions, as conveyed through ethnographic interviews with tradeshow models, before drawing connections between booth babe work and other forms of post-Fordist labor. Finally, I propose that the utility of booth babes to the tech industry stems from their enactment of “promosexuality,” a set of corporate erotics oriented toward capitalist promotion.