'Booth babes' have been one of the more unfortunate features of tech trade shows for years. Women (we've never seen any male booth babes) chosen for their looks are paid to hang around a company's booth and attract the mostly male, mostly older attendees.

Sometimes the women are well paid, sometimes they get minimum wage, but their relationship to the product in question is usually gossamer-thin.

We've seen some fairly egregious examples over the years, but none more so than the one our tech reporter Emily Price stumbled upon at CES in Las Vegas Thursday. Four women dressed in body paint and little else were displayed at a company's booth, like sculptures.

The women looked straight ahead with bored expressions, and were not allowed to interact with attendees. The company's own Instagram feed described them as "fembots."

It was not immediately clear how this display was supposed to relate to the product in question, a hard drive. We won't give the company the satisfaction of mentioning their name, but we have reached out to them (and the CEA) for comment.

After Emily posted the picture on Twitter, it received more than 350 retweets — and many more outraged responses:

@emily @thebloggess How? What? Huh? I get it's Vegas, but this makes no bloody sense marketing-wise. Or as a reasonable human being. — Douglas Davidson (@ElmntsofMadness) January 11, 2013

In the meantime, let us know in the comments what you think. It's 2013; is this an appropriate way to sell a tech product, or anything for that matter?

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Photo: Emily Price/Mashable