Businessweek fell in a bit of hot water over the weekend after ranking business schools by the hottest female students.
On Friday, November 9th, Businessweek asked their over 162,000 Twitter followers: “Which business school has the most attractive female students,” urging readers to vote for either the University of Virginia Darden, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Michigan State, Loyola University or the city’s own Boston University.
The question sparked hundreds of responses, largely negative. One reader commented that she “expected more from Bloomberg than frat house journalism,” while another tweeted, “You’d think [Businessweek] would be above chauvinist crap like this.” Or how about:
The article was live for over 24 hours before being yanked, according to The Daily Dot, who pointed to Businessweek and College Prowler’s 2010 “Fifty Colleges with the Hottest Guys, Girls and Nightlife”—a list deemed acceptable to replicate the following year.
Ranking students based on looks isn’t new, especially from College Prowler, who helped The Daily Beast and Newsweek rank the attractiveness of guys and girls on campus just this summer. The real problem is that this survey singled out females, following a time when several heated debates took place during the election centered around the “war on women.”
Businessweek did send The Daily Dot a statement, writing:
We regret issuing two online polls last week that asked our readers to comment on which business schools had the most attractive male and female students. The Face/Off polls have been taken down from businessweek.com. They were in poor taste and undermine the tremendous value our Business Schools vertical provides.
For the Boston University female business students out there wondering, you did take the top spot in Businessweek’s looks category, garnering 25 percent of the vote in a tie with the University of Virginia Darden. For whatever that's worth.
