In the 1999 Adam Sandler film Big Daddy, Sandler's character, Sonny, never interacts with Corinne (Leslie Mann) without bringing up the fact that she worked at Hooters. It doesn't matter that she's a doctor, a loving girlfriend to his best friend, or eventually becomes a great stepmom. The joke is that, while putting herself through medical school, she worked as a waitress at a restaurant that requires its employees to dress in orange booty shorts.
In Sonny's mind, Corinne sold her body with a side of fries, and that will be her defining characteristic no matter what else she does. And at the end of the film, when Sonny sees his cheating ex-girlfriend is now a Hooters waitress, it's supposed to feel like justice. As if the job is a fit punishment for her behavior. The point of Hooters is the hot women, and because they exist and are hot, they deserve to be demeaned.
As an institution Hooters trades in plausible deniability. While strip clubs, and the women who work in them, know exactly what they're selling (and ideally are able to do so in a safe, supportive environment that protects them from sexual harassment), Hooters continues to hide behind the image of a "family friendly" restaurant. "Throughout the years, we've been delighted to rescue millions from the ordinary with our one-of-a-kind hospitality and consistently good food," they write on their website. In their job descriptions for Hooters Girls, they just require that she be "fit & glamorous," and "entertain guests in a fun way." They're not selling sex, they say, they're just selling wings. And if you happen to read into the revealing outfits, or how the women are trained to sit and flirt with you, the calendars, pageants, or the logo that looks suspiciously like boobs, that's on you. Hooters is just trying to be your neighborhood friendly wing shop.
Hooters was founded in 1983, and though treating women like crap has long been a national pastime, it calcified a particular male fantasy of strip club lite. Who wouldn't want to be surrounded by hot women who bring you fried food and draw little hearts on your check? But now it's 2018, and while things for women are still largely shit—the ongoing pay gap, the attacks on reproductive health, a new story every day about men who have been getting away with sexual harassment for decades—it's hard to imagine someone successfully pitching a "breastaurant" today.
"It is an entire job based on sexual harassment. You are paid to be sexually harassed and objectified. Everyone at Hooters is aware," Brittanny Anderson, chef and owner of Metzger Bar and Butchery, told GQ. Anderson began her restaurant career as a Hooters girl in Richmond, VA in 2002. "I was in college and had dreams of becoming a writer, so I convinced myself that working at Hooters would provide me with lots of cool stories to write about and a little extra cash to blow at shitty bars," she said. Her interview consisted of filling out an application, and then modeling a uniform—a scoop-neck tank top, orange booty shorts, and thick, tan tights to keep your legs shapely and smooth—while the manager took polaroids.
Anderson's description of working at Hooters matches much of what's already been written about the protocol. Waitresses must wear their hair down and pass uniform inspections daily. They must sit and chat with each of their tables, and they're expected to sell Hooters merch as much as wings. But mostly, they were expected to sell themselves. "We were taught that our jobs were less about selling food and more about selling the fantasy of the Hooters Girl," said Anderson.
It's not like women don't understand what they're getting into when they apply, but often it's more than they imagined. Kirsten Hubbard worked as a Hooters Girl in Pacific Beach, San Diego in 2002, and admits being deemed attractive enough to pass the test was a rush. But she quickly found that she wasn't equipped to deal with the aggressive clientele. "At 19, I was just learning boundaries. And how much energy those question marks take: Is that okay? Is that? Is that? Okay, that definitely bothered me. That was gross or mean. But would my manager care?," she said. And she certainly couldn't rely on management to help. "My managers"—who were all men—"were sleeping with Hooters Girls ten years younger." (GQ reached out to Hooters, Twin Peaks, and the Tilted Kilt, but never heard back.)
You don't even have to be an official Hooters Girl to experience this. Rebecca worked as a hostess at a Hooters in Ocean City, MD when she was a junior in high school, largely because other girls in her school bragged about how much money they could make. "Even as a hostess the expectation was clear; you are here to be pretty and flirty and sexy and whatever else the men want you to be," she said.
Rebecca was quickly horrified by what was deemed normal behavior at Hooters. "I saw men fondle servers, I heard management discuss how certain Hooters Girls looked better than others," she said. And the fact that she was underage at the time didn't deter anyone. "I had instances where I felt particularly uncomfortable and my best defense was 'sir, I am 16.' At Hooters, that never made a patron bat an eye. It almost enticed them more."
Consider also that there are no Hooters Boys. Hooters settled a class-action lawsuit in 1997—as a result, Hooters opened up a few jobs for men, but they were still allowed to hire only women as servers as a "bona fide occupational qualification." In other words, for Hooters to be Hooters, the Hooters Girls need to be girls. "While we offer world famous wings and burgers, the essence of our business is the Hooters Girl and the experience she provides to our customers," Hooters said in a statement to Business Insider. They also got around it by opening up Hoots, a fast-casual restaurant where you can get your wings served by both men and women in more conservative outfits.
And now, like other waitresses who have long been told that unwelcome advances from customers are just part of the job, "breastaurant" waitresses are beginning to fight back. Waitresses at a Twin Peaks location in Illinois (most "breastaurants" are franchises) filed a lawsuit against the restaurant, alleging that the all-women wait staff were graded on their bodies, forced to wear lingerie, and that the restaurant's protocols violate Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. According to the lawsuit, the job description for a Twin Peaks girls specified that "the essence of the role is based on female sex appeal," and women were forced to order staff meals from a "spa menu" that consisted of smaller portions. As one waitress put it, "We did not sign up to work at a strip club."
Strip clubs and sex work are still stigmatized in America. Waitresses everywhere are routinely harassed by customers, and are often told to suck it up or risk losing tips, but for Hooters Girls, there is significant job overlap with the stripping industry. Writer and stripper Janis Luna recently described her job as "to flirt and make them feel like a man." Strippers look cute, they interact with you for tips, they listen, they laugh. The main difference for Hooters Girls is the parameters of the transaction are never clearly articulated.
If Hooters proves anything, it's that women's sexualized bodies aren't actually offensive to the concept of "family fun." But what Hooters lacks is transparency, and they use the plausible deniability to keep employees from complaining. "Back then, my reaction to [Hooters being called a family restaurant] was more like, sure it is! We see families all the time! But I was definitely being defensive," said Hubbard. "In reality, customers were 90 percent men, and we only saw a kid every few shifts. I don't find it cute at all now, just gross and manipulative. It lets them say: We're just playing around! Don't be so uptight! It can't be THAT offensive if kids are here!"
According to Anderson, she even had to sign away her right to sue if she was sexually harassed on the job. "When you are hired you sign a ton of documents, including one that basically states that you will not file a sexual harassment lawsuit against Hooters," she said. "It also says that if you ever file any kind of legal claim against the company you forfeit your rights to go to court and instead will handle it within the company in arbitration."
The work is only degrading if women are feeling degraded, which comes not from the nature of the work itself, but from managers and companies who don't take employees' concerns seriously. In fact, Rebecca said Hooters could learn something from strip clubs, because at least there is clarity in what the job actually is. "I believe that Hooters could exist responsibly, but they would definitely need to align their policies with strip clubs and be significantly more forthright about what their employees will be doing or getting into, and promoting policies that protect employees."
So is there a place for Hooters in 2018? According to the women I spoke to, Hooters as it exists now—a place that obscures the work required of its employees, and that often sees harassment as part of the job—cannot exist responsibly. Hubbard said she didn't hate working at Hooters, but that Hooters, by nature, relies on the dynamic between older men being attracted to younger women. "Sure they could be more responsible, but evolution isn't what the clientele is there for," she said. "They're certainly not systems created by women—or with women's best interests in mind. And it's certainly not the Hooters Girls making the real profit."
Though Hooters and similar restaurants never responded to our media requests, they might be getting the message. Sales are stagnant, the overall number of Hooters locations fell by 7 percent from 2012 to 2015, and Hooters seems to relying on other tactics—like healthier menus—to draw in customers. However, Twin Peaks hasn't been undone by its lawsuit. The Hooters 2018 Calendar Tour is still underway. Women still work there. Hooters doesn't have to change, and likely won't unless profits tell them to.
"It is built on inherent sexism and sexualization of women," said Anderson. For a while she thought she could change the culture by working there, that she could further a sex positive feminist agenda by calling out management on their shitty behavior. "Then, a woman who worked at another Richmond location was abducted, raped and murdered from the parking lot. Her body was discovered in a dumpster," she said. "I knew then that I had to leave. That nothing I wrote would change a culture where women's bodies were objectified to the point where men no longer treated them like human beings."
