by Jen Collins and Dan Reines
Originally published in Hermenaut, Issue 16: Stockholm Syndrome, Winter 2000.
Operation Hooters: Pre-Op Recon
Neither of us is comfortable. We should be comfortable — especially Dan. He is surrounded by nearly nude women and big-screen televisions, and he has a plate of curly fries in front of him. This is the stuff of supreme comfort, but Dan is not comfortable.
Nor is Jen comfortable, though her discomfort is perhaps less surprising. We are, after all, at Hooters. And we are surrounded by nearly nude women who deliberately lean way over our table in order to wipe it clean of crumbs, their barely legal tank tops struggling to support their breasts. [Dan: Think of a mover struggling under the weight of a heavy appliance strapped to his back. Then you will know the plight of the tank top in this situation.] This is not exactly a NOW rally.
But that’s not what’s got Jen on edge, the feminist thing. Rather, what’s got both of us feeling a little bit out of sorts is the shared suspicion that we are not passing. We are here to observe Hooters, not to participate. We’re drinking soda, not beer. We’re eating fries, but not burgers. And most of all, we are not staring at the boobs. Everyone at Hooters is supposed to stare at the boobs — that’s the whole point. But us, we read the wacky signs on the walls (Caution: Blondes Thinking!, This Sign is in Spanish When You’re Not Looking), and inspect the various photos of celebrities (Tiger Woods, Darryl Strawberry) surrounded by Hooters Girls. These things are supposed to be incidental to the experience — you’re not even supposed to see them. All eyes on the hooters.
And we can’t stop averting our eyes.
Back Up
Let’s be frank: we are not here at Hooters for our health. Okay, nobody goes to Hooters for their health, but we especially are not here for that reason. We are here because we have a plan. We are going to save a Hooters Girl.
The plan springs from a conversation conducted over vegetarian soup at a mid-city Los Angeles diner. It’s no longer clear where the conversation sprang from, but it sprang all the same: Why Do Hooters Girls Hoot? After all, if you’re going to sell your body, why not make some money off it? Why not strip, and bring home a lot more money each night without carrying trays or busing tables? For that matter, why not go whole hog; certainly the money in porn or prostitution beats the tips at Hooters. Is the difference really all that big? [Jen: Seems like a sensible question. The difference between hooters and hookers is only one letter. If I worked at Hooters I’d be thinking it, especially every time a manager got on me to sell more T-shirts and calendars. At strip clubs, you sell lap dances, not T-shirts, and you get to keep most of the profits.] So what are Hooters Girls thinking? Jesus, are they thinking at all?
That’s where the conversation mutated. That’s where we moved beyond theory. Clearly, the Hooters Girls aren’t thinking. Clearly, they need our help. It’s our American duty. We have a plan: Free her mind, and her tits will follow. We are going to save a Hooters Girl. Hold on, Girl! We’re coming!
Now Forward, Just a Bit
Any good mission starts with research. Who are these Hooters people? “[Hooters is] a casual, beach-theme restaurant known for the Hooters girls — the surfer girl next door.” Straight from the Web site, that description. And that much you probably knew. But did you know that “there are almost 10,000 Hooters girls” in 41 states, as well as Asia, Canada, the Caribbean, England, Mexico, Singapore, Taiwan, Bahamas and Puerto Rico? That’s a lot of Hooters. Girls.
And a lot of restaurants. That’s why the Hooters people have their own management school: “Hooters University [uses] written materials and classroom demonstrations to help you master the essentials of Hooters.” And all in just six days of instruction. Plus: After just a year of service, you qualify for the Hooters 401(k). And: they’ve established something called HooCEF — the Hooters Community Endowment Fund, which raises money for charities like the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and the Special Olympics. So go ahead, make your little endowment jokes. But this place makes a pretense of being about more than just hooters.
Still, Hooters is a fount of controversy. Putting chesty girls in tight flimsy tank tops and planting them in the malls of America will have that effect. In Boston, a Hooters restaurant was firebombed just weeks before its planned 1997 opening. They never found out who did it, and the Hooters people downplayed the idea that it was anti-Hooters arsonists, but you’d have to be pretty naïve not to consider the possibility. All over the country, women have filed suit against Hooters of America, Inc., charging that their overwhelming emphasis on breasts makes for a hostile workplace. And the EEOC once spent four years investigating charges that Hooters discriminates against men in its hiring practices, prompting a “100 Hooters Girl March” on Washington D.C. in November, 1995. (This last detail spurs yet another debate over how many girls actually marched on Washington, 50 or 100.) But we digress.
Pre-Op Recon (Still)
[Jen: Speaking of Pre-op, I once saw a transsexual (M-to-F) wiping tables at McDonald’s. I doubt you’d ever see one at Hooters, though. My Grandma was there, and she whispered to my Mom, “Is that a parasite?”]
That Web site of theirs trumpets the average Hooters as featuring “Hooters Girls hula-hooping and singing; an open kitchen with boisterous cooks; ‘50s and ‘60s rock ‘n’ roll playing from the jukebox; and sports on television… [it’s] ‘delightfully tacky, yet unrefined.’” (Har.) If the whole thing sounds like a scene from Pat Morita’s Happy Days diner, that’s because it is; but what we’re seeing here is not what they describe. Every now and then, it’s true, a Hooters Girl very conspicuously sings along to Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls” or Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher,” and we even witness one girl wiggling around inside a hula hoop, though nobody seems terribly interested in such embarrassing pleas for attention. Far from boisterous, the cooks all look like they want to get the hell home. And as for the music… Does Bryan Adams qualify as ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll? How about the Gap Band? Because that’s pretty much what we heard coming out of the jukebox. Tacky? No argument here.
We’re also finding that while the Hooters Girls are generally not bad looking, they’re nothing extraordinary either. Even the boobs are pretty standard, when you get right down to it. A waitress named Roller Girl — says so right there on her name tag, and she’s actually cruising around on a pair of white skates [Dan: Yep, Roller Girl. As in Heather Graham’s sex nymph from Boogie Nights. Oh gee, that’s subtle. What, the sex vibe isn’t strong enough here? She had to name-check a fictional porn star? Why not just wear a shirt that says “tits”? Oh wait…][Jen: There’s also a Hooters Girl named “Clinique” limping around with an injured leg. Maybe Roller Girl isn’t the first to attempt to bring a little something extra to her role. But what would a girl named Clinique bring to Hooters that might result in a busted knee? And what could be less sexy than a mopey Hooters Girl? The same Hooters Girl wearing band-aid colored pantyhose over a giant velcro knee brace, that’s what.] — appears to have rather enormous breasts, until Jen notices that she’s applied stunt make-up to them to make them look bigger. They’re very matte, and just a little sparkly, like how face powder is sometimes a little sparkly. Jen’s guess is that Roller Girl is using contouring makeup for a trompe-l’oeil effect. There’s a skin-tone shadow down the gutter, blended outward and upward into a highlight color, and everything is coated lightly with powder for an even patina. Up close she just looks like she’s hiding acne or perspiration. [Dan: The strange truth of it is, the boobs here are not that much of a turn-on, with our without makeup. Oh sure, they’re something of a turn-on, being boobs and all. But (how should I put this) they don’t move. These girls have got ‘em wrapped up so tight and pushed up so high that they’re often more like office towers than like Jell-O molds. Combine that with those wretched shorts, and the bottom line is that any one of them would be much more attractive in jeans and a T-shirt. I find myself furtively fantasizing about what they would look like with clothes on.]
All right, that’s enough recon; there’s nothing more for us to scout. We set a date for Operation Hooters and clear out.
Questions
We have questions. Hooters Girl, don’t you worry, we’re gonna Socratic Method you right out of those shorts. Er, in a good way.
Do you wear this kind of stuff in real life? Do you tape your boobs together before running off to the market? Wear pantyhose with short shorts? Show off cleavage deep enough to make Baby Jessica nervous?
Do they encourage breast enlargement surgery here at Hooters? No? Do they actively discourage it?
Have you always dreamed of working for people who so want their customers to stare at your breasts that they named their restaurant after them? Did you always wish you could sell your body for seven dollars an hour? Did you, Hooters Girl?
How much does a lapdance cost? Is there a champagne room around here? What kind of tip do we have to lay down to get you to go home with us? Don’t like the line of questioning, eh? We don’t blame you. But we’re not the first ones to ask, are we? So when are you going to decide that enough is enough? Let’s get out of here. Come on, repeat after us: My… eyes… are… up… here. Come with us, Hooters Girl. Don’t be afraid. We’re here to help you.
Oh yeah, we got questions. Now let’s go save us some Hooters Girl.
Operation Hooters
First off, it turns out her name is Dawn. Our Hooters Girl. We were expecting Nikki, or perhaps Tonya. But, OK, Dawn will do.
And she ain’t that dumb, either. We figure that out pretty quick, right about the time Dan orders a hamburger with french fries and a beer. See, Dan doesn’t eat meat, which is why his original order consists of a small dinner salad and a water — no reason to waste a perfectly good appetite on a greasy plate of fries, right? Right. Unless, that is, Dawn challenges the order (“And? A salad and…?”) And suddenly, Dan’s agreeing to the Hooters Burger (“More than a mouthful,” purrs the menu). Like we said, Dawn ain’t that dumb. [Jen: Is she playing dumb because that’s what gets her the big tips? Or is she actually dumb as dirt, but just knows her job? I figure I’ll ask her some questions, get a read on her, but, not surprisingly, she doesn’t seem to want to spend too much time at our table. if Dan were here with another guy she’d be hanging out, giggling and bouncing from lap to lap. I think she’s just got game, and that’s what matters here.]
As a matter of fact, Dawn is what you might call a first-class Hooters Girl, a real company success story. Once a lowly junior high school teacher, she has pulled herself up by the bra-straps to achieve a position of unofficial authority here at Hooters of Santa Monica. She’s something of a lifer, she tells us, having worked there for a few years already, and we can tell she’s kind of assumed the den mother role. All the other girls seem to look to her for direction, and we notice it’s always she who does the “1-2-3-Go” when the girls sing “Happy Birthday” to a drunken frat boy. And come 2001, Dawn’s going to be featured on the Hooters Girls calendar! How about that? Cue R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly.”
After fleecing Dan and politely answering our initial questions, Dawn skips away to replace some empty beers for the three guys at the table next to ours. We watch as she bends toward one of them and whispers something into his ear. She really leans into him, and he turns red. He looks like Clark Kent with a goatee. She scoots off to the kitchen, their empty glasses in tow. He is still red. One of his buddies punches him in the shoulder. The other doesn’t seem to be interested in this business with Dawn. Instead he seems somewhat entranced with Jen. [Jen: I notice him staring at me as we sit down, and then again while we’re ordering. He has a droopy face but no discernible neck. I catch him again later, and he smiles weakly, as if he’s afraid to open his mouth.] Which is odd, to say the least. Women in tight shorts and tighter tank tops are milling all around him, and Jen is not one of them. Jen ignores his stare.
Roller Girl whizzes by, carrying a huge platter of wings in one hand and snapping the fingers on her other to the beat of “Power of Love,” by Huey Lewis and the News. She knows those skates, boy. Dan flags down Dawn on her way back to Clark Kent’s table.
“Does Roller Girl ever fall?”
“Huh?”
“Roller Girl. With the skates. Does she ever fall?”
“Oh yeah, all the time,” Dawn tells us, after checking to make sure Roller Girl’s out of earshot. “All the time. Coke goes flying everywhere, she’s spilled food on customers, yeah. I don’t know why she wears the skates. She doesn’t have to.” [Dan: That part fascinates me. Roller Girl doesn’t have to wear the skates. She doesn’t get paid extra. She just likes to. It’s like they said, “You can work here, Roller Girl, but you’ll have to dress in such a way that completely exploits you body. And you have to flirt with strange men, most of whom are here expressly to stare at your boobs, which you will keep almost completely exposed. Oh, and you have to clean the tables in such a fashion that exposes your already exposed boobs even more, and you have to avert your eyes so that you purposely won’t catch the men looking down your flimsy tank top. Can you do all this?” And Roller Girl’s response was. “Um, okay, but only if I can wear roller skates.”]
Realizing that we’re not the tips-for-tits crowd she’s chasing, Dawn quickly turns her attention back to Clark and his boys. She fawns over him, laughing at his jokes and holding his beer bottle up so that he can suckle, to the delight of the meatheads who’ve been egging him on. It’s really too much. Then she scampers off to help some other poor sucker in love.
Oh yes, Dawn’s a player. Way too smart for this gig. We feel like God’s angels here. It’s time to save a Hooters Girl.
Jen motions Dawn back to us and begins to talk about Clark. It’s universally acceptable straight-girls-in-a-bar conversation, and Jen draws Dawn in. “Hey, that guy’s pretty hot, huh? He likes you!”
“You think so?”
“Yeah! He looks like Clark Kent!”
“Who?”
“Superman!”
“Superman! Save me, Superman!”
Okay, that was code, clear as day. We both caught it. Save me. Dawn knows the score. We’re here for you, Dawn. It’s time.
“Hey Dawn,” Jen begins the script, “do you wear this kind of stuff in your day-to-day life?”
“No way — what’s that, a joke? ‘Course not.”
Good answer, Dawn!
“Well, does it bother you to wear it to work then?”
No, not really. Does it bother lifeguards to wear swimsuits to work?
Touché. Well, sort of. Lifeguards wear swimsuits to work because they swim at work, but that’s beside the point. It’s the same amount of skin on parade, and she’s obviously not bothered by the outfit. We try a different tack.
“Well do you guys, um,” Dan stumbles, “do a lot of the girls, you know, have a lot of the girls had… work? Done? You know?” Dan is waving his open palm in the general direction of his chest. Dawn’s too distracted by Clark to be offended by the question. No, as far as she knows, most of the girls are natural.
“But people get the wrong impression all the time,” she adds. “We get asked out a lot because guys think we’re all kind of easy, you know? Just because we have boobs. Guys are kind of clueless that way. One guy asked me if I wanted to go out with him after work, but then he said he wanted to take me to a strip bar. I think he kind of figured that was my scene. What an asshole, you know?”
Dawn informs us with a conspiratorial wink that she spit on that customer’s hamburger. We grin and nod and voice our nervous approval.
Well, the lapdance question is out.
Sensing a lull in our interrogation, and clearly grateful for the opening, Dawn scampers off to talk to a young man in a backwards baseball cap.
On her way back, Dan flags her down and orders another beer, while Jen shifts to Plan B: the empathy play. She asks Dawn about possible employment opportunities at Hooters’surely this’ll get some honest griping about the job.
Or maybe not. “Yeah, you should definitely work here,” Dawn chirps. “Come back between 2 and 4 on Thursday to meet Tom, our manager. He’s so awesome!”
Awesome. Hm. “Okay, thanks,” says Jen. “Do you like it here?”
“Oh yeah, it’s really mellow. We have a bunch of regulars, and all the girls are really cool. We’re like sisters. I love it here. I’ll go check on your food.”
Pep Talk
We’re starting to pick up a very discouraging vibe from our Dawn. A minute ago she was practically begging us to take her away. What happened to “Save me”? Now it’s as though she doesn’t want our help at all. “I really love it?” Please. [Jen: Maybe I could do it, but I could never love it. She has to be lying.] Dawn, drop the charade. We’ve got the truck waiting out on the street, ready to whisk you away from this horrible place and off to… well, that’s a detail we haven’t figured out just yet. But isn’t anywhere better than working at Hooters? Isn’t it?
We psyche ourselves up with a quick mantra: Save the Hooters Girl. Save the Hooters Girl. Save the Hooters Girl. Let’s go.
Operation Hooters (cont’d)
Save the Hooters Girl indeed. How? We came into this mission armed with a dozen foolproof questions to free Dawn’s Hooter Girl mind. But it’s become abundantly clear that Dawn is impervious to our too-subtle questions — no doubt she knows what we’re getting at, but she’s heard it all before, and she’s got the answers memorized down to the last beat. There is but one option left open: a straightforward challenge to Dawn’s way of life, with no room for ambiguity. Dan nominates Jen to start the grilling. But first, we wait for Dawn to put our dinner — spit-free — on our table. We’re no dummies.
“Dawn, we have a question for you,” Jen begins nervously. Dawn arches her eyebrows expectantly. “Well, why do Hooters Girls… Hoot?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Well, I mean, why do you do this? Why do you work here?”
“I love it here — ”
“Yeah, yeah, we know that,” Dan interrupts. “You love it here. But I mean — we mean — why do you want to wear this kind of stuff to work? You know? Why do you — ”
“Why not?” Dawn darts back. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
We stare at Dawn, then at each other. We came prepared to ask questions, not to answer them. Still, Jen gives it a shot.
“Well I mean, wouldn’t you rather work at another restaurant? You know, that shirt — it’s kind of skimpy, you know?”
“Well yeah, so’s a bathing suit. So’s a volleyball outfit. How come no one asks swimmers or volleyball players if they wish they had different jobs?”
Um, because they have a reason for wearing what they do? Again, we’re dumbstruck. Dawn’s not angry so much as she is bored. She’s used to our kind, people who know exactly what she needs. She sees we’re not saying much, so she decides to finish up.
“I like it here. I mean it’s not a strip bar or anything, it’s a restaurant. And I’m a waitress. And I usually get about 125 bucks a night in tips, just for being a waitress. And most of the customers are really cool — they just like to flirt, that’s all. What’s wrong with that? They do that any way, whether I’m here or out with my friends. What’s the big deal?”
Dan shoots a glance at Jen, who is nodding sympathetically.
“Do you guys want anything else or do you want the check?” She pushes the check the way she pushed the burger earlier. We tell her yeah, the check will be fine.
Suddenly, this once-holy mission looks pretty stupid. Save a Hooters Girl? Who are we kidding? Save her from what? Sure, it looks like a crappy job from here. Oh hell, it is a crappy job. But she doesn’t seem too bugged by it. It’s “mellow.” Isn’t that what she said? And mellow’s a good thing, right?
It’s obvious that Hooters is exploiting Dawn and her natural assets—not to mention her 10,000 “sisters” worldwide. Sure, 125 bucks a night sounds pretty good, but when you look at the dollar-earned-to-square-inch-of-flesh-exposed ratio, Hooting ranks way, way below, say, plumbing. But it’s equally obvious that Dawn doesn’t give a damn about us and our little mission. Is she a corporate dupe? No question. Is she happy being a corporate dupe? Appears to be, yeah. Is any of this our business? Well, we’re still not decided. But it’s looking like the only way we’re going to “save” Dawn now is to distract her with something shiny, then kidnap her. And we’re pretty sure the local authorities would frown on that.
God’s angels? We’re not God’s angels, we’re just a couple of idiots who grossly misread the object of our attention.
Not that we’re alone.
As we stare dejectedly at the useless burger sitting uneaten on our table, Clark Kent and friends get up to go, leaving behind a sizable tip. As he passes us, Jen’s creepy admirer slides a cocktail napkin onto our table. On it is written his name (Ralph) and phone number, and the following message: I know your busy [Jen: Yes, he spelled it y-o-u-r. He knows my busy.], but I would like to get to know you. Call me, will [Jen: That’s two. Ralph, Master of Homophones.] have coffee.
Ralph smiles at Jen over his shoulder as he walks through the front door. Jen watches him leave, slackjawed. This is Hooters, the T-and-A capital of this shopping center, if not all of Santa Monica. There are at least a dozen waitresses busting their asses to get him beer and wings, and Ralph has decided to drop his number on the girl in the conservative-by-comparison T-shirt-and-slacks ensemble —the one eating dinner with a guy friend, no less. [Dan: Yeah, what’s that about? What, Ralph, you didn’t see me here? Huh?] Ralph, don’t you know that that’s not how this place works? Don’t you know you’re supposed to hit on the Hooters Girls? That’s what they’re here for, Ralph — for you to flirt with. Why not? It happens all the time, whether they’re here or out with their friends.
A New Hope
There’s nothing left for us here at Hooters. Dawn was right — guys will hit on women no matter where they are — and every now and then it’d be nice to get a fat tip just for flirting back. We drop the appropriate amount of cash on the table and walk toward the door in silence. At the exit, Dan holds the door open for none other than Roller Girl, off for the evening and out of the skates. Curiosity gets the best of us. “Hey Roller Girl, can we ask you a question?” She smiles and nods. “Why do you wear the skates?”
“I just like them. It’s just more fun.”
“Do you ever fall in those things?”
“No, never.”
“Never?”
“Nope. I’m pretty good on skates.”
We look at each other. We can’t believe our ears. Forget Dawn — we just had the wrong girl, that’s all. It’s Roller Girl who needs us.
Hold on, Roller Girl. We’re coming.
© 2000, Hermenaut. Reproduced by permission.
You want ribs with those wings?
