The Sprout

Sam (Sub-Editor)

Rhoddwyd sylw 18 mis yn ôl - 11th August 2010 - 13:21pm

Hooters seems more of a St Mary's Street thing (Fantasy Lounge, Walkabout etc.) than a St David's II thing (TGI Friday's, Yo! Sushi etc.).

Pasternak

Rhoddwyd sylw 18 mis yn ôl - 11th August 2010 - 13:25pm

Good article. Fair and balanced, unlike most of the other ones I've read on this debate.

As I type this, there is a small group of protesters outside John Lewis collecting signatures for an Anti-Hooters protest. They have just accepted a signature off a 10-year-old boy. Something tells me they are struggling to find people who really care.

The key word here is CHOICE. Hooters staff wear more than the average girl stumbling down St Mary Street on a Saturday night. I would fiercely protest anywhere which **forced** girls to work at a place like this, but fortunately we live in a society where such a protest is not called for.

Much like strip clubs, I suspect I will be dragged there occasionally on stag-do's or birthdays, but will otherwise avoid the place. I suggest the "radical feminists" protesting outside John Lewis as I type this do the same.

Just be sure to keep your eyes closed until you're well out of Cardiff, as if the girls at Hooters are enough to offend your feminist sensitivities then the girls in nurse outfits covered in vomit down the street will probably be enough to kill you.

The banality of this article is only matched by Pasternak's reply which I will respond to here.

The argument of the 'liberal' ('caring') employer (otherwise known as the capitalist):
"Some may feel that women are being demeaned by such a restaurant opening its doors, but nobody will be forced"

As with all modern work places (read capitalist enterprises), no one is physically coerced into selling their social labour power. However, if we as workers' are to survive, eat, pay rent, have at least some mediocre form of existence (i.e not starve to death etc) we are forced to sell our social labour power. That is the limit of our freedom. The freedom of workers' to be exploited by the capitalist.

The fact is if you are 'lucky' enough to get a job in this particular 'restaurant' you are forced to wear what the capitalist tells you to wear. There is no choice. A worker may feel as though not only their labour is being exploited (surplus profit etc) but also their bodies, spiritually (not in the religious sense), and feel demeaned in numerous ways.

...God forbid we should want to eat...

Let's take an example, a worker quits her job because the conditions of work and pay are being purposefully driven down by the capitalist, not an uncommon occurrence. And she's just had enough, she's sick of it. The surveillance, discipline, mind-numbing boredom, lack of control or say in her work combined with the bosses attacks are too much to take. (Perhaps she wasn't aware of Trade Unions, workers' rights, or independent organising with fellow workers' i.e members of her own class. Perhaps she did but was so fed up (perhaps exhausted by the so-called freedom she has, simply gave up?). After a short period, somewhat refreshed from the freedom to exploit herself she recognises full well she needs to again become a wage-slave, to exist.
She applies for many jobs in an area where jobs are scarce and hard to come by including several she thinks are crap, but in reality they're all crap. The experience from the last job has given her a further insight into what it is to be a worker and how they are treated, the division between worker and boss, and the relentless drive for profits.

To cut a long story short, she gets a job at Hooters which unfortunately her friend can't apply for, for a crime against capitalist enterprise, being a man. Perhaps he could try and get a job in the kitchen where: "If you're looking to have fun and make money while you work, this is the place to be!" - (Hooters Employment) As if being paid was some kind of bonus! The young Marx comes into his head for a brief fleeting moment: "Labour is external to the worker, that is, it does not belong to his essential being. Therefore he does not affirm himself in his work but denies himself. He does not feel contented but dissatisfied. He does not develop freely his physical and spiritual energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself to be himself outside his work, and in his work he feels outside himself. He is at home when he is not working and when he is working, he is not at home."

...The same contradictions, the same misery...

Our worker is now on less pay than her last job and is being forced to sell her body as well as vastly over-priced ribs, burgers and steaks. But we don't just mean literally sell her body, all workers' are forced to do that. Lest we forget, "we are all prostitutes". In this case she has been employed because she meets the distinct criteria, she meets the commercial requirements. She's had to alter her appearance to get the look required for employment. And it is still altered further by the capitalist. She feels slightly ridiculous and knows full well it is in the interest of the bosses profit and not in some pseudo liberation of womankind. No doubt countless other workers' did not meet the requirements of 'the market'.

I'll leave it up to someone else to give an impression of what it may feel like to work in such a place and in such an environment where sexuality is so clearly a selling point and what this does to social relations etc. It doesn't even have to be as explicit as Hooters.

I will continue with some comments in relation to Pasternak:

"The key word here is *IMBECILTY*. Hooters staff wear more than the average girl stumbling down St Mary Street on a Saturday night."

Pasternak fails to recognise the simplest of differences. In that, during the little non work time workers have they are largely free to wear what they want and how they want it. This can be denied by backward, fundamentalist or conservative ideology or institution though and we know that it is. The political economy of 'fashion' or social/cultural critique is for another time and perhaps another place. I have already dealt with at length his following sentence. The concluding comments by Pasternak, crucially the penultimate paragraph are a nonsense which in part contradict all that he has said. His conservatism is clear throughout his comments as is his reactionary ideology concerning the economy, as far as I'm concerned he clearly sides with the article which poses questions that were once 'given's' like: Is the exploitation of women okay for monetary gain? The article offers no analysis and only poses to bring into question reactionary ideas as being the 'right' ideas.

Richard Keane

Pasternak

Rhoddwyd sylw 18 mis yn ôl - 14th August 2010 - 13:16pm

Richard, this article is about HOOTERS. Not an in-depth critique and analysis of capitalism.

BrokenEggShells

Rhoddwyd sylw 18 mis yn ôl - 18th August 2010 - 13:03pm

The chosen location for this 'resturaunt' is a liitle odd, infact I'm against it being there, but to be honest, whoever works there has made the decision to, infact I'm sure that the people who chose to work there would be more than happy to serve food scantily clad, as the article pointed out, this outfit is no different to what we see people wearing on a summers day. You could say that women don't wear it for the pleasure of men, but I disagree, I think that people wear short shorts and low cut tops to feed their own insecurities about how they see themselves, gaining self confidence through men 'liking what they see'. And as for Richard Keane, yes, it is the women's decision to work at Hooters. I personally have no problem with it.

I feel that the author's either/or questions at the end of the article are misleading. it's not a matter of tackling Hooters OR 'more important' issues like rape. the two phenomena -- Hooters and rape -- are more closely connected than we might imagine.

The key question is whether Hooters encourages the perception of women as sexual objects for consumption, and whether it encourages men's sense of entitlement to women's bodies, by normalising ogling in public and sexist commentary. The answer is clearly yes.

Why should a "Hooters Girl" have to sign a declaration saying "I do not find my job duties, uniform requirements, or work environment to be offensive, intimidating, hostile, or unwelcome"? Surely if we are talking about an environment as lovely and welcoming as Hooters, no such declaration would be necessary?

The argument that this will create jobs is also spurious. What kind of jobs do we want to be creating in Cardiff? Jobs for which hiring practises are highly discriminatory, which require employees to smilingly accept harassment, which teach women that their bodies are only valuable insofar as they are beautiful enough to sell products? Is this the kind of image Cardiff wants to promote?

It's true that nobody forces anyone to work at Hooters. No single individual holds a gun to these women's heads. He doesn't have to because society as a whole does it on his behalf. Women are socialised (by the media for example) to believe that their attractiveness to men is their greatest asset, and that their bodies exist in order to serve men's pleasure. Men are socialised (by pornography for example) to believe that they have an entitlement to women's bodies and that women should be sexually available to them at all times. These attitudes are harmful because they inhibit the full-fledged personal development of women as human beings equal to men. These attitudes are what enable rape to be perceived as a lesser crime. Hooters may seem like an innocent bit of fun, but in fact it is very deeply connected to the attitudes within society which perpetuate inequality and allow "occupations" like stripping and prostitution to exist.

Any use of a woman's body which takes away her ownership of herself and turns her into an object for consumption should be seen as detrimental to all women, hence why Hooters should be opposed.

Imagine, in any other context, a woman wearing almost nothing, with big target-shaped eyers painted over her breasts, in a room full of men. Do you think she would feel comfortable? Do you think she would want to work in this environment? Then why should this be acceptable in the context of a restaurant?

I'd like to close with a couple of quotations from an interesting book I'm reading at the moment, called "Men on Rape" by Tim Beneke (1982). Beneke interviews a wide range of men on the subject of rape -- from police officers to lawyers to rapists to the partners of women who have been raped. These are some of his conclusions about the pervasive attitudes that allow rape to happen.

"The view that it is natural for men to rape is closely connected to the view of women as commodities. If a woman's body is regarded as a valued commodity by men, then of course, if you leave a valued commodity where it can be taken, it's just human nature for men to take it. If you left your stereo out on the sidewalk, you'd be asking for it to get stolen. Someone will just take it. (And how often men speak of rape as "going out and taking it".) If a woman walks the streets at night, she's leaving a valued commodity, her body, where it can be taken. So long as women are regarded as commodities, they will be blamed for rape." Hooters treats a woman's body as a commodity.

"We cannot count upon the criminal justice system to end rape. If its efficiency were suddenly doubled (an unlikely prospect) not two or three, but four or six of every hundred rapists would find themselves in prison. For a man to acknowledge and reject all the different ways he has learned to regard women as less than human is an act of courage and an act of love. If violence against women is to end, we will need nothing less than a revolution in consciousness among men. We must create a consciousness that relates to women as people instead of property, that acknowledges and refuses to accept as normal lives of constraint for women, a consciousness that ceases to blame women for rape, and finally a consciousness that is able to acknowledge with clarity its anger at women and put that anger aside."

I would venture to suggest that Hooters represents an integral part of this old, primitive, harmful consciousness. In a society where objectifying, degrading pornographic imagery is pervasive in all forms of media, it seems like a futile battle to stand up against Hooters -- no wonder one commentator observes that Cardiffians express little interest in the issue -- but it is still worth fighting.

Sock Monkey

Rhoddwyd sylw 15 mis yn ôl - 30th October 2010 - 17:02pm

If a man were walk down a street perving at a woman's chest who he'd never seen before (as they frequently do), then that is clearly debasing, potentially frightening for the woman, and wrong. Yet in Cardiff there are attempts to set up a "restaurant" in Cardiff where men can pay for this privilege.

While I accept that there is a difference if the woman consents to this activity, my concern is that when men think that it is OK to ogle the big-chested waitress in a "breastaurant", out of habit they also ogle the big-chested co-worker that's just transferred to the office.

Objectification does a huge amount of damage to women, willing or not. I'm really pleased that all these MEN (^^^) have an opinion on this subject, given that most will go through their lives without experiencing objectification by strangers. Don't pretend that these women are taking money to be humiliated is an excuse.

Vickster

Rhoddwyd sylw 13 mis yn ôl - 22nd December 2010 - 20:31pm

Woah! why is everyone writing articles in the comment section? Having said that, I think Hooters is so WRONG! as well as giving men the wrong idea, what about us girls?! what if we wanted to eat in a tacky american restaurant? You really expect us to sit there while some waitress totters around in almost her underwear with a bunch of men drooling after her? Many of us would lose our appetites! So to plainly say what everyone is thinking: Hooters = Bad influence on men, bad influence on women, lack of appetite all round and waitresses exposed to harassement and wandering eyes. nice.