By David Futrelle
Have you heard the bad news about Hooters? The infamous “breastaurant” chain, a place where America’s creepiest dads and granddads could live out their fantasies of gawking at their waitresses’ boobs without the owners of said boobs being able to complain about it, has been, well, sagging a bit lately.
According to Business Insider, “the number of Hooters locations in the US has dropped by more than 7% from 2012 to 2016, and sales have stagnated, according to industry reports.”
Some are blaming the chain’s troubles on millennials’ alleged lack of interest in boobs, at least compared with their breast-obsessed elders. And maybe they have a point. What’s a business based on boobs supposed to do in an ass-obsessed world like ours? Why should millennials pay to eat overpriced wings while staring at boobs when they could be home eating ass for free?
One enterprising young game developer has some ideas. In a series of tweets (starting here), Eric Adam Hovis explained how he would “fix” Hooters to make it more appealing to geeky millennial dudes like him.
Waitresses aren’t there to be looked at! They’re there to be TALKED at!
DEBATE NIGHT! Come on down to Hooters and DEBATE our GEISHAS! Did we mention the FREE WINGS?
Just remember to tip your waitress, at least if she lets you win the “debate.”
What’s better than FREE WINGS? FREE EMOTIONAL LABOR from women with huge bazongas!
But of course. Because millennial men are clearly entitled to all this attention from “smart and pretty women” for practically nothing.
Yes, because what human interaction could possibly be more “meaningful” than a”debate” between some dude and a woman who knows that if she challenges him in any significant way he’ll stiff her on the tip? Especially when she has to endure hour after hour of such “debates,” on topics not of her choosing, every single shift, while delivering up plate after plate of wings and jalapeno poppers with a giant smile plastered on her face?
Well, Mr. Hovis got his free debate all right. His tweets inspired a wave of comments and jokes on Twitter and elsewhere. Let’s just say that his ideas weren’t quite as well received as he was perhaps expecting, particularly by women.
Hovis, who actually sees himself as something of a feminist (or, as he puts it half jokingly in his Twitter bio, as a “Berniecrat progressive leftist sjw libtard feminazi betacuck”), has spent much of the last several days “clarifying” and rethinking his suggestions in a series of followup tweets and in a blog post he’s already revised and rewritten several times.
He insists he didn’t mean to suggest that “waitresses/bartenders should … have to be people’s therapists” — I’m not quite sure how this denial squares with his bit about “‘problem listener’ hostesses” who would basically be serving as therapists. He also declares that everyone at his new, improved Hooters “should be paid a living wage” — despite his demand that the restaurants also be ‘”SUPER CHEAP.” Oh, and he also thinks “Hooters should be more body-inclusive” even though his reference to “smart and pretty” waitresses in his original tweets made clear that he thinks looks should play a big part in the company’s hiring decisions.
But Hovis’ original tweets are much more, well, revealing than his somewhat less-that-altogether-convincing “clarifications.” And that’s because his original tweets reflect something about our society’s insidious tendency to dump emotional labor onto women, and to demand that women do this labor largely for free.
Many if not most of us could benefit from having someone listen to our problems. But this responsibility shouldn’t be foisted off on hostesses working for a casual dining chain famous for its skimpy outfits. Nor should it be foisted on wives or girlfriends. People should be able to get the therapy they need from actual therapists, well-trained professionals paid for their expertise. And, like Hovis’ imaginary improved Hooters, this service should be “SUPER CHEAP” if not free, with costs subsidized by a beefed-up health insurance system based on Single-Payer or Medicare for All (as should the rest of our medical expenses).
And if after all this you still want some hot wigs, well, there are better places to get them from than Hooters.
I saw someone else suggest that Hooters should go with an actual owl theme, have the waiting staff in owl costumes etc.
Wow. I could imagine Sacha Baron Cohen’s extreme liberal character coming up with exactly this. What a stupid idea.
Hooters has to die. Fortunately we only have a handful in Britain (if that’s the right term) and that’s too many.
I don’t see how having to work there could help anyone’s self respect.
This idea reminds me of those creepy teenager cafes in Japan where middle aged dudes pay to keep company with sexy teens. Disgusting stuff.
I’m thinking of opening a chain of restaurant where the wait staff are middle aged, white, male scientists tell you to clean your room and just-so stories about feminism and human evolutionary history.
I’m thinking of calling it Peterson’s.
I’ll use this if I ever get invited to hooters again
(went once as a kid. Friend’s step dad, of course named Guy, took us. Didn’t leave much of an impression. Him or the restaurant)
Thing is, a place to eat and chat with interesting people sounds like a cool idea. I wouldn’t go within 100 yards of that type A, people people pit of sorrows, but sounds cool. Except dudes like this (by which I mean nearly all dudes to various degrees) is exactly why anyone who’d start up such an establishment would be a fool to do so
Oh, and if there’s a lesson here, it’s tip your waitstaff. In restaurants and otherwise. I get paid… relatively well, but it’ll never be remotely enough to deal with yall’s needy asses. Not the commenters here specifically, y’all generally…
I just went to the dude’s Twitter. I don’t believe he is inherently evil. He has clarified some of his thoughts and he wasn’t defensive and angry about it – pro living wage and body positivity, wait staff should not be forced to be therapists. I think his vision was poorly worded rather than actively misogynistic. Dude just wants to converse with live people rather than whatever is typing at the other end.
Gijoel:
Would you serve lobster?
@Moggie, Jordles is into ants now, do try to keep up ? ?
@Rattus
“Dude” should not expect wait staff at any restaurant to be having long conversations with patrons, particularly since they’re being paid to, y’know, wait tables, ‘living wage’ or no. He’s not evil, just blinded by privilege.
They’re called “people”; annoyed, angry people on a hair-trigger because of an unending wave of sealions and other bad-faith proposals, and therefore slightly inclined towards giving shit rather than taking it, it is true, but people nonetheless.
I understand what you mean; getting piled on tends to elicit a defensive reaction, which shuts down one’s ability to intake new information, ideas, and perspectives. And this also happens vicariously, especially when the person under the pile has some similarities with the observer in question.
The thing is, change is almost never easy. It’s hard work, and sometimes it’s painful or embarrassing, and that can be a huge hurdle, especially for men who have been raised in a patriarchal society.
But…
WWTH’s point is crucial, especially the part I bolded. The root cause of the discomfort associated with changing unconscious patriarchy is the ubiquitous, often invisible reinforcement of patriarchy. The only way to change that is to change what gets reinforced socially, and the only way to do that is through constant effort over the course of decades and generations. Piling on to casual misogyny highlights the fact that it’s so pervasive, and even if people feel defensive about seeing it the first few dozen times, once they’ve seen a thousand people get called out for the same thing, it starts taking hold. Hell, just look at how Cheeto Hitler can sway folks just by repeating blatant falsehoods over and over and over and over…. We can harness that dynamic just as easily as he can.
And besides, if the OP is truly as progressive as he claims, he should be able to see the merits of the criticism he’s receiving. Being wrong doesn’t make you a bad person; clinging to your wrongness even when you’ve been shown how wrong you are does.
Wait staff at a Hooters should NOT have to act as therapist for this “boob”…
THATS WHAT BARTENDERS ARE FOR!!!
E.T.A. that’s probably more of a dated, 1950’s meme… today’s bartender would likely tell you to go to a therapist…. 🙂
Evil, no. He probably thinks he’s a great feminist dude, one of the most feminist and progressive dudes there is. He’s very likely not making the suggestion out of active malice towards women, not like most of the people featured on this blog.
That doesn’t mean the suggestion wasn’t misogynistic, though. Dude very clearly has some deeply embedded and (at least at the time) unquestioned sexist biases. Honestly, I suspect he STILL has those unquestioned biases, because he’s responding to people with “no no no, you just didn’t UNDERSTAND my proposal”, not “oh jeez I didn’t think of it like that, yikes. Sorry, I’ll do better.”. He CAN’T possibly be the least bit misogynistic, because he’s a Feminist and Good Person. Therefore anything he thinks is feminist and good and doesn’t need to be examined at all! There’s no need whatsoever for self improvement.
These kinds of guys, while generally not on the same level of danger as incels, still normalize misogyny, and still perpetuate sexism. And going “aw, he means well, let the little guy have his cheap pretty geisha waitress fantasy” isn’t going to improve anything. (I suspect the roasting he gets won’t improve HIM any, given how he’s responded to it, but witnessing it may make other similar dudes examine their biases.)
TL;DR you don’t have to be “Evil” to support harmful and prejudiced power structures. It happens by default in our society. Being unwilling to face up to your fuckups means you’re going to KEEP doing that.
Skeevy as Woody Allan is, I still find some of his early writings pretty funny – but there’s one, about an escort service where pretentious guys can hire women dressed as grad students to listen to them and nod in agreement, that’s close enough to this to be both hilarious and kind of chilling.
I went to a Hooters once when I was 16.
I never went back. It was just that forgettable and off-putting.
Speaking of escorts, I saw the weirdest ad stapled to a telephone pole near the bus stop I board at. It was for a sex doll brothel opening in North York.
Yes, a brothel… for sex dolls.
I can think of few things less appealing than that. I know that the manosphere buttwhistlers think that women’s bodies are gross and icky if they happen to be sexually active, but I wouldn’t trust my ding-dong to bunch of skeezy guys applying caustic chemicals to molded silicone. Assuming they even get that far. O.o
Perhaps someone should open a business that platonically hooks guys up with other guys who just want conversation and emotional support. It is an issue that there is a stigma around men having these kinds of conversations with each other because men aren’t supposed to be vulnerable with each other. This is one of those ways that patriarchy can hurt men. But as usual, when patriarchy hurts men, men turn around hurt us. Then we excuse that by saying “he’s not such a bad guy” or “he’s just hurting.”
It stinks that straight men put all the emotional labor and support burden on their wives and girlfriends because they’re the only ones willing to do so. It stinks that straight men with no wife or girlfriend have no one to do talk to and get support from when they’re hurting.
The solution to that is not for society to find new circumstances under which women are expected to provide support for men who need it. The solution to that is for men to be better to each other. But I know it’s hard for men – particularly young men – to ask this of their friends and risk being mocked in their friend group for it. So, I propose an app. It would be sort of like OK Cupid. But only for men and only for friendship. Users can find other men who share their interests and values who are willing to ask for and to receive emotional support.
Why is it that when men are lonely or in pain we always look for ways to make women responsible for fixing it and then scold women for not responding kindly to this expectation. Men, you created patriarchy and you created toxic masculinity. You fix it.
BTW, I’m pretty sure that NotTom is a Jordan Peterson fan who is concern trolling and that’s what he meant by the claim that this blog is targeting non-misogynists now. I’m guessing he was never a fan in the past.
There are tons of women who are eager to listen to people’s problems. They’re called therapists and they’re way way way more helpful than a busy wife or a stranger waitress.
But there’s an interesting question. How much burden or problems should a spouse be expected to download off their partner? Surely “none” is neglectful but “all” is burdensome and exploitative right?
Assuming equal reciprocity.
@j
Nah, too simple. More like from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs. Some people simply need more emotional work than others. Or in different ways. Some need low key, background taking care of. Others need an occasional therapy session. And partners should be able to provide that for each other. But it’s also important that neither rely on the other too much that it becomes a true burden (connotations intended) if at all avoidable. It’s a balancing act, but that’s what trust, effort, and communication are for 🙂
Speaking of Clueless Dudes Who Just Won’t Get It (and crappy chain food)…
Papa John Is Convinced Only Papa John Can Save Papa John’s
A Hooters opened last year on Crescent Street (Montreal). The street’s known for its bars and restaurants but they’re mostly local ones, not big chains. So why put a stupid Hooters in the middle of it? We are a HIPSTER party street, dammit.
Plus, Hooters is conceptually muddy. It’s difficult to know which bird is symbolically predominant. The name comes from breasts being called “hooters” (somewhere, somehow), which leads to the owl theme, but THEN they’re known for cooking chicken, not owls. Chicken breasts are often the most expensive part, but (as someone pointed out before) Hooters are better known for their wings. What’s up with that?
Personally, I blame postmodernism. 🙂
As for the tweets, I began to frown at the third one. Why does this guy think that if men don’t get to talk to food servers they’ll “dump their problems onto each and every woman they encounter”? Why? And why women specifically?
Re – does the huge response telling him wrong help anyone –
I would say that it does. It might not help the OP, but in the comments there are two people who went “Oh, I wouldn’t have seen the problem with this suggestion without the explanation provided.” *
People won’t necessarily see this guy’s tweet, but (in my limited understanding of twitter), someone’s followers WILL see the reply of someone going “wtf is this shit? This is the worst idea ever!”. That way, the reaction to it will hopefully help people who wouldn’t have thought twice about how shitty this idea is now understand the true depths of its terrible-ness.
And I hate to pull a ‘sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander’ thing, but this is just how twitter works. It sucks, but you can say something and then it can blow up, and you can then have to deal with the consequences.
You can mute mentions, so you don’t have to deal with it on that specific tweet, and there’s also blocking anyone who is harassing you.
Harassment over this = NOT OKAY. But seeing this, and going ‘Hell to the No’ and saying something, well… Might not help the first dude, but might help other people.
Also, being able to see how many other people are not okay with something can be very empowering. It is good for marginalised people to be able to push back on something, and see that others are doing the same. It makes the world feel like there are other people who maybe don’t want low-paid women to bear the brunt of emotional labour for everyone.
Do I think that *he* is evil? Not really. Do I think that the unexamined misogyny is evil? Well, yeah.
* I think you were one of them, *wink*.
This idea doesn’t “fix” Hooters at all. It still presupposes that women are entertainment for men.
If this new Hooters had male waitstaff, or extremely smart, articulate women who could dunk on mansplainers all night long, that would totally ruin it. He doesn’t want an equal sparring partner. He wants to be fawned over and told he’s something special. He wants to be able to explain the world and have something pretty to look at while he’s doing it. Someone who will validate, but never challenge, his perceptions, while serving wings and beer. He wants someone who will do all of this practically for free.
Men keep insisting that they need women’s emotional labor, but they refuse to ever value it.
I get an appropriate amount of emotional support from my husband, but I don’t expect him to be my therapist. I have a therapist for that*. I’m certainly not going to expect it of service staff in a restaurant.
Virgin Mary, there are also host clubs in Japan. Somewhat disturbingly, many of the women who patronize them are workers from hostess clubs who go to have a (relatively) young, congenial man actually listen to and pay attention to them.
*She’s suggested I look into existential philosophy as part of the cognitive therapy for my depression.
@Rhuu
Guilty as charged (as I said in my reply to @Laughter at Bigots).
I actually saw this “millennials are killing Hooters” thing parenthetically mentioned on Jim Sterling’s Twitter feed, and subsequently saw OP’s Tweets on Reddit (front page, posted on r/WhitePeopleTwitter or similar). I have to admit that my first thought was, “Well, duh it has to be cheaper for millennials to afford”, and totally skipped over the “I want to talk the ear off a woman who is duty-bound by their job description and paycheck to pay attention to me” bit. Until it showed up here.
So piling on does help to increase the visibility of problematic attitudes. I’d hate to be the one in the center of said pile, though (then again, this is why I tend to be circumspect about any public statements, and rarely post on social media in the first place ?).
@WWTH
The weird thing is that once upon a time, strong emotional connections between men were all the rage, because women weren’t full human beings and didn’t have the brains to provide genuine support. Which is a point of view you’d think these chucklefucks would be all in favor of.
One weird side effect of the current iteration of patriarchy in which men can’t be vulnerable with each other is that people looking back at men in the Renaissance end up going “OMG they were all gay!” Obviously, some of the close male relationships we know of from back then would have qualified as what we now think of as “homosexual,” but there’s this weird insistence that men displaying emotional closeness with one another must have been sexually involved.
Obviously, evidence of respected men having had same-sex relationships is hugely important for normalizing such relationships (if it still needs normalizing). Seriously, Leonardo da Vinci was the flamingiest flaming flamer who ever flamed, and once that’s pointed out it’s pretty hard to argue that gay people never provided anything to the human race.
Point is, it’s really weird even more oppressively patriarchal societies allow for emotional relationships between men, while now, when there are cracks in the patriarchal structure, such relationships have apparently become a major threat.
Too many men rely on their SO’s too much for emotional support, but usually you don’t need to outsource it to a professional. Partners should support each other–equally. I agree that the average person’s baggage is too much for one person to handle, which is why people should also cultivate mutually emotionally supportive friendships. If you need more emotional support than your partner or friends can give, and you have the money, THEN seek therapy.
@wwth
Dang it, and I spent so long addressing his statements.
A little late on my part, but thank you for your reply to me. I felt that it was very enlightening. What particularly made it click for me was the statement (later also quoted by @Gaebolga):
Powerful words.
Thanks also for being resident troll-hunter.