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.
This would be….amazing. Not just for men whose friends can’t/won’t give them support, but for men who simply don’t have friends because they have no way to meet other people eg. my disabled husband & oldest son.
I want this app to exist. If I had any clue how to program, I’d try to create something like it.
@ Mish,
“Anecdata time: I once worked at a gentlemen’s club – waitresses in lingerie, each assigned to ‘serve’ a specific table, the whole deal. We had to light their cigarettes for them, chat to them, pour their drinks, etc. That place was incredibly pricey. Not that we saw much of the money, obv.”
Wow this sounds surreal to me. I couldn’t do it. I’m too impatient. And ill tempered. You must have nerves of steel!
Oh also I do agree with you about prison labor (other thread here). So I don’t forget to say, and I was also thinking about what sort of people you will deal with in the manufacturing environment, in regards to dealing with clients.
I don’t have to be overly nice to people, it’s usually strictly business. One of the plusses of it, you are dealing with the topic at hand. For those who missed it I’m a mechanical engineer. You speak to the client about what they want made.
And oh I did remember a few people, screaming, crying, begging, grown men. And the only way I can help is going to cost plenty but there will be attractive flight attendants involved 🙂
Which the client won’t get to interact with, aw 🙁
What would happen, and it’s not their fault either, (their inventory people would be at fault), a part would break, they had no spare, nothing in inventory, and they have to have it now because not only is that machine down, because of that their entire production line is down. Because of one little thing.
Screaming, crying, begging, oh please I have to have it NOW!
But if they are in TX and my co. only has one in a warehouse in NJ, well I hate to tell you, but. And it’s too late for overnight shipping. I can’t wait that long I have to have it now!!!
OK, we can do it, but oh will you pay. If they agree, what happens in instances like this is, the part is bought a passenger seat on a flight, it flies like a person 🙂 On the next available flight. And because most mid to big biz’s have in house travel agents, for business travel, it is then handed off to them and they book the part a seat on a regular passenger flight.
No, it doesn’t sit in the seat bought for it 🙂 The flight attendants hold it, it doesn’t go to cargo because it must get to it’s destination, will have someone waiting for it there, so the attendants keep it with them. And it might get to touch boobs too! The (possibly female) flight attendant might keep it in her uniform or shirt pocket.
And this happens often. A $10 part takes a $1,000 flight.
Something to ponder if you have an empty seat next to you on a plane. Wasn’t sold? It might’ve been sold, but it’s occupant is hanging out with the flight crew 🙂
Think of these machine parts, flying the friendly skies 😀 They’ll go first class too, if that’s the only flight available. What nice trips they have, and attractive flight attendants take special care of them 🙂
Dude. Just be a machine part.
And in remembering this, at this one factory I worked at, I remembered a “restaurant” that’d we’d have lunch at.
In quotes because I’m not sure you could really call it a restaurant. W side of Chicago, old industrial area. Down the street from the factory we worked at. On the nearest bigger commercial streets there were nice restaurants and fast food too. This, was some ‘hot dog place’.
Hey let’s go, it’s right over here. Er, ?
It was down the street in this industrial area, literally in an old warehouse. And in one corner of it they were making and selling hot dogs. And chips and pop and that was it. I don’t remember if there were even any tables or chairs in the place, there might’ve been, like some old plastic lawn furniture.
On the other side of this space, was a boxing ring.
It was quite weird. I guess they did boxing there on the weekends. Really weird. This huge empty space in an industrial area with a boxing ring and these people selling hot dogs in the corner.
And evidently they figured they could open up in the afternoons for the local lunch crowd.
Really good hot dogs, we started going there all the time 🙂
It was probably the inverse of “fancy” though. Really weird.
That building looks condemned!
No, hot dogs!
@Z&T
One of my mates works on a drilling ship. They survey the seabed prior to construction projects. He was on leave once when he got a call. He had to fly to West Africa, as did everyone else on leave. His company needed to ship out a replacement drill and they worked out it would be cheaper than regular air freight if they just got everyone to take bits of it as luggage.
@Faceball:
Things you are not an expert in:
Anything worth doing, really.
Things you are an expert in:
Wanking.
Please do that someplace else. Like, preferably, your own tear-stained bathroom.
@Faceball:
Don’t believe David ever claimed to be an expert in any of those subjects. And I doubt you are, either. What David IS an expert in is schooling trolls (like yourself). Go away. Bother someone who cares about your obviously self-inflated opinion.
@ Alan R,
That’s the smart way!
“Seabeds” –
Our pal T here also has enviro sci and they got to go on research trips. Including doing core samples of Lake MI, where the ashes of “the great Chicago fire” were clearly visible. Back in the day they shoved all the burnt stuff right into the lake and you can still see this, I find this very interesting, and yet disturbing.
I want to know more, that’s about all she has to say about that trip.
Besides “I got violently seasick.”
Eh. Man has a somewhat dumb take on the internet. News at 11. :T
Honestly, sometimes I feel like people like to dump on people just cuz they’re bored or like to feel superior. Obviously this guy’s “proposal” will never happen, and he needs like four people to be like “dude, that’s a dumb idea and stop relying on women to be your therapist”. Instead it’s the Twitter machine, where everyone dive bombs on anyone who says something stupid because…reasons????? I don’t know who benefits from this.
This is why I don’t want to be on Twitter and why I think it’s mostly a garbage fire. Unless this guy is my friend, a relative, or a politician/powerful person, and unless he’s advocating for harmful policies or hate speech, I just don’t really care about what he has to say about anything, and honestly, I don’t even think what he said was “haha!” stupid. Just run of the mill het man stupid, which is like… *shrug*.
Also, I kind of resent the idea that anyone who needs to talk about their feelings and/or have in-depth conversations about things should see a therapist. Therapists are great, but in the real world, they’re expensive and only ever seem to have M-F 9-5 hours (speaking from personal experience looking for one… yeah, gave up on that real quick, lol), and wanting to talk about your feelings shouldn’t mean you need to find a professional. Sometimes you just wanna talk, man. :T I’d much rather open up to a friend than a random stranger I’ve paid, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll even be able to help me out. Granted, I do not want to open up to Hooters waitresses. I mean, unless they really want to hear about my theories about faith and how it relates to ego…? Right now I reserve this sort of thing for my dad. We can get crazy deep into it because we enjoy philosophical conversations.
Anyway, the only way Hooters is gonna make a comeback is if they have actual owls in the restaurant. On any food order you can order “fried chicken… or owl”, and if you order owl, an owl dive bombs at your head. That’d be fun, I think. Could get a few talons in some skulls but hey… OWLS!!!!!
@Katamount
Oh my, yes. “Shapiro destroys leftist!!” “Harris utterly wrecks random person!!!” – a whole culture of pwnage that makes my brain want to die. “Just debate them if you’re so sure – or are you scared?” they shriek.
Jordles fans are the worst for this. I did recently say to one of them that winning a debate doesn’t mean that your position is right, or better – it just means you’re good at debating. His response was “that’s just sophist-rhetorical BS”.
Lolz.
That doesn’t mean that women should be constantly on call to act as a therapist any time a man wants one though. The reason he was getting pushback is because that’s the assumption built into this guy’s ideal business model. That waitresses shouldn’t just serve food and drinks, but should also be willing to be a mommy and a girlfriend. And for a low, low price.
I agree that wanting someone to talk to or someone to listen to you doesn’t mean you have to find a therapist. But it also doesn’t mean it’s cool for you to foist yourself on an underpaid service employee. The expectation that it’s a woman’s job to provide emotional labor for men at all times is a huge part of patriarchy and it’s good for feminists to push back. Not mean.
Hetairai. He means hetairai. Or geisha. By definition, such women do not come cheap.
They don’t. Emotional support can/should be found in many close relationships. Friends, family, partners, etc. In fact, it would be beneficial if society as a whole was more aware of the need for emotional support and labor, so that dudes are more likely to share in the work and women are more likely to actually be valued for the effort they are disproportionately expected to provide.
But if you want a complete stranger to provide you with unidirectional, attentive, supportive emotional labor in exchange for money, you are talking about a therapist.
I’m sorry for posting yet again, and this is also quite OT (although it’s still on the theme of people saying Very Silly Things). Apparently Zendaya is in line to play Ariel in the live action remake of The Little Mermaid, and there are a lot of salty white people. This take has to be among the best, even if you allow that autocorrect was responsible for “melatonin”:
But a creature with a human respiratory system living underwater is totes logical.
> Weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
Good idea. Let us create a bar called AVFMLounge, where Paul Elam serves drinks to men while giving them a Ear For Men (and drinking himself too) ! What could possibly go wrong ? 🙂
Just jocking, sorry. The idea in itself is good.
In France, we have some non-lucrative associations which are doing something a bit like that, like S.O.S. Amitié (Friendship), where people who feel alone can call to speak with someone (the caller does not choose the gender of the listener, if i am not wrong). The call is free, but they do not have the money to make a great promotion, so it is not really known, and they often lack of volunteers.
I just recently noticed “cat cafes” are popping up here in Helsinki. I presume the concept is already familiar to people living in more civilized and cosmopolitan locations.
IIRC, there’s a kink-friendly cafe named Wicked Grounds in San Francisco. That is, they don’t mind some roleplay among customers, and you can have any food/drink on the menu served in a pet bowl.
If we’re extrapolating from our personal interests, I’d say this is what millennials want.
@Daniel Kashora
Then why are sperm whales (deep-sea mammals) dark-skinned? Checkmate. /s
I wonder if anyone else has made the observation that this would be the second time Zendaya will be playing a Disney-owned character who was originally a white redhead (the first being MJ from Spider-Man).
Re: owl cafes
At least one already exists in Japan.
Does the dolt not realise there’s a place like that already? A place where you can go, eat and drink, and talk about all sorts of shit, deep or silly.
Its called going out for a meal with friends.
@Mish of the Catlady Ascendancy
There are plenty of examples of dark skinned/scaled sea life,
its entirely reasonable that merpeople would have similar diversity to land dwelling humans but for different reasons in regards to skin/scale tone its also not something I would expect a whimsical musical for children to address scientifically.
@Z&T
I now have this humorous image of some random part sitting at the airport lounge before their flight and then striking up a conversation with a different kind of part in business class about their destinations,
might be a decent short film satirizing air travel.
@Lumipuna (nee Arctic Ape)
Well I know cat cafes started as a Japanese thing,
people go to them and relax and play with the cats after work since a lot of apartments apparently prohibit pets or something,
a good cat cafe has places the cats can go and be alone when they need to so its more humane then the OP’s plan.
I remember hearing about some opening in California a while ago, they seem like something that would be tricky to keep compliant with health codes but less weird then maid cafes to most Americans.
Exactly, Mish! The mass-debaters pretend or claim that it’s dialectic, when in fact debate – especially in their terms – is really pure showmanship and points-scoring and has less than nothing to do with actually arriving at a better or truer understanding of some facet of reality. Discussing something in good faith with other good faith interlocutors (or consciously entertaining the best arguments for a position with which one disagrees, as Scildfreja spoke of in a recent thread) could hardly be more different from debate aka adversarial zero-sum word games (you could even say it’s the exact opposite).
It’s tricky enough with our human brains to do this “honestly” even in a non-adversarial situation, as Scild also pointed out – but in debate it’s not just effectively impossible, being honest is positively counter-productive given that debate isn’t even about facts, it’s just a game that’s all about winning. In practice, in the societies we live in, of course it’s a very useful skill to have! There’s naturally quite a lot of overlap between debate skills and expressing oneself well, and of course one can admire people who are good at it and who use their skills for good – there are many brilliant examples right here of people who use those and related skills to reject or turn around the terms of engagement that trolls want to use. But ultimately the way our societies elevate “debate” is to our detriment, since the very structure of it actively down-values any desire to reach a better understanding of anything. What kind of a game is it that you can win by deliberately obscuring what you know to be true? Nasty, pernicious, socially destructive brain-fungus :-(.
All of which is to say, really … what Mish said :-s
Uh… That mermaid thing… SO stupid… There really are lots of whales with dark skin! Maybe because they spend a lot of time near the surface, where I think water actually makes sunlight harder on your skin rather than protecting it? Or for some other reason.
This is a mermaid I’ve been drawing from time to time since I was a kid: http://dpossen.blogspot.com/2010/05/mina-sjojungfrur.html
She’s bald, because no mammal in the sea has long flowing hair (for obvious reasons). She’s got pointy teeth for eating little slippery fish. She’s fat, even on her head, to preserve heat in the cold water. Also, her tail is like a dolphin’s tail rather than a fish’s tail.
I came up with this mermaid design as a kid when I was thinking about what a mermaid should look like. Might seem boring to think that way instead of just rolling with pure fantasy, but I thought it was interesting, and it produced something original and different in the end.
There’s also the fact that the most badass animal in the high northern latitudes of the world, the polar bear, has not just dark, but black skin. 😀 The reason their fur, which is colorless, looks white, is the light refracting within the hairs. Basically, any claims that animals adapted to life in the arctic must be light-skinned is utter bunkum. 😀 Also there’s the little thing of a lot of the original nomadic peoples living within the Arctic Circle are, in fact, closer to the Mongolians than the Scandinavians in both culture and ethnicity. Slight things, no biggie… ^_^ (I wonder if my sarcasm is evident enough….)
There has been similar daftness over the idea of Idris Elba playing James Bond, with lots of angry white dudes saying “What’s next: a black Henry VIII? A white Martin Luther King?”
Both of whom, of course, were real people. As James Bond is not. He’s already been dark, Scots, Irish, blond and English.
Also Bond’s birth year is variously given in the original books as 1917, 1920, 1923. So if he were still with us I doubt he’d be leaping off tall buildings and firing guns while jet-skiing, or whatever he’s up to these days.
The in-universe explanation is that “James Bond” is a job title for whoever currently has the 007 listing… so why not?
What really takes the cake for me are the angry dudes who ranted on the internet about the Doctor in Doctor Who being female now, and presenting themselves as concerned fans, despite clearly haven’t watched the show. I mean some angry dudes probably had, but others ranted away without knowing such basic facts as the Doctor regenerating into a new body from time to time.
Re: Idris Elba as James Bond
Not happening, sadly. Daniel Craig is still Bond in the upcoming film.
That’s the in-universe explanation? Doesn’t make much sense considering that we see the headstones of James Bond’s birth parents and his family home gets blown up in Skyfall, and we learn that he was subsequently taken in by Blofeld’s father in Spectre. (Oh yeah, spoilers I guess.)