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.
Because you’re walking and quacking like a barely-veiled MRA concerrrn troll.
Honestly, “Female harassment”? It’s “Harassment of women.”
@ armaror
Then my apologies.
Because there’s an unfortunate, and all too prevalent, double standard.
Women are expected to put up with the most vile abuse, merely for expressing a public opinion.
Whereas for guys it’s all too common to see ‘Why the witch hunt? What happened to free speech?”. With all the irony that entails.
Sorry, I’m just a bit jaded these days. I don’t even have any skin in the game; but it just seems so unfair.
Amaror,
It was one blog post from days ago, I follow David on Twitter and he has not been tweeting about or at this guy. The thread had moved on to a James Bond discussion until you brought it back around to the OP. I don’t see where the kicking him while he’s down or harassment is occurring.
Sorry to double post, but I just wanted to add one more thing. I don’t think anyone in this thread was even being too harsh with this guy. The conversation has centered around why the proposal was problematic and tied it to larger issues of how women are expected to take on emotional labor at the expense of ourselves and to the benefit of men. We haven’t been making it personal about him. The same can’t be said of the vast majority of Anita Sarkeesian or Zoe Quinn’s “critics.”
@Alan Robertshaw
It’s no problem, I certainly understand where your sentiment comes from, I have seen far too much dismissal of female harassment myself.
Don’t even get me started on “free speech”. “Women really need to get a thicker skin and take criticism, but I certainly shouldn’t get this evil backlash for using the N-word twelve times in a row.”
@weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
Yeah, I think I overreacted a bit in my original posts. I just saw multiple articles about this guy in relatively short time and thought that was an overreaction. It’s certainly not on par with the Sarkeesian critics.
It also felt a bit weird to put this guy next to the usual suspects features on this side. One is a clueless dufus who got defensive about his dumb idea. The others are raging misogynist, who propose making women into sex-slaves.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
You can keep pretending that I am an angry MRA throwing around dogwhistles, but that won’t make it true.
Um, you know that wanting women to do free emotional labour is pretty bad though, right? Like, the ‘making women into sex-slaves’ isn’t something that will be adopted into wider society, but wider society is A-OK with women bearing the brunt of all emotional labour?
There is a reason he is a perfect fit for this blog, and I think you’ve illustrated it really well. Low level misogyny like this is just background noise that we’re all used to.
“Aw, he’s just a doofus, he didn’t mean it!” (ignoring that he certainly did, and his ‘clarification’/doubledown on his blog didn’t go “WHOOPS this is a terrible idea top to bottom, sorry for devaluing women and emotional labour”)
People need to highlight this, and say “this is not okay.” There needs to be spaces for people to say “HOLY SHIT, this is a BAD TAKE”.
Otherwise the low-level stuff is just normal for everyone.
Re – female harassment – You doubled down on calling ‘women’ ‘females’ instead of going ‘whoops yes, that is an MRA thing to do, sorry for trying to dehumanise you with some clinical language’.
Maybe try not doing that.
@Rhuu – apparently an illiterati
Yeah, of course that is bad. I have said that the dude is wrong and an idiot multiple times already. I don’t have an issue with calling it out, I have an issue with dogpiling.
Concerning the “female harassment”, the @Scented Fucking Hard Chairs edited that part in after the fact. My reply was based on his original tweet.
I personally don’t see how I dehumanised women with that. Female is an adjective and I thought that was the correct way of using it. What I have seen from the usual MRA-Stick is to use it as a noun in order to dehumanise women. I am not a native english speaker, though, so if I used it in a dehumanising way, I apologize for that and will refrain from doing so in the future.
@Amaror
Female is typically used as an adjective when describing humans. It can be used as a noun, but that’s typically only done in the following circumstances:
1) a lab setting
2) when speaking of non-human animals
3) when you’re a misogynist who wants to intentionally dehumanize women or you’re so used to seeing it from misogynists that you use it without realizing the inherent misogyny
4) when you’re a ferengi and a hooman has distastefully decided to allow one of their females to wander about clothed
Please only use female as an adjective and if you need a noun use woman instead.
@kupo
Yeah that was my understanding of it as well. Didn’t I use it as an adjective? “Female Harassment”, “Female” here acting as an adjective to describe who is being harassed by the Harassment.
Or though I guess in that case the “female” could also describe the origin of the harassment. That would be more like the usual use of adjectives.
So I guess in that way my use of Female could be seen as short for “Harassment of Females” instead, in which it would be the noun used to dehumanise women.
Sorry I am tired and am just rambling here a bit. I think I see my error now in the way I constructed that.
Sorry for that, I’ll try to do it better in the future.
@Rhuu
If it’s okay, would you mind expanding on what you mean by
Like, are you talking stranger women or like friends and family? Like, if you can’t talk to your friend about a problem you have then, don’t you have to reconsider if they’re really your friend?
What? I said
and what I mean here is that if you say “hey, I have a great idea for a restaurant, it just requires women to provide tonnes of emotional labour for freeeeeeeeeeeee!”
That would be bad.
Emotional labour is not free, it requires effort, energy, and practise. It needs to be recognised as a thing that isn’t just easy breezy whatevs to do.
I’m not saying that women providing emotional labour is bad, or that expecting that you can discuss difficult things with your friends is bad. In a good friendship, each gives when they can, and listens when they can. If the emotional labour is all slanted one way, that is an important thing to recognise AND FIX, or that friendship will be lost.
So, to sum up –
Definitely, don’t lump emotional labour on women you don’t know, they don’t have time for that.
Is the person expecting lots of free emotional labour from these friends and family, and giving none in return? Then yes, I do mean this. Just because you are related or have friendship doesn’t mean that women needs to pamper you and listen to all your problems.
Are they really your friend if they demand free emotional labour, never recognise how exhausting that is, and never reciprocate?
Dump ’em. You need people who enrich your life, and who’s life you enrich.
This is a ‘my turn, your turn’ partnership. It won’t be split 50/50, because sometimes people need more than they can give. But, one would hope, they would see and acknowledge this.
Hopefully that clarifies what I meant!
An example would be jumping into a feminist blog and expecting everyone there to very kindly explain why your missteps were wrong. That’s one you’ll see a lot of you hang out here some more, j.
For example, in this thread Amaror has been nice to everyone but SFHC, who wasn’t nice enough in response to the initial misogyny. Amaror probably thinks SFHC was aggressive first, but in fact the casual misogyny in Amaror’s phrasing was the initial aggression, whether intentional or not.
@Amaror
I hope you realize you are probably done when you get the blogger’s name wrong.
So what’s the point?
The fact that he has already been responded to is not evidence that they should not be responded to.
Evidence please. Seriously. If you’re going to stand opposite a person standing against a bigoted oart of our society I neef, no demand MORE.
Then explain how you lazy fuck.
“Female harassment” does, to my eye imply that the harassment itself is female. I certainly wouldn’t read it as “harassment of women”, any more than I’d read (for example) “medical misconduct” as “misconduct targeting doctors”. It makes a little more sense if “female” is used as a noun (which, as noted, is often rude) – just as, if one were targeting doctors with one’s misconduct, one might be accused of “doctor harassment” – but it’s grammatically odd.
@Diptych
Or, even more blatantly: “sexual harassment” means “harassment of a sexual nature,” so “female harassment” clearly means “harassment of a female nature”. Which I assume would be… I dunno, nagging?
That’s not what is meant when we talk about emotional labor. I think the vast majority of women and female presenting people here care and want to be there for the men in our lives. What is unfair is when men expect women to devote their lives to solving their problems and acting as their sole emotional support system. It’s not just about being able to talk about problems. When a man expects his wife to be the one in the family to do the majority of the parenting as well as being the one to organize their social life, remember and shop for all the birthdays, perform all the elder care and be the one to make sure all the chores get done and the bills get paid, that’s an unfair imposition of emotional labor to. When a man expects that he can say whatever he wants to his female friend, but she must walk on eggshells around him, that’s an unfair imposition of emotional labor. When men kill women over rejection and men’s response is to demand that we change how we reject men/stop rejecting men, that’s an unfair imposition of emotional labor. Those are just a few examples. I’m sure we can all think of more, but hopefully you get the point.
Thanks to both of you for taking the time, I think I get what your mean by emotional labor. The ‘labor’ word made me think of like, therapeutic conversations since having a friend reveal something heavy to you can be very laborious. (The worst I had to personally deal with was my friend’s brother telling me he wanted to kill his ex-wife, that, that was an exhausting several hours.) But yeah, if you’re going to partner up with someone you should involve yourself in making both your lives.