Sorry, I found this burger bar more offensive than a lapdancing club

By LIZ JONES

Cheers: Liz Jones meets two Hooters waitresses who can be sacked for getting fat


This is probably the worst Friday night of my life - and that's saying something. I'm sat on a high stool at a small table, plasma screens are oozing sports programmes around my head and there is a grubby plastic menu in front of me that is littered with pictures of fast food.

Not a green vegetable in sight, unless you count a deep fried chilli, coated in batter.

There is the thump, thump, thump of awful music in the background, competing with the braying of table upon table of men: young men, old men, students, office workers, football supporters...

Weaving between the tables are young women bearing enormous, overflowing jugs of beer and steaming piles of food. I keep beckoning the wrong waitress, as it's so hard to tell them apart.

The ironed, bottle blonde hair, the Cheryl Cole eyelashes and, most of all, the bodies: high, round breasts, small waists, curvaceous thighs and squashy buttocks.

I don't normally examine the physiognomy of my waitresses this closely, but, in this case, I can't help it. Because I'm inside the UK's only branch of the U.S. fast-food chain Hooters, a place that makes me feel simultaneously bilious, outraged and old.

I cannot believe that I am in Nottingham or that it is the year 2010. I remember, as a student in the Seventies, interviewing one of the last Playboy bunnies at the club on Park Lane.

I asked the young woman in fishnet tights how it felt to be part of a dying breed.
Peeling off her false eyelashes, she said the world had moved on - women were no longer to be viewed as objects. Fast forward 30 years and, again, I'm talking to a young woman in tights with false eyelashes.


Prefect stag do venue: The waitresses in hot pants serve their predominantly male customers


But while there was something tongue-in-cheek and marginally glamorous about the bunny outfit, the clothes the women working in Hooters are wearing look cheap and nasty.

Orange Lycra shorts, low-cut T-shirts with Hooters's slogan 'delightfully tacky', white socks and plimsolls and, of course, a wide smile are all obligatory - it is just so awful.

I imagine this is what a dirty old man deems sexy: semi-exposed breasts and buttocks, but a hint of the schoolgirl, too. There is nothing intimidating about these women, which, I think is the point.

I ask my waitress, Kimberley, who is blonde with a sweet face, whether you have to be beautiful to work here.

'Oh no,' she says. 'We have had really beautiful girls, stunning girls, working here before and they can't do it. They are too haughty, not friendly enough with the customers and the men feel they are unapproachable, to be honest.'

So: sexy, but not with ideas above her station. Hooters was started in 1983 by six Mid-Western businessmen with no experience of catering, but who knew what men liked: beer, fast food and busty blondes.


Sian Norris, founder of the Say No To Hooters In Bristol protest group, says: 'People claim it's a bit fun. But it's part of a culture where women are only seen as sexual objects, not as full human beings'


There are now 455 branches worldwide, including four in China - but only one branch in the UK, here in the Midlands.

A second branch is planned for Bristol, at a site leased to it by Marks & Spencer. The city council has already granted the U.S. chain planning permission, saying it 'offers something different', despite local residents and women's groups mounting a campaign.

Sian Norris, founder of the Say No To Hooters In Bristol protest group, says: 'People claim it's a bit fun. But it's part of a culture where women are only seen as sexual objects, not as full human beings.


Not planning to return: Liz Jones was horrified by the Nottingham bar but the chain is due to open another in Bristol


Protesters say that M&S is undermining its commitment to the Let Girls Be Girls campaign, which aims to prevent the premature sexualisation of children.

A further 35 British sites have already been earmarked. Of course, Hooters markets itself as a family restaurant, where it offers harmless fun.

Why, then, do women who work at Hooters sign a contract that states 'I do not find my job duties, uniform requirements or work environment to be offensive, intimidating, hostile or unwelcome'?

Kimberley, 28, has worked here for two years. Is she ever harassed by the punters, leered at or disrespected? She is careful in her reply.

'There are always men from management who are keeping an eye out,' she says (I didn't encounter a bouncer when I arrived, which makes me wonder who will keep out or eject the drunks; there are children in here, too). Is there a strict dress code?
'I need to look groomed, but not tarty. Hair has to be down [strange, given they are handling food], nails clean. No piercings.'

Does she not feel exposed, knowing all these men are looking at her bottom and cleavage? 'I feel quite covered up,' she says. 'This is no worse than what you see young women wearing here in Nottingham, out shopping or clubbing.'
This is true, but that is their choice. Here, exposing your thighs and cleavage is compulsory.

Kimberley is a marketing graduate. I ask how much she earns. 'I get the minimum wage,' she says. 'But we get to keep our tips.'

Supplementing your income from tips may work in the U.S., which has a culture of tipping. Here, I wonder how she makes ends meet.

'I always do a 12-hour shift. A lot of women who work here are students, earning extra money or they have a day job, too.'

I imagine, given the proposed increase in fees for students, that the number of women who supplement their education in this way will sky-rocket.

I had thought I would find the waitresses to be predominantly Eastern European, but they all seem to be locals who, a few years ago, would have worked for Boots (which earlier this week announced 900 job cuts in Nottingham) or in the fabric trade (Nottingham was once world-renowned for its lace-making).

The only Polish girls I meet are customers. 'We come from a Catholic country,' says one. 'Our parents wouldn't want us working here.'

I ask Kimberley if her boyfriend knows what she does for a living. 'Yes and he doesn't mind.'

I meet another Hooters girl. Sarah is 25 - 'Oh God, I'm officially old!' - and she, too, is blonde and a university student, studying film and television. Does she call herself a feminist?

'No! I'm feminine. It's my right to dress like this. It's no worse than what Cheryl Cole wears or the Pussycat Dolls.'

Kimberley says there is one pregnant Hooters girl here, but that it 'doesn't show yet'.

I wonder, what would happen if a girl grew fat or old or converted to Islam? Two former employees, Cassandra Smith, 20, and Leanne Convery, 23, who worked for a branch in Michigan, claim they were first put on probation for gaining weight - and then sacked.


The only Polish girls I meet are customers. 'We come from a Catholic country,' says one. 'Our parents wouldn't want us working here'


Hooters' wait staf pose for a picture. They earn minimum wage but are allowed to keep their tips


Julian Mills, the manager in Nottingham, tries to reassure me. 'We use the same criteria as if you were going for the job of a Calvin Klein model,' he says, incongruously. 'You have to look the part, but it is about personality and charisma, too.'

I join a table of young men for pudding, which resembles a giant Snickers bar, covered in ice cream (interestingly, the food is designed to make its customers fat but served by women who all tell me they have spent the day in the gym).

The men are here on a stag do. Rob, wearing a Viking helmet and a beer bottle holster, is the groom.

Does his fiancee know he is here? 'Of course she does. It was the Hooters brand that drew us in. But the girls aren't busty enough. I'm disappointed, to be honest. In the U.S., the girls have all had boob jobs. In the UK, the breasts are natural.'
It's not enough for the girls to expose their cleavages; men expect the breasts to be plastic, too.

There is now a generation who, thanks to internet porn and places like this, expect women to be petite, big breasted, with sooty eyes, bodies as hairless as a billiard ball and, above all, smiley and compliant.

My companion this evening is a male, married photographer with a young family. He is wearing a wedding ring, but tells me all the girls try to catch his eye. This is not a lapdancing club. But because Hooters is so brazen about its sexism, I think it's worse.

Men here see leering as their right - something so normal that a child can watch you do it (T-shirts proclaiming 'life begins at Hooters' are available for three-year-olds) and learn that this is how women can and should be treated.

I stand outside Hooters in a puddle to have my picture taken. A group of young men leave the bar. 'Wooo hoooo,' they yell at me. 'We'd say "show us your tits" but you haven't got any!'

The young women working here have it bad enough, but I wonder about the wives and girlfriends these men will go home to - if they don't pass out in the street as they weave their way home.



source :dailymail