March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Ex-Hooters Girls order up a lawsuit

It’s tough to pick a side on this one.

On the one hand, you’ve got a restaurant chain that entices Mom, Dad and the kids to come in and have a wholesome old time — heck, they’ve got a friendly owl on the sign out front and they’ve even got peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the menu — then parades in front of the customers nubile young things in outfits that they’re all but falling out of.

Ah, yes. That upstanding clientele. The grabbing, the leering, the making of suggestive comments — often, reportedly, in the presence of their children, not to mention their wives. There’s a nice lesson for Junior or Baby Jane. And isn’t that a novel way to show respect to The Little Woman. Tell me again: Which one’s the kid?

And let’s not forget the management, which doubtless does some gaping, grunting and groping of its own.

On the other hand, you’ve got a handful of those nubile young things who used to work at the place — a place smirkingly called “Hooters,” and if you really believe it means owls, well, maybe you’re in the market for a piece of earthquake-proof property in California.

These ex-Hooters Girls now claim in a lawsuit that, although the owl on the logo had suspiciously large, round “eyes,” and although they were required to wear low-cut, midriff-length T-shirts, and shorts that hike halfway up to here, well, they just didn’t really think they would be treated like sex objects.

Can they have been so naive? Did they not notice that no waitress was hired if she couldn’t have been the live model for cartoon sex kitten Jessica Rabbit? Did many of these women not pose for photographs on “Hooters Girls” calendars and trading cards?

I don’t know. Who wins: McPlayboy? or the ersatz Bunnies? Tough call.

We are not talking about a woman being raped just because she happened to be walking down a street at night, or because she elected to invite a date to her apartment for a drink, or because she was wearing a certain type of clothing.

And while I hardly condone that any woman — or any man — being subjected to unwanted sexual attention, especially by an employer, we are talking about women who went to work for a company that makes its money by selling at least the idea of sex. It’s a fine line, granted; but it has been crossed.

Repugnant though the restaurant’s concept is, I question whether a woman who willingly goes to work for such a place can lay full responsibility at its doorstep.

What next — will a Playboy centerfold sue the company that hired her because men howl at her during public appearances? Or a stripper take the bar where she dances to court because a customer stuffed money into her G-string? Or an actress filming a nude scene file a complaint if the eyes of the production crew linger a little too long?

Can you imagine if the aforementioned Ms. Rabbit wanted to take certain animators to court for subliminally inserting into the movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” several sexually explicit frames uncovered recently by a computer hacker?

(Okay, bad example. But it allows me to raise these questions: If she did sue, would her argument be: “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way”? And why was the hacker going through it frame by frame anyway? And will they change the title to, “Who Reframed Jessica Rabbit?” I’m just asking.)

Anyway. Women who choose these sorts of career paths hinder women who would prefer to get by on something other than their bodies; but the operative word there is choose. To suggest that they are helpless victims is to condescend to them, and probably to all women.

No, I’m sorry. They must share in the responsibility for allowing it to perpetuate.

They could have taken a cue from northern New England, where married women are shunning the Mrs. Vermont pageant in droves. This year, for the second year running, not one woman there entered the beauty contest; organizers have tried, in fact, to import contestants from neighboring states. I’m choosing to believe that the lack of interest is NOT because the women can’t meet the requirement that they be “of good moral character.”

Like the women of Vermont, the ex-Hooters Girls could have chosen to say, in the profound words of Bill Clinton, and I quote: “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!”

In fact, they finally did. They quit.

Margaret Warner lives in Bangor.


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