Today, as it happens, is “National Just Because Day” — the perfect time to write an article about hooters: just because. So let’s take a little trip back in time . . .

The year was 1959. I was shopping in one of my favorite clothing stores in downtown Washington, D.C., about to pay for my purchases, when a well-dressed man approached me, handed me his business card, and introduced himself as the manager of the soon-to-be-opened D.C. branch of the Gaslight Clubs.

Then he asked me if I would be interested in applying for a job at the club.

I was very young, but old enough — and savvy enough — to know that being a “waitress” in a private gentlemen’s key club was not my goal in life, no matter how generous the tips might be. I had a good job that I loved, an active social life, and I was taking college classes two nights a week. Life was good; I didn’t need to be the serving girl to a bunch of lecherous old men.

So I thanked him for the compliment, and declined his offer.

It was an era of male dominance and female subservience, when we “girls” had to wait to be asked out by a man; when we were restricted to lower-paying jobs; when we were expected eventually to become stay-at-home wives and mothers because those who wished to be doctors or lawyers or engineers were assumed to be lesbians, which was something you definitely did not want to be suspected of. There weren’t many Ruth Bader Ginsburgs around in those days.

And it was an era when workplace sexual harassment was considered the norm. I wish I had a dollar for every time someone took aim at my backside — and got their hands smacked for it . . .

*. *. *

By the 1980s, Gaslight Clubs and Playboy Clubs were everywhere. We women were a little better off than in the’60s, but not much. We had navigated the Betty Friedan sexual revolution, and were freer to impose our own terms on a relationship; but it would still be another decade before gender discrimination became verboten and employers began subjecting their employees to mandatory sensitivity training courses.

In 1983, a group of men opened a restaurant in Clearwater, Florida; they hired attractive, amply-endowed young women as servers; they dressed them in hot pants and low-cut tee shirts; and they named their establishment “Hooters.”

And to everyone’s surprise, they were enormously successful — perhaps because of the titillating name. (Sorry about that.) Soon, Hooters were everywhere. You could stop in for dinner and be treated to a face full of Hooters’ hooters.

*. *. *

I hadn’t thought about Hooters in years; in fact, if you had asked me, I would have said they no longer existed. But then I read that they are still very much alive, although legally in bankruptcy, and hoping to be rescued and revitalized by one Neil Kiefer. He says he wants to turn the “breastaurant” into “a place where men come for beer and wings alongside families who are there for chicken strips and curly fries at lunch.” [Heather Haddon, Wall Street Journal, August 22, 2025.]

Kiefer wants to redo the more rundown locations, update the menu, and make the entire chain — in the words of its original founders — “delightfully tacky” again. [Id.]

While he says, “I don’t think you’re going to see a bunch of butt cheeks hanging out,” Kiefer does allow that the waitresses will be wearing orange shorts (not hot pants or bikini-style bottoms), and that the job qualifications will include “glamorous hair styling” and the “ability to maintain attractive fit & image.” [Id.]

In other words, sex appeal is definitely required.

Goodness knows, we’re no longer in the 1980s; it’s the 2020s, and the sexual revolution has long since come, gone, and left its mark. Skimpy outfits on well-built (and some not-so-well-built) women are to be found everywhere these days, from the beach, to the local mall . . . even (unfortunately) in our middle and high schools. I doubt anyone would be shocked by a pair of orange short shorts.

What I am wondering, though, is how a generation of young women still having to fight for job equality, reproductive rights, and basic respect will feel about their mammary glands being publicly promoted as “hooters.”

And I’m thinking that perhaps some entrepreneurial ladies should pool their financial resources and open a competing chain, staff it with hunky male waiters clad only in Speedos, and call it . . .

Well, never mind. You get my point.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
8/27/25