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THE HOOTERS GIRL & THE CONUNDRUM OF CONNOTATIONS:

AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF THE USE OF THE CULTURAL

TOOLKIT IN MANAGING STIGMA

By

Miriam Michelle Newton-Francis

Submitted to the

Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences

of American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree

of Doctor ofPhilosophy

In

Sociology

Chair:

Dean of tile College of Arts and Sciences

2008 American University Washington, D.C. 20016

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UMI Number: 3309126

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2008

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DEDICATION

John and June Newton

Daniel Francis

Ming THE HOOTERS GIRL & THE CONUNDRUM OF CONNOTATIONS:

AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF THE USE OF THE CULTURAL

TOOLKIT IN MANAGING STIGMA

BY

Miriam Michelle Newton-Francis

ABSTRACT

Although past research on culture as a toolkit offers strong evidence that individuals mobilize tools in order to deal with everyday social interactions, the ways in which they deploy those tools are not well understood. Most studies focus on how culture is involuntarily used rather than examining how social actors deliberately collect, assemble, and mobilize tools. Further, little research examines the existence of toolsets within the broader cultural toolkit that can be assembled and used in specific situations.

To address this gap in the literature, this exploratory study examines how those who face stigma threat actively use culture to reveal, negotiate, and sometimes resist, negative meanings attached to them by different social audiences. The central argument is that actors actively and systematically use culture to manage social interactions in order to assess stigma threat and to unpack social situations to evaluate other actors that are party to the interaction in order to make decisions about disclosure of a potentially discrediting characteristic.

11 The Hooters Girl serves as the stigmatized population by which this examination is accomplished. This study utilized a qualitative approach through participant observation, reliance on key informants, and in-depth interviews with twenty-five women who are current and former Hooters Girls. The Hooters Girl was chosen because her occupational identity is received differently by different audiences: some audience members attach positive connotations to the Hooters Girl while others may stigmatize her. In this context, this dissertation also examines how the women experience the production of the Hooters Girls persona while simultaneously receiving meaning that others have attributed to the cultural object of the Hooters Girl. As such, I offer the new construct of"producer-as-receiver" to describe how individuals produce a particular object and then must deal with the varying reception among social audiences in every day interaction regarding the very thing they have produced.

This study indicated that actors intentionally use their cultural toolkit to assemble a smaller toolset to manage stigma. This study contributes seven tools: actors use social reconnaissance to take inventory of the social setting, the actor excavates in order to draw out pertinent information in order to get a sense of the parties to the interaction, the actor will reveal the information or they will use the tool of veiling where they reveal information in increments, if the parties to the interaction react negatively, they will use the tools of nullifying and justifying to minimize the impact of revealing, and if the impact is not nullified or justified, they will use the tools of resignation to "let it go" or will use the tool of dissolving to end the interaction. This study advances our

111 understanding of the cultural toolkit by highlighting the ways in which individuals deliberately use them in particular social contexts.

IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This project could not have come to fruition without the support and guidance of my dissertation committee. I am indebted to Dr. Grant Blank, who has been an amazing chair and sounding board, for about six years, for the ideas that would lead to this dissertation. I thank him for his enthusiasm about the project and for believing in the conceptual framework and my abilities to bring it to completion. I also want to thank Dr.

Gay Young for coming on board at the last minute, for her strong and confident leadership in the final stages of this process, and for also providing encouragement and valuable comments on the project. You are a wonderful intellectual "grandmother"! Dr.

Dick Bennett has been a great champion of mine and has provided support and encouragement and a wonderful sense of humor to this process. Rounding out the committee is Dr. Mona J.E. Danner, whose support of my intellectual growth has spanned decades starting with a fateful meeting when I was an undergraduate and she just starting her tenure-track position at Old Dominion University. There are no words to describe my indebtedness to her for believing in this diamond in the rough. She is a great polisher!

In the same way that I had a fateful meeting with Dr. Danner, I also had the same experience with Dr. Steve Hamilton whom I met when we were both starting the Ph.D. program at American University. He has been a constant support to me in coursework, in personal matters, and has tried to keep me sane and focused throughout the dissertation

v process. I owe him much gratitude and am thrilled that we will be working together as friends and colleagues for many years to come. I'd also like to extend a big thank you to my closest circle of friends, whom I have known for about 15 years, for being a group who did not ask me specifically about the dissertation unless I wanted to talk about it.

They provided shelter from this process when I desperately needed it. Oddly enough, these same friends provided the lifelines and tools necessary in order to complete it.

Their contributions to this project are invaluable and my debt to them could never be repaid. I owe you big time!

I also want to thank Dr. Salvador Vidal-Ortiz and Dr. Kristin Marsh who have been a positive source of encouragement in terms of keeping this all in perspective!

Many thanks to Sandra Linden, who keeps the ship afloat. Also, thanks to the

Appalachian College Association for the funding via the dissertation fellowship that allowed me to complete this project.

My immediate family has always been a source of quiet strength for me. My parents have allowed me to explore a variety of avenues, some of them crazy and some of them not, without question and always with unconditional love. I thank them for allowing me the freedom to continuously explore, to make mistakes, and to constantly grow into my own person. Mostly, I want to thank them for always believing that I can accomplish anything, even when I do not believe this to be true. I'd also like to thank my husband,

Dan, for his years of emotional labor, domestic labor, and paid labor, which allow me to seek out the various activities that nourish my soul. Finally, I want to extend a big kiss to my feline companion of 14 years, Ming. He has loved me unconditionally and has sat

Vl faithfully on the keyboard as I feverishly typed the words that would comprise this dissertation. I love all of you eternally!

Last, but not least, I want to thank the women who participated in this project for graciously telling me their stories, their experiences, their hopes, and their dreams. This dissertation would not be complete without their contributions. I hope that I have been a good steward of their voices.

Vll TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... v

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ...... xii

Chapter

1: ON CONNOTATIONS ...... 1

Backdrop of the Study and Research Questions ...... ?

Significance of the Study ...... 8

Definition ofTerms ...... 12

Delimitations ...... l3

Project Organization ...... 14

2: CONCEPTUALFRAMEWORK ...... 17

Culture as a Toolkit or Repertoire ...... 18

Empirical Studies ofthe Culture as Toolkit ...... 23

Meaning: Production and Reception of Culture ...... 30

Cultural Objects: Empirical Studies of Audience Reception ..... 32

Framing as a Part of Production of Cultural Objects ...... 38

Stigma ...... 42

Conceptualization of Stigma ...... 4 7

Strategies of Action for Information Management...... 51

vm Summary: Toward a Stigma Strategies Toolkit...... 57

3: METHODS OF INQUIRY ...... 60

Why Qualitative Research? ...... 61

Analytical Framework ...... 62

Hooters Girl as Cultural Object ...... 62

The Cultural Diamond and Hooters Girl ...... 62

Gaining Entree ...... 65

Sample Design and Selection...... 66

Comparisons ...... 69

Methods of Data Collection ...... 70

Participant Observation and Document Collection ...... 71

In-Depth Interviews ...... 72

Research Setting and Interviewing Women ...... 75

Data Analysis ...... 79

Coding and Memoing ...... 80

Presentation of Demographic Data ...... 81

Women Currently Working As Hooters Girls ...... 81

Women Who No Longer Work As Hooters Girls ...... 83

Summary ...... 84

4: HOOTERS AS A CULTURE INDUSTRY SYSTEM: PRODUCING, MARKETING, AND DISTRIBUTING THE HOOTERS GIRL ...... 86

Introduction ...... 87

IX Hooters as a Culture Industry System ...... 88

The Managerial Subsystem: Hooters Restaurants as a Franchise System and Theme Restaurant...... 92

The Technical Subsystem: The Hooters Girl ...... 95

The Hooter Girl as Woman ...... 98

Hooters Appearance Guidelines ...... 99

Hooters Girl Serving Scripts ...... 105

The Institutional Subsystem: Marketing and Media ...... 107

Consumers and Industry System Feedback ...... 109

The Customer ...... 11 0

Consumers, Cultural Objects, and Action ...... 112

Situating the Hooters Girl as Waitress ...... 121

Waitressing as Low Prestige and Deskilled ...... 123

W aitressing as a Lack of Moral Constitution ...... 128

Summary ...... 131

5: PRODUCTION IN UNIFORM: CONVENTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES OF DOING HOOTERS GIRL ...... 133

What is a Hooters Girl? ...... 135

On Becoming a Hooters Girl ...... 13 7

Appearance as Convention: Getting In ...... 138

Sex Appeal as Convention: Serving It Up ...... 146

Panoptic Management as Convention: Body Technologies ..... 150

On Working the Floor ...... 15 9

X Emotional Labor as Convention ...... 160

Regular Customers as Convention ...... 169

Promotions as Convention ...... 172

Summary ...... 176

6: RECEPTION OUT OF UNIFORM: USING THE CULTURAL TOOLKIT TO NEGOTIATE NEGATIVE MEANINGS AND STIGMA THREAT ...... 180

Frames and Stereotypes ...... 182

The Cultural Toolkit ofStigma Strategies ...... 191

Social Reconnaissance ...... 193

Excavating ...... 199

Veiling ...... 201

Revealing ...... 204

Nullifying and Justifying ...... 205

Resigning and Dissolving ...... 207

Summary of Out ofUniform...... 208

7: ON CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS ...... 210

Conceptual Overview ...... 211

Review of the Results ...... 214

Limitations: Standards of Quality and Verification ...... 223

Suggestions for Future Research ...... 226

APPENDICES ...... 228

REFERENCES ...... 241

Xl LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures Page

3.1. Cultural Diamond ofthe Hooters Gir1 ...... 63

3.2. Recruitment Card ...... 67

4.1. The Making of an Industry System: Origin ofHooters Restaurants ...... 88

4.2. Schudson's Five Dimensions of Cultural Power ...... 114

Xll CHAPTER 1

ON CONNOTATIONS

Two Spectator Sports for the Price of One Hooters Billboard

A stigma may have long lasting consequences in the personal and professional trajectories of those individuals who possess a characteristic that others may label as deviant. In the influential book, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity,

Goffman (1963) defines stigma as an "attribute that is deeply discrediting" and as reducing the individual (or group) from "a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one" (p. 3). Stigma is often the result of the framing of a particular cultural object or actor as blemished, lesser or deviant. Further, dominant culture can drive stigma in that it is often associated with political, social, and economic power (Link and

Phelan 2001). Those in power, whatever the realm, often stigmatize those without it.

Constructing something or someone as tainted, deviant, or stigmatized involves meaning and meaning making. Meaning is produced on multiple levels such as in culture industries, in political discourses, through media outlets, and through the process of face- to-face interaction. Labeling theorists, such as Becker (1963), argue that the process of

"othering" individuals or groups lies not with the actual act itself, but within societal reaction to a particular act. He states:

Social groups create deviance by making rules whose infractions constitute deviance, and by applying these rules to particular people, and labeling them as outsiders. From this point ofview, deviance is not a quality of the act the person

1 2 commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an 'offender'. The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behavior is behavior that people so label (Becker, 1963: 9).

In other words, meaning is produced and received at both the macro and micro levels.

Meaning has impact in the everyday lives of cultural producers and audiences and it sometimes points to stigma.

This is certainly true with respect to the cultural object of occupational identity.

Deviant occupations are often stigmatized because they have been cast as physically, socially, or morally tainted or what Hughes (1958) refers to as dirty work. According to

Ashforth and Kreiner (1999), physical taint refers to those jobs with duties related to social interpretations of un-cleanliness such as a janitor or funeral director; social taint refers to jobs with duties related to interactions with groups that are stigmatized such as

AIDS workers; and moral taint refers to jobs that are associated with immorality such as a prostitute, exotic dancer, or in the case of this study, the Hooters Girl.

Some types of work have particular occupational identities/personas attached to them. Such identities are often produced by actors and received by actors via a culture industry system. Culture industry systems, as understood by the production of culture perspective, are systems of mass production, mass distribution, and mass reception.

These culture industries work to create meaning in order to attract consumers to their products. For example, some record artists such as Brittany Spears, Madonna, etc. are created as teen idols. It is part of their manufactured occupational identity. This is also true for the Hooters Girl. Her identity is produced amid the culture industry of a franchise/themed restaurant. Culture industries try to control reception and meaning making among audiences. However, social audiences often recast meaning and 3 sometimes construct occupational identities quite differently, even when they involved the same elements. For example, we can look at the fact that some women who participate in erotic labor are labeled deviant while others are not. Career choices that are similar to the Hooters Girl are often not labeled in the same way. For example, the

Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders wear sexualized uniforms and offer their bodies as spectacle. However, they are labeled as "America's Sweethearts". Similarly, the

Victoria Secret models wear lingerie in many venues and are constructed as

"supermodels" and "angels". Indeed, meaning signals action and in many cases it signals stigma and it is quite different based on individual interpretations.

This can be problematic because occupational identity is widely regarded as an important part of an individual's sense of self and their social self (Ashforth and Kreiner

1999). When someone's work is labeled and stigmatized as deviant by certain audience members in society, his/her social identity may be discredited within a social interaction.

Certain stigmas are not outwardly visible such as that of a deviant occupation. Goffman

(1963) calls these hidden stigmas discreditable; they have the potential to surface or to be found out in every day social situations. Because of its importance to the American culture and the individual's sense of self, occupational identity is a key piece of information that is exchanged when encountering strangers where the question, "What do you do for a living?" often arises. This question can be quite problematic for those who do dirty work because they face stigma threat and the possibility of stigmatization almost immediately in the interaction.

A significant amount of research on morally tainted dirty work such as that of stripping shows that women involved in producing erotic labor employ a variety of 4 techniques to manage the stigma of their occupation (Bell and Sloan 1998; Ronai and

Cross 1998; Schweitzer 2000; Thompson, Barred and Burks 2003). Thompson et al.

(2003) report that in order to manage the stigma associated with stripping, the women engaged in a variety of techniques of neutralization (Sykes and Matza 1957) such as denial of responsibility, denial of injury, denial of the victim, condemnation ofthe condemners, and appealing to higher loyalties. While these techniques are useful to understanding how dirty workers such as strippers seek to rationalize or validate their own participation in a stigmatized field, these studies stop short of examining the tools that individuals use to manage or disclose information and how they use techniques within an interaction to diffuse stigma threat.

Suppose for a moment that you are involved in the daily production of a cultural object/product through the course of your job that some may see as socially undesirable or dirty such as that of a Hooters Girl. For example, others may think of you as a whore, assume you are unintelligent and lack any kind of professional skills, or objectify you.

Given these potential negative responses, do you answer the question of your occupation directly or do you try to reveal the minimum amount of information that you can? That is, do you directly say "I work at Hooters" or might you say, "I am a waitress"? The latter statement is not a lie; it just does not completely reveal the truest nature of your job.

Prior to making this judgment about how and what you will disclose about your job, how do you assess the social environment in which you find yourself? That is, are you in a situation where people will socially accept your position as a Hooters Girl? Or, are you in a situation where people will pass negative judgment? 5 One factor that can affect the decision to disclose or non-disclose a stigmatized characteristic such as dirty work has to do with the individual and his/her own sense of self. Individuals want to project a positive image during the course of interactions and rely on the response of others for direction of how to accomplish the presentation of self

(Goffman 1959). As Crocker, Major and Steele (1998) have shown, those who are stigmatized understand their position in society. This understanding comes from past social encounters and their own interpretation of the beliefs ofthe dominant culture and how they are viewed within that context. Actors become aware of the competing meanings surrounding them and the possible consequences (such as stigma) related to revelation of the characteristic that is stigmatized (such as participating in a particular activity). According to Goffman (1963), those who are stigmatized try to hide stigma by engaging in face-work: the potentially stigmatized try to present a face that is socially desirable so as to not risk being marginalized by a particular individual or group.

Competing meanings are problematic to someone who has a potentially discrediting characteristic that can bring about stigma. This is because they can never be sure which audience and which meaning they are dealing with in any given social situation. They must engage in social excavation where they try to assess the particular audience with whom they are dealing. How do actors unpack social situations to assess what meaning they are dealing with and to decide if they will do disclosure? In addition, how do actors manage social situations when they encounter the unfavorable audiences 6 and meaning? One answer may lie in the way they use culture to negotiate, manage,

1 minimize, and refute the possibility of a stigma threat .

An important line of inquiry regarding how actors use culture lies in the metaphor of culture as a repertoire or toolkit (Swidler 2001 ). According to Swidler (200 1), culture is a toolkit that people draw upon to assemble tools that they choose to problem solve and negotiate their social worlds. These tools provide the basis for strategies of action. Yet, as I will further delineate in Chapter 2, the toolkit metaphor lacks clarity and I argue that we can identify sub-sets of tools within the larger toolkit that actors assemble to aid in accomplishing a particular task. In the context of this study, I view the metaphor of a cultural toolkit as a large collection of a variety of tools that one has available. Within this larger collection of tools, actors assemble smaller toolsets specific to particular tasks.

For example, let us assume you are a car mechanic that must work on a transmission.

You will not need every tool available to you in your larger toolkit to perform the task because not every tool is appropriate for fixing a transmission. However, you will retrieve a smaller sub-set of tools that are necessary to perform the task. Further, if you do not have a particular tool that you need, you must find a way to acquire it. I view

Swidler's (2001) metaphor of culture as a toolkit in this way. The larger cultural toolkit exists, but when confronted with a specific task, actors assemble smaller toolsets that they deem necessary to aid in completing the task.

1 I am building upon the Steele and Aronson (1995) concept of stereotype threat, which asserts that people are aware of the stereotypes that may be applied to them. Since stigma is often rooted in stereotypes, it follows then that individuals are also aware of the fact that a stigma may potentially be applied to them in any given social context. 7 Individuals are more likely to create cultural tools in times of crisis, tension, or anxiety that they experience at the macro- or micro-level of face to face interaction.

When social settings are characterized by familiarity, stability, and consensus, people's actions are typically guided by tradition as they are comfortable with the tools that already exist and are hesitant to create new tools because they are typically resistant to change (Forte 1999). Yet, in social settings where there is uncertainty, anxiety, or flux, competing ideologies exist and new strategies of actions/tools are created to help deal with the change. In these unsettled situations, actors make use of culture to "organize new strategies of action and to model new ways of thinking and feeling" (Swidler 2001:

94). As such, toolkits, and subsequently toolsets, are most often used in times of crisis when there are competing views about a social phenomenon, such as a possible discrediting characteristic. In times of transition, actors must select the tools that help them negotiate the contrasting patterns they encounter. How do people know how to act in situations where these contradictions exist? Does an identifiable toolset within the larger toolkit exist that actors use when faced with the disclosure or recognition of a discrediting characteristic?

Backdrop of the Study and Research Questions

In the context of this dissertation, the Hooters Girl is treated as a cultural object.

Cultural objects are vessels of meaning and meaning can be produced in the context of a culture industry system and can also have meaning ascribed to them via audience reception. In order to situate the Hooters Girl as a stigmatized occupational identity, it is necessary to explore how the Hooters Girl as a persona is produced. This production 8 happens via a corporate environment where the corporate vision and mission of the persona constrains how the duties of the Hooters Girl are performed. I seek to understand how individuals experience this system of production and how they make meaning related to their work within this system. Secondly, as I will show later in this dissertation, various audiences have interpreted the Hooters Girl concept quite differently. In order to understand why the occupation of Hooters Girl may need to be concealed in an interaction, it is necessary to explore the negative reactions that the women of Hooters have experienced as a result of performing the job.

The main analytical purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the cultural tools that actors deploy from their cultural toolkits to reveal, minimize, or resist stigma threat in an interaction with other people. That is, how do actors engage in culture work to develop a particular toolset for usage in dealing with competing interpretations of a characteristic? Expressly, this exploratory research will be guided by the following questions: 1) What are the everyday consequences for those involved in the production of a cultural object? 2) How do actors experience the negative reception of the cultural object they have produced? and 3) In what ways do actors assemble and use cultural tools to manage stigma in everyday interactions?

Significance ofthe Study

This study attempts to enhance the explanatory power of the conceptualization of culture as a toolkit by examining how people delve into their broader toolsets to assemble strategies of action that can be used in a particular social circumstance; in this case to negotiate stigma. That is, I propose that within the larger repertoire of available 9 responses to a possible stigma threat, there exists a concrete anti-stigma strategies toolkit that can be empirically identified. Other studies of the cultural toolkit simply look at the repertoire of responses that one uses in a particular setting. This study builds upon that to identify a toolkit that may be used across populations and that is used in a systematic manner. Certainly, toolkit theory has done much to advance the study of culture and to increase our understanding of the relationship between culture and the individual. Yet we are still in the process of discovery about the very nature of toolkits. We have very little understanding ofwhat is in the toolkit, how it got into the toolkit, and when it is called into action from the toolkit. This study contributes to that ongoing quest.

Implicit in the concept of stigma is meaning. Thus this study also contributes to our understanding of meaning and meaning making. Here, I investigate the ways in which individuals become aware of, understand, and sometimes use culture to rebut the social implications of the various meanings that exist about their participation in the production of the Hooters Girl image. Further, I investigate the ways in which they engage meaning in various social interactions by examining the process by which they move towards (or away) from disclosing their position as a Hooters Girl. I examine how they assemble this cultural toolset to accomplish this disclosure in stages. It also contributes to the rich literature on managing stigma. Whereas other studies of managing stigma focus on the meaning that individuals give to their own stigma, this study looks at how individuals disclose potentially discrediting information and how they manage the interaction and responses of others.

Meaning is sometimes produced in culture industries, political discourse, and through media outlets. It is also socially constructed and reconstructed by individual 10 audience members. Therefore, meaning can provide a link between structure and agency.

Meaning has impact in the everyday lives of cultural producers as it can impact production and reception of the very object they create. Yet the production of culture school in the area of the sociology of culture has ignored the individual as a level of analysis and it has ignored the variable of gender. Along a similar vein, reception studies have also largely ignored gender as an audience. This study analyzes the effects of production through a gendered lens. I seek to understand how individuals, specifically women, experience the production of culture. Moreover, production studies and audience reception studies tend to focus in their respective field and ignore those who are simultaneously producers and audiences, such as in the case of the Hooters Girl. As such, this dissertation contributes the construct of producer-as-recipient to the literature.

Further, as a popular culture symbol, the Hooters Girl is virtually absent from scholarly research and the debates surrounding women's work. In fact, academic searches have returned only one chapter in a dissertation that focuses on placing the

Hooters Girl on the lower end of a sex work continuum contrasted to that of strippers and prostitutes (Dinenno 2003). Still, research that looks at sexualized labor focuses almost exclusively on prostitution, human sex trafficking, and stripping. While definitions of sex work clearly capture some of what Hooters Girls do, there is much more to the

Hooters Girl experience given that the restaurant encompasses both sexuality and table service. It also involves disclosing. This research lends to an empirical and a better understanding of the women whose work has been defined as sex work but may not be viewed as such by those who perform the job. That is, this dissertation will also be sensitive to the continuum of cultural categories used by the participants and not just the 11 single cultural category of sex work. Their understanding of their work should be of interest to feminist scholars who value and employ standpoint theory (Smith 1974). In the interest of advancing our understanding ofwomen's work that involves evoking women's sexuality, this study seeks to give these women a voice.

As the dissertation will show, waitressing continues to be a vital and growing field of employment for women. Despite this growth, there is only a small body of literature that exists with respect to women in table service. Additionally, there is no study that looks at the effects that waitressing and its various adjunct forms have on the women who wait outside of the restaurant. Further, the waitress as entertainer has received little attention in empirical analysis (Hearn and Stolll975; Hochschild 1983;

Spradley and Mann 1975; Steinem 1983). This research explores this realm by looking at the everyday lives ofwomen both "in uniform" and "out ofuniform" and explores the murky waters surrounding meanings attributed to their work. This project will contribute to the broader picture of table service by exploring the complexities and nuances of overtly eroticized/sexualized table service.

This dissertation also relates to the sociology of consumption. The Hooters of

America Corporation is a highly profitable business that is seeking to become a major player in the leisure brand. We can learn much from the popularity ofHooters in the consumer world. In terms of consumption, Hooters is reflective of the marriage of several of our central values: that eating out of the home is desirable; that female sexuality is always profitable; that beauty is still the standard in employment; and that entertainment is standard. The Hooters Girl concept is produced, received, and ultimately consumed by members of society. 12 Definition of Terms

Since much of this research is rooted in the theoretical frameworks and methods of the sociology of culture, and because this particular area of research is replete with jargon that may be unfamiliar to those outside of the discipline, a section is included here to define terms that are integral to the project. Each of these concepts is explored in­ depth in later chapters, but by placing the definitions here, I hope to emphasize their importance in both understanding the interplay between the individual and culture and the methodological implications for cultural analysis undertaken in this study.

Cultural object: Cultural objects are used to understand an aspect of the larger

cultural system because they emanate meaning (Griswold 1994). That is, a

cultural object is created and has expressive attributes given to it by members of a

particular society. A cultural object is: "A meaningful expression that is audible,

visible, tangible, or can be articulated (Griswold 1994:11 ). In essence, the

cultural object can be described as "telling a story".

Cultural Toolkit/Repertoire: The terms toolkit and repertoires are interchangeable

in this study. This concept represents a movement away from treating culture as a

collective consciousness that is universal to a society. Rather, toolkit theorists see

culture as active and intertwined with the individual. As such, culture is a thing

that is "used" to link cognition to action. Thus, culture is viewed as a toolkit

where people pick and choose those elements or strategies needed as a situation

arises. Most often, people use their toolkits in points oftransition or in unsettled

times (Swidler 2002). 13 Producer: This refers to the creator or manufacturer of the particular cultural

object. Examples of producers are artists and writers.

Production of Culture: This approach looks at the linkage of those that create

culture and those that consume it. Here, the interest is in analyzing such things as

production facilities, marketing tactics, and media usage to bring a cultural object

and a consumer together (Griswold 1994).

Receiver/Audience: These are the recipients of the cultural object and may

include groups such as consumers, listeners, viewers (Griswold 1994).

Delimitations

One of the main premises of the cultural toolkit metaphor is that tools that exist in any one individual's repertoire are a direct reflection of that individual's experiences.

That is, one does not have a tool if they are not aware of it or if they have not had an experience that warrants the use of the tool. It is common for sociologists to analyze variables such as race and class and these variables may certainly be brought to bear on the cultural toolkit. While there are references to race and class in the results chapters, these variables were not the focus of my research. Rather, I sought to identify tools that most, if not all, of the respondents applied to social situations where disclosure of the fact that they worked at Hooters may surface notwithstanding more specific backgrounds such as race or class.

There are many populations that experience stigma threat. The results of this study are limited to the experiences of the women of Hooters. As such, the characteristics of the social environment that lead to the possible stigmatization ofthe 14 Hooters may not be the same as the social characteristics that lead to the stigmatization of other groups such as felons, the disabled, the aged, or racial or ethnic minorities. The emphasis in this study is to understand how people manage stigma when faced with stigma threat, regardless of the social or cultural basis for that threat. Thus, I hope to come up with a model where the tools are salient in a variety of contexts in which populations are stigmatized.

Project Organization

This dissertation project is comprised of seven chapters. The substantive findings follow this chapter and are summed up in the final chapter. Immediately following this introductory chapter is the theoretical framework (Chapter 2). This chapter presents the main theoretical frameworks that guide the study and presents the current state of knowledge about those frameworks. Specifically the chapter addresses the frameworks of culture as toolkit, stigma, framing, and the production and reception of culture.

Chapter 3 is the methods of inquiry chapter and outlines the qualitative methodology used to answer the research questions, the data collection, and data analysis procedures for this study. This chapter also presents the demographic characteristics of the respondents.

Chapter 4, "Hooters as a Culture Industry System: Producing, Marketing, and

Distributing the Hooters Girl" positions the corporate image/persona of the Hooters Girl in the larger context of Hooters restaurants. This chapter takes Hirsch's (1972) model of the culture industry system and applies it to the Hooters of America Corporation.

Through analysis of corporate documents provided by key informants, participant 15 observation, and current research on Hooters, this chapter examines the ways that

Hooters produces meaning with respect to the Hooters Girl.

Chapter 5, "Production in Uniform: Conventions and Consequences ofDoing

Hooters", examines the work of the women of Hooters as a collective activity and how they "do Hooters Girl" in the restaurant. It takes as its analytical frame Becker's (1982) conceptualization of conventions to show how the women create, resist, and internalize the written and unwritten conventions of "doing Hooters Girl". This chapter also explores how my respondents feel about working at Hooters and the meanings they have encountered by different audiences while doing Hooters Girl in uniform.

Chapter 6, "Reception Out of Uniform: Using the Cultural Toolkit to Negotiate

Negative Meanings and Stigma Threat", examines the frames that the respondents have encountered regarding how different audience members have interpreted their work.

Further, it examines the cultural tools that the respondents reported using to manage potentially stigmatizing information in interactions to include the possibility of doing disclosure.

Chapter 7, "On Conclusions and Implications", summarizes the main points of this dissertation project and provides future implications for lines of inquiry on the topic.

The list of references and appendixes follow the concluding chapter. CHAPTER2

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

This chapter presents the analytical framework and explores relevant empirical studies that provide the context for this study. The frameworks that inform this study are at the intersection of several bodies of literature: culture as toolkit or repertoire, the production and reception of culture, framing, and stigma. The present study combines these literatures in order to understand the complex arrangement between the production and reception of meaning and how it influences culture and action. This combination is accomplished by looking at the relationship between two points of view. The first is that consumers of culture attach a variety of different meanings to cultural objects that they come in contact with. The second is that those who are involved in the production of that cultural object may simultaneously be on the receiving end of the meanings that cultural consumers have applied to the object. Such is the case when a cultural consumer has attached a negative meaning, in the form of a stereotype or stigma, to a particular object.

As such this chapter outlines the literature that serves as the conceptual framework for the interplay between the cultural producer and the producer-as-recipient.

The emphasis is on investigating how the producer-as-recipient uses his/her cultural toolkit to deal with a variety of meanings that they encounter in their daily lives, particularly those that are negative.

17 18 Culture as a Toolkit or Repertoire

The study of the relationship between culture and the individual has long been a central problem in the discipline of sociology and in the sub field of the sociology of culture. The approaches to this relationship can be generally divided into two camps: culture as motivation or culture as justification (Vaisey 2007). Those who view culture as motivation see culture as a shared way of living that emphasizes values and beliefs as guiding individual actions in consistent ways and usually with predetermined ends

(Vaisey 2007). On the other hand, those who view culture as justification focus on how culture consists of many complex cultures and subcultures that social actors use as resources to devise and sometimes justify strategies of action in the course of everyday living (DiMaggio 1997; Vaisey 2007). Vaisey (2007) captures the difference between the two camps quite nicely noting that the view of culture as a motivating force has now given way to viewing culture as a tool for social sense-making. One important line of social inquiry within the culture as justification paradigm is the question of the link between meaning, meaning making, and how meaning influences social action. Thus researchers are interested in where "meaning comes from and how actors find it, use it, and create it" (Kaufman 2004:340).

Conceiving of culture as a toolkit or as a repertoire of meaning is a useful analytical tool that helps us understand how people "find it, use it, and create it"

(Kaufman 2004:340). Ann Swidler (1986; 2001) is the most often cited scholar associated with culture as a toolkit (sometimes referred to as toolkit theory) and has produced two important works on the subject matter. To be sure, other scholars have worked within the area oflinking culture to behavior (for example, see Bourdieu (1984) 19 on habitus, Bryson (1996) on music genres and taste, Dimaggio (1997) on "grabbing culture" and Lamont (1992) on symbolic boundaries and status). However, Swidler's work (1986; 2001) is the most codified and serves as an appropriate point of entree for understanding the metaphor of culture as a toolkit as it recognizes the linkage between cognition and behavior. Her work and findings provide the context and impetus for this dissertation research because her findings show that actors are cognizant of meanings and that this cognizance influences actions that they take.

Swidler (1986) first introduced the image of culture as a toolkit or as a repertoire of meanings in her groundbreaking essay Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies. The underlying premise of the cultural toolkit is that culture is causal, rebuffing Weber's

(1930) view of culture as rationalized ideas that shape people's motives and direct action in the manner of a cultural switchman or the Durkheimian (1964) view that a collective conscience influences action. Instead, Swidler (1986) argues that culture is much like a toolkit from which people draw upon tools which they select to devise strategies of action for solving problems, interacting, and interpreting the social world that they confront during the course of daily living. In Swidler' s (1986) model, the emphasis in cultural analysis should be less about how values shape individual action but what social actions are available to an individual in their metaphorical toolkits. That is, she argues that culture mediates between symbols, meaning and experience (Barnes 2005). In her metaphor, Swidler (1986) provides more agency than classical understandings of culture in that actors are seen as using culture for action rather than as a passive cultural dope that is pushed about by cultural forces outside of his/her control (Crane 1994). 20 The underlying premise of the metaphor is that culture consists of both material

(e.g., technology, food, and ritual practices) and nonmaterial (e.g., symbols, values, lore, norms, and language) elements that organize social life that provide meaning, expectations, and the reinforcement about behaviors among group members (Barnes

2005). These are essential to the actions and decisions that individuals make on a daily basis. Actors learn these cultural elements through the process of socialization whereby they pick up experiences, habits, skills, ideologies, and actions that become stored in the repertoire as cultural tools that will be called upon as strategies of action at the appropriate time.

Society is comprised of numerous cultures and subcultures and thus individuals come from differing social backgrounds and experiences. As such, not all members of a society or group will share the same toolkit and in fact, some tools will be absent from a particular individual or group toolkit. Thus, cultural tools are only relevant and understood in relation to a particular group or subculture in which the tool is rooted. A person can only draw upon a cultural tool it if exists in their toolkit. Further, actors have an assortment oftoolkits and Swidler (1986; 2001) explains that individuals possess far more culture than they actually use. What is important to the metaphor is the understanding that actors internalize culture but can be separate enough from culture to use it.

The metaphor of culture as toolkit is most appropriate in times of shifting and contrasting social or cultural patterns, particularly with respect to meaning, meaning making, and meaning change. Swidler (1986) refers to this shift in patterns as unsettled times. In unsettled times groups question their particular social position and question the 21 scripts previously employed in order to devise strategies of action to problem solve.

Thus, there may be uncertainty as to how to interpret a particular situation and as a result people will create culture and actively use it in order to understand and deal with the change in a variety of social contexts (J epperson and Swidler 1994). For example,

Hebdige (1979) shows how the punk style and music subculture arose among white working-class youth in post-war Britain as oppositional strategies of action used in unsettled times because of ideological differences with parents, the British bourgeoisie and consumer culture, and the influx of distinctive immigrant music and styles. In an attempt to carve out a style of their own because of these changing social patterns, the punks used culture to devise strategies of action: wearing ripped clothing and placing safety pins on clothes in opposition to consumer culture, dance as a performance of middle-class solidarity, and Mohawk hairstyles that parody Rastafarian dreadlocks. This example shows that actors were aware of their social location in an unsettled environment and used existing meaning in order to recast it into a particular cultural identity.

Outwardly, it appears that actors only use those strategies that they are aware of.

However, Swidler (1986) argues that in unsettled times there exists a continuum of awareness that is comprised of ideology, tradition, and common sense. Ideology represents that which is most conscious, such as a consolidated ritual or belief system. At the mid point, tradition represents the awareness of social practices that can be articulated if needed, but do not need to be because they are an expected part of social life. Lastly, common sense represents those strategies that are taken-for-granted because they are so heavily rooted in social life that they appear to be invisible. Whatever the case, cultural meanings are important and they are called upon to influence social action. 22 In her other chief work on culture as toolkit or repertoire, Talk ofLove: How

Culture Matters, Swidler (2001) tries to resolve the toolkit metaphor by showing how people use their cultural toolkit of reasons to deal with the tensions that arise between two competing definitions of love: love as a voluntary choice or love as a commitment.

Specifically she examines how middle-class married couples think and talk about love and how they use their cultural toolkits to problem solve the tensions that exist between the categories of love as voluntary choice and love as commitment. For example, people will talk about love both as choice and commitment; since they chose the partner they married, and then say that while their partner is no longer the best fit, they are committed to that person. Interestingly, the respondents were not aware that they were using two very different justifications of their actions at the same time. That is, they go into one toolkit to grasp the tools to describe their marriage as a choice and go into a completely different toolkit to assemble the tools that describe their marriage as one of commitment.

In addition, they mobilize them simultaneously with improvisation.

In order to explain how her respondents called upon different cultural toolkits,

Swidler (200 1) looks at the manifestation of marriage as both an institution and interpersonal relationship in the U.S. She traces how many Americans adopt the meaning of romantic love as portrayed in Hollywood as an all or nothing choice like those portrayed in Romeo and Juliet or the notion oflove at first sight (she calls this mythic love). However, her respondents simultaneously espoused a "realistic" approach to love as "not sudden or certain" but as "ambivalent and confused" maintaining that love grows gradually overtime (Swidler 2001). These different understandings of the meanings 23 associated with love became mobilized as strategies of action to help individuals reconcile their understanding of their particular marital situation.

While the handling of different meanings of love may indeed be contradictory, the chief finding in this study is that actors do not simply rely on culture to provide meaning in their lives. Rather culture serves as toolkit that people draw upon to devise strategies of action in order to find the right symbolic expressions, justifications, or actions to help them make decisions in their every day life circumstances. Further, it shows us that toolkits are organized variably and that they are relative to time and space. This is important to the present study because meaning does indeed matter: it informs cognitive processes and the shaping of strategies of action and in addition, people deploy strategies of action in order to deal with various, and often competing, fragmented, and inconstant meanmgs.

Empirical Studies of the Culture as Toolkit

It has been twenty years since Swidler (1986) first introduced the culture as toolkit metaphor and it has enjoyed wide application. In fact, the toolkit metaphor has been referenced as conceptual framework for a variety of disciplines such as social work

(Forte 1999), business management (Weber 2005), criminal justice (Dunn 2002) and politics (Bandelj 2004). Two lines of inquiry within the sociological literature can be distinguished with respect to the cultural toolkit. The first are empirical studies that explore the nature of toolkits in a variety of social contexts such as childhood punishment

(Cast, Schweingruber and Berns 2006), adolescence and high school debate (Fine 2004), social work (Forte 1999) and money work in door-to-door sales (Schweingruber and 24 Berns 2003). While the reference to the usage of culture as a toolkit appears in many studies as cultural competencies, habitus (Bourdeiu 1984), or repertoire (Lamont and

Thevenot 2000), I am concerned only with those studies that expressly build upon

Swidler's (1986; 2001) concept of the cultural toolkit. Further, while Swilder (1986;

2001) is widely cited in a variety of studies, very few empirical studies specifically test the cultural toolkit and consequently the literature is very sparse. The second line of inquiry encompasses a handful of articles that offer critiques of the metaphor in an attempt to refine or expand upon its theoretical foundation (Berger 1995; Vaisey 2007).

Given that human's lives are centered around community, it is of no surprise that the toolkit model has been linked with community action (Barnes 2005; Norgaard 2006).

In one of the only three quantitative studies in sociology on the cultural toolkit, Barnes

(2005) used a national sample of black church congregations to test a hypothesis that common cultural symbols of the Black Church such as gospel music, spirituals, and prayer groups affected community service. These cultural components are important to

Black church cultural processes because of their longstanding historical affiliation with slavery, oppression, liberation, and community solidarity. In particular, the participation in prayer groups had a consistent influence on community action and Barnes (2005) attributes this to religious symbolism often associated with sermons on social justice.

The results of the study yielded considerable support for the linkage of toolkits to community action because cultural components commonly appropriated in Black churches have shared meaning and often influence shared motivations about community involvement. In essence, meaning embedded in cultural elements influence action. 25 On the other hand, people appropriate toolkits to justify social inaction. Norgaard

(2006) studied how a toolkit of emotions provided strategies of action with respect to the failure to generate participation in a national social movement regarding global warming.

This study employed field research: forty-six interviews, media analysis, and participant observation in a rural community in Norway. Respondents devised strategies of emotion management in two forms. First, they employed a strategy of selective attention where they controlled exposure to information ("I don't really want to know"), decided not to think too far ahead (turning attention to something else), and focusing on what they could do locally. Secondly, they employed the strategy of perspectival selectivity where respondents bring a certain angle of vision about certain events, in this case global warming (such as comparing Norway as doing better in global warming than America) or to think of Norway as a "little land" and that it did not really have an impact on the larger global climate. In this study respondents resorted to their toolkits in order to help them locate their position within a larger social problem and devised strategies of action to provide justifications for not seeing themselves as part of the problem. While this study confirms the toolkit as a link to action, it also confirms that actors resort to their toolkit to develop strategies to justify inaction.

Employee productivity is important in the business world. Organizations utilize toolkits in order to accomplish routine business tasks. Shwiengruber and Berns (2003) examine how managers use cultural meanings associated with money in order to maximize door-to-door sales associate's performance. They identified four key strategies of action that managers employed via the cultural toolkit that are used with respect to money: persuading others to pursue desired courses of action, worker control, decision 26 making, and as impression management tactics. Indeed, the pursuit of money has meaning and it is those meanings that are called upon to influence social action, particularly in sales.

Researchers have also sought to understand how the toolkit develops with respect to tool acquisition and tool disbandment (Cast et al. 2006; Fine 2004). Cast et al. (2006) suggest that those whose parents used physical punishment had a less refined toolkit for solving conflicts in adult relationships, particularly marriage. They investigate how corporal punishment results in both verbally and physically aggressive and controlling behaviors as conflict resolution strategies of action in adult relationships, especially with a spouse. The researchers use longitudinal interview data on marital dynamics consisting of couples who applied for a marriage license in two small communities in Washington

State during 1991-1992. The study included face to face interviews shortly after marriage, one year later, and two years later, with only those couples who remained childless during the time period (noting that child rearing caused significant marital strain and they did not want this to influence the study). Findings show that those who experienced physical punishments in their childhood were more verbally and physically aggressive with their spouse and reported feeling less likely to understand their spouse's perspective. Thus, some cultural tools develop at an early age and may be recalled as strategies of action later during the life course. As such, cultural toolkits have "memory".

Violence, as a strategy of action, can be reproduced intergenerationally via the cultural toolkit. This also shows that toolkits may also be less refined and consequently narrower, limiting the strategies of action that an actor may have available. 27 While some toolkits remain constant, others can be in flux. Through participant observation and in-depth interviews of two high school debate teams, Fine (2004) examines the tension that exists in an educationally intense activity that is based on adult action and yet one that is enacted by those experiencing tumultuous adolescent years.

Fine (2004) investigates how those who participate in high school debate engage in impression management by vacillating between the toolkit of adult action at certain times and the toolkit of adolescent action at others. As such, adolescents have a variety of behaviors that they can bring to bear on social situations and they test the boundaries of behaviors in a variety of social contexts as they engage in the presentation of self.

Adolescence, as an unsettled time, is associated with testing strategies of action and that strategies of action are either "discarded or embraced" (Fine 2004:76). Toolkits can change as actors test strategies of action; adopting those that work and discarding those that do not.

Of great importance to the research at hand is Armstrong and Weinberg's (2006) study on a toolkit of cultural competencies with respect to viewing sexual images. They investigate how a broad cultural toolkit is linked to credibility in classifying a wide variety of cultural objects and how a broad toolkit allows actors to evaluate the exact same object in different ways. Heterosexual students were shown different photographs: an image of a Caucasian man masturbating was shown to the female students and an image of a Caucasian woman masturbating was shown to male students. Survey instruments and interviews asked students to rank the degree to which they thought the image was pornographic and this was then linked to data collected about student's backgrounds. Armstrong and Weinberg (2006) present four classifications of how 28 background influences perceptions of pornography: Non artistic Conservatives; Non artistic Liberals; Artistic Liberals; and Artistic Conservatives. The degree to which the respondents thought the images were pornographic, or art, was relative to individual thoughts as to how much sexual content equaled pornography (which was linked to religion and conventional ideologies in a regression analysis). This study contributes the concept of identity to the toolkit and shows how individuals from different backgrounds approach the same cultural object with different interpretations.

While the majority of the studies take a qualitative or mixed-method approach,

Weber (2005) shows that the different dimensions of cultural toolkits can be compared and analyzed through sophisticated quantitative techniques such as multi-dimensional scaling. In a twenty year analysis of German and American pharmaceutical companies' annual reports, Weber (2005) provides a step by step process for information reduction that allows for the study of cultural toolkits at the field level such as in the case of markets and organizations. Therefore, toolkits can be empirically verified in both qualitative and quantitative realms. The present study employs a qualitative design.

The culture as toolkit model is not without its critics. When Swidler (1986) first introduced the concept it was criticized as allowing for too much agency and ignoring how social structure determines action (Berger 1995; Hall and Neitz 1993; Lamont 1999;

Robertson 1988) or that the concept of tools was too ambiguous and needed clarification

(Callero 1994). In Talk ofLove, Swidler (2001) resolved many of these early critiques; new and some old criticism arose from the developed toolkit metaphor presented in the book. For example, scholars assert that the model minimizes how culture is constructed and reconstructed through the process of interaction (Hall and Neitz; 1993, Fantasia and 29 Hirsch 1995; Zelizer 2004) or that it minimizes group contexts as a key cultural arena

(Lichterman 2004). Fine (2004) reiterates the early concern about tools, noting that we do not know how they get into the toolkit and how they are assembled. Vaisey (2007) critiques the culture as motivation or culture as sense making debate and tries to reconcile them by calling for a dual-process model of culture in action that incorporates both.

Certainly, Swidler (1986; 2001) and those scholars reviewed above have done yeomen work in expounding the culture as toolkit metaphor and its applications. Indeed, they have endeavored to evidence culture in action. Yet, I stand with Fine's (2004) analysis that we need to discover how tools become a part of the toolkit and how they are assembled in order to form lines of strategic action in a variety of contexts. The existing studies reviewed here look at the culturally available responses that one uses in a particular setting to provide meaning for specific social situations and focuses on tools that are used on improvisation. However, they do not show how individuals resort to their toolkits to develop strategies of action for working with the meanings that people have applied to a stigmatized attribute they possess. This study explored that avenue by adding the concept of stigma to the discussion and investigated the strategies of actions

(cultural tools) that individuals devise in order to deal with stigma threat. Further, this dissertation research distinguishes itself in that it sought to identify that a specific toolset was consciously appropriated and further examined how those toolsets were assembled and deployed in a hierarchical manner rather than on improvisation. 30 Meaning: Production and Reception of Culture

The production of culture perspective represents another movement away from the culture as motivation paradigm or the view of culture as a mirror that reflects social structures and social patterns onto one another (Griswold 1994). The focus ofthe perspective is on how culture, and subsequently meaning, can be created through the innovation of expressive cultural objects such as art, books, television, movies, or music in a complex system of mass production, mass distribution, and mass reception.

Specifically, the production of culture school investigates the effect of non-creative aspects of production on changing the content of cultural objects and their constraints on output of the culture industry system. Peterson (1978), a prominent scholar in the field, describes the approach as an examination of the "complex apparatus which is interposed between cultural creators and consumers" (p. 295).

The main thrust of the production of culture school is on how capitalist arrangements influence those innovations/cultural objects that make it to production and distribution. In a signaling work on this process, Hirsch (1972) conceived of this controlled arrangement as the culture industry system. Not all cultural innovations make it to market because there are far more innovations than there is market demand. The culture industry system is quite complex, as it is comprised of several organizational units each with its own innovation filtering processes to decide what is input and output via the system. These units include the technicians (actors, singers, and writers), the managers ofthe cultural organizations, the institutional distributors such as mass media, and the social system, which is comprised of retail markets. 31 Consumers are fickle and it is hard to predict consumer demand and thus there is a great amount of uncertainty among mass cultural producers as to what will be a hit.

The industry is always pushing objects out into the market hoping to score "the next big thing." Further, the culture industry has developed several coping mechanisms that help mitigate this demand uncertainty. Hirsch (1972) identifies these three strategies as: 1) allocating people to boundary spanning roles; 2) overproducing and differential promotion of innovations; and 3) co-opting ofmedia gatekeepers. Boundary spanners are contact people at both the input and output points of the system. For example, boundary spanners at the input point would be talent agents, scouts, and promoters who are trying to get the innovation "looked at". Boundary spanners on the output system would try to get the innovation to the retail markets via buyers or mass media organizations. Due to the unpredictability of the consumer, the culture industry minimizes capital investment and pushes out several innovations that they understand will probably fail. Yet they see this as the best business strategy: one hit will pay for all of the failures and it is far better to increase the chances of scoring that hit through overproduction than underproduction.

Further, they differentially promote items and select only a few for mass promotion.

Lastly, the culture industry relies heavily on the coverage of their innovation by the mass media. Here, they try to influence that coverage by directly marketing in trade magazine or through industry parties to get exposure.

Changes in cultural markets also produce changes in the culture industry system.

Cultural products typically change slowly over time but on occasion rapid change can drastically alter what consumers demand and how producers scramble to meet that demand. This has been evidenced in a variety of cultural markets: rock music and 32 country music (Peterson and Berger 197 5; Peterson 1990) and prime television production (Bielby and Bielby 1994). In terms of market change, Peterson (1990) posited a production model that shows how rapid change in six components affects cultural markets and products: technology, law and regulation, industry structure, organization structure, occupational career, and market. Changes in one component can produce slow change, but when changes in several, or all, of the components occur concurrently, it can bring about rapid change in cultural production (Peterson and Berger;

1975, Peterson 1990). As such, the culture industry must be able to adapt to such changes in order to meet market demands. Thus, while markets work feverishly to push products out for consumers, the consumers play an important link in what will be produced for their consumption and how that cultural object is interpreted.

Cultural Objects: Empirical Studies of Audience Reception

In recent years, the focus of the production of culture school has expanded beyond the supply side of production in terms of the culture industry, cultural markets, and the cultural producer to include that of the demand side of production, or the cultural consumer (Griswold 1994; Peterson 2000). Here, the focus turns to consumer audiences and how they receive, interpret, and make meaning out of the cultural objects marketed to them. There are two competing theoretical perspectives of how audiences fashion meaning. On one hand, mass consumption theory stipulates that actors have no agency and that they are at the mercy of a culture industry that has rendered them cultural dopes by overexposing them to the sensationalized (Adorno and Horkheimer 1972; Griswold

1994). As such, they are incapable of creating their own meaning and must rely on others 33 such as politicians, reporters, etc. to tell them what the meaning is. On the other hand, those who subscribe to the auto-production of culture see actors as active participants in making meaning through reinterpretation or resistance (Griswold 1994; Peterson 2000).

Peterson (2000) describes the auto-production perspective as the idea "that mass production is not linked to mass consumption, but to a reception process in which people actively select and reinterpret symbols to produce a culture for themselves" (p. 230). One central question in both camps of reception studies is how social background influences the ways in which an audience uses and interprets cultural objects.

Socio-economic status and the reception of cultural objects are well documented in scholarly theorizing and research regarding highbrow (elite) and lowbrow (pop) cultural forms. One of the most influential works cited on the subject is Pierre

Bourdieus's (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique ofthe Judgment of Taste. In this work,

Bourdieu (1984) argues that culture can be thought of as capital; much as we think in terms of economic and political capital. A person's distinction, or social position, is determined by the kinds of capital that they possess (economic, social, or cultural). Class status is reproduced through the habitus, where one likes cultural products that one can afford. Bourdieu (1984) refers to this as taste and according to him, people use taste to classify things as beautiful, ugly, distinguished, or vulgar. An essential part of the process of distinction is to reject non-elite cultural patterns as unsophisticated. Further, cultural capital consists of education and knowledge about certain topics, specifically the beautiful and distinguished cultural forms. This knowledge as cultural currency buys entree into a wider social network and is often converted into economic and social capital to advance their distinction in society. Therefore, distinguishing oneself from low brow 34 forms of culture and understanding cultural variety can be used to one's advantage in gaining social status.

Scholars have also studied the controlling of cultural objects for gaining social standing and limiting access of certain groups to cultural capital (DiMaggio 1982; Levine

1984; 1988). Levine traces historical evidence that up until the mid-nineteenth century, distinctions ofhighbrow and lowbrow cultural objects did not exist. In fact, his analysis shows that Americans shared public culture in all forms with Shakespeare being the most popular playwright and opera performances as a popular form of entertainment.

However, in late nineteenth century he documents an effort by the White Anglo-Saxon

Protestants (WASPs) to distinguish certain cultural forms as highbrow in order to create a unique identity and division from the influx of immigrants. In order to gain social standing, the WASPs recast certain forms of culture as lowbrow, labeling them corrupt and immoral and associating them with the immigrant population.

Along a similar vein, DiMaggio (1982) historically traces this shift in the city of

Boston in the nineteenth century. The Boston elites (called Brahmins) were upset at the commingled forms of popular and high culture and sought to make a distinction between the two and to control high culture. At the time, Boston lacked the organizational arrangements that could make the distinction between popular culture and high culture.

However, by 1910, pop culture and high culture were encountered less frequently in the same setting because the Brahmins were able to utilize the concept and structure of the non-profit organization to separate the two. These non-profits were a "trustee organization" that were able to ignore and withstand market demands because they were self governed and supported. The organizations used classification and framing to their 35 advantage, as it was through the non-profit entitlements that they could define boundaries of art and entertainment and through framing they could develop a new etiquette for appropriation. They created the Museum of Fine Arts and the Boston Symphony and pitched it as being for the public. But they had to first take the art away from the mass and repackage it in the form of an institution for the mass. Dimaggio (1982) ultimately talks about how two high culture organizations (Boston Symphony orchestra and

Museum of Fine Arts) were created by elites to make visible their high status in class crossing culture. This analysis is important because it directly shows that high culture did not emerge on the basis of aesthetics, but from that of cultural politics. This is an excellent example ofGramsci's (1985) concept of cultural hegemony and it is important because it highlights how dominant groups can subvert minority groups because they can control and define cultural appropriation.

While there are class differences in the consumption of cultural objects, the cultural division between highbrow and lowbrow may be overstated (Bryson 1996;

Peterson and Kern 1996). Bryson (1996) investigated the degree of cultural capital and inclusiveness and exclusiveness with respect to education, politics, and musical taste.

The study analyzed a General Social Survey data set that asked respondents to evaluate

18 music genres on a Likert scale ranging from "like very much" to "dislike very much".

Findings indicate that education reduced exclusivity in musical taste. Further, political attitudes increased exclusivity in musical taste and that negative attitudes about certain groups of people transferred to musical genres associated with certain groups of people

(country, rap, gospel and heavy metal often associated with race and lower education).

Interestingly, all people seemed to want to listen to "anything but heavy metal. Similarly, 36 Peterson and Kern (1996) used data from the Survey ofPublic Participation in the Arts to study musical taste among the elite, or whom they refer to as "snobs" or "omnivores".

They define a snob as anyone who does not partake in any lowbrow or middlebrow activities and an omnivore as someone who is open to appreciating them all. They find that highbrows are becoming more omnivorous cultural consumers because they partake in a variety of non-elite musical genres such as gospel, rap, bluegrass, rock, etc. These findings were also confirmed in a recent study of social status and consumption in the

United States (Alderson, Junisbai, and Heacock 2007). In contrast to Bourdieu (1984), these two important studies show that "distinction" does not necessarily require rejecting all lowbrow cultural forms. Groups cut across class lines in their consumption of cultural products but due to social background, they may interpret them quite differently.

Therefore, while class does have impact on reception of cultural objects, many other variables also influence it.

Gender is also important to the reception of cultural objects, yet it has largely been ignored in the cannon of the sociology of culture with respect to cultural production

2 and audience reception . One of the most widely cited study on gender and reception is

Radway's (1984) ethnography ofhow women read and interpret romance novels and the significance the novels play in their every day lives. In terms of reception, Radway

(1984) was interested in what made a romance novel successful and what characterized a failed romance. The successful romance typically involved a storyline where a woman

2 Gender has been studied in the area known as cultural studies or in media studies, distinct lines of inquiry in and of themselves. However, within the field of sociology of culture, very few articles take gender, or race for that matter, as their central focus. 37 meets a man whom she believes to only have interest in her for sexual reasons, so she thwarts his advances. They become separated in some form (due to war, travel, etc.) in which the long separation leads the rejection to become reversed. Eventually the male exhibits tenderness and warmth and declares his love for the woman and they end up together in a romantic relationship. Radway (1984) analyzes this as a way to authenticate the social relations of patriarchy, but she also finds that patriarchy influences more than the storyline; it influences the reception of the novel among the female readers. In fact, the readers stated that the primary reason they read romance novels was for escapism from the domestic doldrums they faced in their daily lives. While reading the romances gave them pleasure and escape, they also felt an extreme sense of guilt in their indulgences in the novels. Radway (1984) notes that the guilt seemed to stem from their husbands who voiced displeasure at the time and money spent on the novels that they thought would be better spent on the household.

Gendered roles and expectations about those roles are also evident in more public arenas of audience reception such as watching horror films at the cinema. Berenstein

(1996) analyzes how the audience, through their reactions and performances as spectators, contributes to the overall effectiveness of the horror movie in scaring or horrifying. For female spectators, this performance is more exaggerated in that they perform anticipated gender roles such as screaming, gasping, fainting, or grabbing onto their male dates. Males, too, have gendered performances in that they are expected to act brave and as comfort to their female companions even if they are shaken by the movie.

Thus, the audience impacts how the film will be received along with the story line and quality of actors' performances. Both Radway (1984) and Berenstein (1996) illuminate 38 how gender inserts itself into the reception of cultural objects and how reception is accomplished through the lens of gender. However, gender is curiously ignored at the level of production of cultural objects.

In this dissertation, I add another dimension to the analysis of production and reception. I not only looked at the producers and receivers as separate entities, I also introduced the analytical category of producer-as-receiver. How do those who participate in the production of a cultural object also experience the reception of that object by other members of society? This dissertation focused on the Hooters Girl as a simultaneous producer as receiver, and looked at how issues of power and cultural appropriation, systems of production, and gendered audience reception merge.

Framing as a Part of Production of Cultural Objects

According to Goffman (1974), one way actors recognize meaning and context is via frames. Frames provide a context for interpreting meaning and deciphering our experiences; they are cognitive structures that guide our perception and representation of reality. In the book, Frame Analysis, Goffman (1974) introduces us to his innovative concept of a frame(s):

When an individual in our Western society recognizes a particular event, he tends, whatever else he does, to imply in this response (and in effect employ) one or more frameworks or schemata of interpretation. (p. 46)

This schema of interpretation allows an individual to give meaning and context to a particular event/scene and they allow us to assess what is going on in any given situation.

In any given day-to-day activity, actors encounter a variety of cultural objects that they must decipher. The frame that they apply influences the kinds of interpretations that 39 people make and the kinds of action that they take with regard to a cultural object. While

Goffman (1974) conceived of frames as unconscious practices, there is a thrust in literature to show how frames are consciously created as a deliberate process. The media

(Entman 1991; Gamson and Modigliani 1989), politicians (Nelson et al. 1997), and organizers of social movements (Gitlin 1979; Hilgartner and Bosk 1998) are constantly manufacturing frames about issues that individuals adopt and apply to daily experiences and cultural objects. Therefore, frames are used by cultural producers to create meaning in the mind of audiences.

Gamson and Modigliani (1989) examine how frames can create different realities, or what they call interpretive packages, that individuals deploy as strategies of action to make sense of cultural objects. Using nuclear power as the subject of their study,

Gamson and Madiglioni (1989) employ historical analysis of network news broadcasts, news magazines, and editorial cartoons regarding nuclear power to examine two important linkages in the melding of media discourse and public opinion: the perceived credibility of the source and the number of times a subject appears in the newspaper.

According to them, packages have internal structures: they have a central organizing theme (a frame) that makes sense of events; they imply a range of positions that allow for some degree of controversy; and they contain condensed symbols in the form of a metaphor, catch phrase, or symbol. There are competing packages on a variety of issues and packages that ebb and flow over time adjusting for new events. Interpretive packages have careers that are affected by cultural resonance, sponsor activities, and media practices. A package must culturally resonate and be taken up by an organization with a larger agenda. Organizations provide catch phrases to journalists (e.g., make 40 peace not war) who unconsciously give these "official packages" the benefit of the doubt, making them the starting point for the discussion of an issue. Thus, public opinion is shaped by these packages.

If different sources are presenting different versions, the audience must pick the version that they believe to be the most truthful or credible to their life experiences, interactions, and worldviews. Package representations varied by field and time. For example, several different interpretive packages were applied to nuclear power over the years: progress, energy independence, not cost effective, and Devil's bargain. Package representation varies by field and by time and this shows us that a frame analysis must be conducted across fields. Packages have careers and during the course of those careers public opinion can change.

Entman (1991) illuminates how the media, as cultural producers, use framing to create meaning. In this study, he examines how the U.S. news media presented two seemingly similar events: the downing of a Korean airliner by the Soviets and the downing of an Iranian airliner by the United States Navy. His analysis of various media outlets shows that the downing of these airlines was framed differently by the media.

This difference in framing led to two different internalizations in the public mind: the downing of the Korean airliner by the Soviets as murder and the downing of the Iranian airliner by the U.S. as an accident. He identifies five characteristics of frames: size, agency, categorization, identification, and generalization. Size refers to placement of items such as pictures and headlines in order to illustrate importance. When framing an issue, agency is often assigned in terms of who is responsible and this also influences how a frame is categorized in terms ofwhat labels are attached to it and even the moral 41 tone. The story must resonate with readers and as such, there is deliberate attempt to create identification with an item to the audiences. Lastly, frames employ generalization in terms of making the act seem as a broader symbol of something else.

The different framing techniques used to describe these incidents created two very distinct internalizations of these incidents that directly influence public opinion. For example, the dominant frame of the Korean airliner incident was that of moral outrage; it received negative coverage, blame was assigned to Moscow and the news media implied it was purposeful. On the other hand, the Iranian airliner incident was framed as a technical problem and received significantly less media attention. Blame was assigned to technical difficulties and images and rhetoric downplayed fault. Ultimately, Entman

(1991) shows that meaning carried in frames can be highly structured and that it can be manipulated.

Public opinion is directly tied to a cultural object with respect to the retrieval of meaning (Schudson 1989). If an issue/object is not portrayed in the media, people are unlikely to be aware of or even have an opinion on the subject matter. In his receive­ accept-sample model, Zaller (1992) notes that people are rarely called upon to express their opinions on certain matters and do not need to integrate competing views and packages that they may hear about a given topic or phenomenon. Yet, when an individual is "put on the spot", they will simply bring forth the most recent information they have on the topic in memory (Zaller 1992). Conversely, if it is repeatedly represented in the media, people will internalize their opinion and subsequently identify an interpretive package that they wish to adopt (Gamson and Modigliani 1989). 42 Therefore, frames and frames bounded in interpretive packages are crucial elements to the organization of meaning and experience with respect to cultural objects.

As the literature shows, frames are produced and received. At the producer level, frames deal with how something is presented to audiences in terms of language selection, visual images used, and time and space given to the object. At the audience level, frames deal with how an individual (or group) internalizes the meaning of the producer frame. As discussed in the production of culture section above, different audiences internalize different meanings, regardless of how it is presented by the cultural producer. While audiences interpret their own meaning, they often use the language and metaphors of what is presented in the media to help construct their own meanings.

In this study, some frames are equivalent to stereotypes and stigmas are more narrow frames. Framing is important to the study at hand because I examined how audiences framed the cultural object of the Hooters Girl. Additionally, I examined how the women of Hooters negotiated the various frames that others had applied to their work.

I also looked at how their involvement in production impacted their daily lives, with particular emphasis on negative framing of that cultural object as stigmatized.

Stigma

A stigma may have long lasting implications in terms of life chances for those that are considered to be at the social or cultural margins. Sociologists (Becker 1963; Fine and Asch 1988; Goffman 1963; Link and Phelan 2001) and social psychologists

(Aronson and Steele 2005; Crocker and Steele 1998; Jones et al. 1984; Major and

O'Brien 2005; Neuberg et al. 1994) have paid quite a bit of attention to the question of 43 stigma. Further, stigma is linked to a variety of circumstances such as mental illness

(Corrigan and Penn 1999), substance abuse (Room 2005), obesity (Carr and Friedman

2005) and adult entertainment (Bradley 2007).

Stigma is widely regarded by scholars in sociology and psychology as a socially constructed label about an attribute, behavior, or group identity that members of society possess (Crocker et al. 1998; Link and Phelan 2001). In fact, stigma is at a complicated nexus of psychological and sociological forces. Link and Phelan (200 1) identify four components that must converge in order for a stigma to exist. First, people must distinguish and label differences. Second, people must associate difference with negative attributes in the form of stereotyping and labeling. Third, there must be a separation into categories of"us" (non-stigmatized) and "them" (the stigmatized). Lastly, those labeled individuals or groups will experience status loss and discrimination. Link and Phelan

(2001) also underscore the importance of access to social, economic, and political power to the placement of stigma and to the management of consequences related to the stigma.

As the following sections will show, the voluminous research on stigma is rooted in the comprehensive work ofErving Goffman (1963). Goffman (1963) theorizes that those who are normals (not stigmatized) reduce the stigmatized to a less than human state justifying discriminatory practices. In doing so, normals construct a stigma-theory which is an ideology that explains the stigmatized inferiority. Essentially, the stigma-theory is a rationalization or justification for animosity, prejudice, or discriminatory practices against the stigmatized.

Stigma is one result of meaning making that can originate in the production, reception, and framing of attributes, cultural objects, or cultural forms. Griswold (1994) 44 defines meaning as it relates to a cultural object as referring "to the objects capacity, in addition to whatever practical or direct properties it may have-to suggest or point to something else" (p. 18). Griswold (1994) also explains that culture is comprised of symbols that are complex in their meaning because they evoke a variety of connotations.

Thus, any cultural object or form does not simply point to one single meaning, it points to a multitude of meanings.

On the macro-level, a stigma can be the result of the framing of a particular cultural attribute or cultural object as undesirable and in turn this stigma becomes embedded in the larger social structure. As demonstrated in the section above, the dominant culture or moral entrepreneurs can drive stigma in that it is often associated with political, social, and economic power (Link and Phelan 2001). As, Lopes (2006) suggests, moral entrepreneurs use their power to "make certain attributes problematic and then demand intervention." (p. 390). Intervention may come in the form of institutionalization, imprisonment, or censorship (Lopes 2006).

Yet stigma labels are inconsistent and on the micro-level; audiences have agency in that they can accept or reject the framing of a cultural object as stigmatized.

Consequently, what one audience labels as stigmatized, another may view as normal.

Further, stigma varies with respect to time and place. As noted above, in the context of cultural change, different groups may attach differing meanings with some buying into the stigma and others rejecting the stigma. As such, different groups may attach differing meanings to attributes, behaviors, and group identities; some will stigmatize a particular cultural object while others do not. Thus, one cultural object may have a variety of 45 meanings ascribed to it by different audiences because of competing values and beliefs as to who and what is defined as normal.

Accordingly, stigma is particularly relevant to popular cultural forms given the history of certain forms being characterized as low status and being marginalized in society. In fact, stigma has been associated with the production and reception of popular cultural forms such as comic books (Lopes 2006), fandom (Cusak et al. 2003), jazz musicians (Becker 1963; Lopes 2005), romance novels (Radway 1984), tattoo artistry

(Kosut 2006), and musical gemes (Binder 1993; Bryson 1996; Lopes 2005).

Lopes (2006) provides an eight point analytical framework for considering how stigma works in popular culture. First, stigma attaches to a variety of cultural objects, including cultural forms and cultural producers and receivers. For example, Lopes (2002;

2005) shows how, in the early 1920's, jazz was a stigmatized geme due to its African

American heritage. Yet the public demanded jazz and professional musicians sought to meet this demand, having to deal with being stigmatized for playing the music.

Second, stigma can attach to a broader cultural form (such as all pornography), or at a more specific level such as geme or style (e.g., hip-hop or punk style). Third, producers and receivers are stigmatized through a labeling process that discredits them and makes them problematic, often resulting in some form of intervention. For example, rap music and subsequently rap artists have been viewed as obscene and threatening

(Binder 1993). On the other hand, audiences are also stigmatized and marked for intervention. In the same way that rap artists have been stigmatized, so have those who listen to the music. These examples also evidence the fourth and fifth point of the framework: that stigma implies harm or danger and that it leads to intervention by 46 "normals". In the case ofrap music, intervention has come in the form criminal investigation and prosecution, a call for self regulation in the industry in terms of message (from Black leaders such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Oprah Winfrey), and censorship (such as in the case of2 Live Crew and The WUTANG clan). In fact, those who participate in the production or consumption of rap music are subject to the most damaging effects of stigma- discredited social identity.

The last three facets of the framework relate to how stigmatized producers and receivers deal with stigma. The sixth point of the framework considers how producers and receivers/consumers respond to stigma threat via stigma management or through the creation of alternative stigma theories. Lopes (2002) identifies how jazz music and subsequently jazz musicians were stigmatized in broader culture. He found that those media outlets who covered the jazz genre worked feverishly to counteract the stigma of the producers associated with it; yet jazz audiences were not stigmatized. Alternatively, science fiction as a genre is not necessarily stigmatized, but those who are fans of the genre, such as trekkies are (Cusak et al. 2003; Lopes 2006).

Lopes (2006) also includes in his model the fact that stigma can affect the development of cultural forms. In fact, he found that the decline of the comic book market was a direct result of being stigmatized. Similarly, he also presents how the stigma of playing jazz music saw the musical genre almost disappear (Lopes 2006). The last point in the model is that stigma theories change over time. That is, a cultural form that was stigmatized yesterday may not be stigmatized today and vice versa.

It is clear that stigma matters in terms of popular culture: it attaches to a variety of cultural objects, including some popular cultural forms, those involved in the production 47 of the form and those audiences who consume the form. While the literature discusses cultural forms and stigma, it almost ignores the case of gender and how gender is brought to bear on cultural forms in terms of production and consumption. This dissertation inserts gender into the discussion by looking at how those who participate in the production of a cultural form (in this case the Hooters Girl) are stigmatized by non­ consumers and consumers alike. More importantly, it adds how cultural producers use culture to negotiate the stigma threat applied to their particular form.

It is important to ground the stigma of popular cultural forms in the broader stigma framework. While the literature on stigma is capacious, this discussion will review the foundation of stigma provided by Erving Goffman (1963) and the strategies that are employed to deal with stigma. These lines of inquiry with respect to stigma are the most germane to the research at hand because I examined how a popular cultural object is received by various audiences in society and in particular, how some stigmatize that object.

Conceptualization of Stigma

Goffman ( 1963) presented his theorizing about the concept of stigma in his groundbreaking work Stigma: Notes on the Management ofSpoiled Identity and it has remained a constant presence in all ensuing studies on stigma. A founding precept of his argument lies within the idea that society organizes social encounters around categorizations and attributes applied to groups in order to help identify how social interactions with members ofthose groups should proceed. In fact, these social settings are infused with anticipations and expectations such that when an individual enters the 48 setting to interact, there is a general understanding of how that person should be or act.

Goffman (1963) argues that in any given social encounter, certain social identities are expected, even demanded, and when these demands are not fulfilled questions arise about the social identify of the person in question. Thus, there are two social identities present in any given social encounter: the virtual social identity (what a person ought to be) and the actual social identity (what the person actually is).

The conceptualization of stigma arises out of the break between these two identities. When a person's actual social identity is found to be different from the expected social identity, the person is vulnerable to be socially stigmatized and rejected if the actual social identity is thought to contain "an attribute that is deeply discrediting"

(Goffman 1963:3). Here, the person's social identity is thought to be that of a spoiled identity and Goffman (1963) uses the term stigma to refer to reducing the individual

"from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one" (p. 3). He qualifies this definition, noting that the concept of stigma does not refer directly to an attribute, but to a relationship between attributes and stereotypes. This is an important distinction because a categorization or attribute does not have an innate quality; in order for an attribute to signal stigma to others, it must resonate with a shared meaningful negative understanding or stereotype (Jones et al. 1984). Thus, since Goffman (1963) first proposed the concept, stigma is now widely understood to be a socially constructed phenomena and what signals difference or stigma to one group may signal normalcy to another (Becker 1963;

Crocker et al. 1998; Jones et al. 1984). Further, as other scholars have confirmed, there is great variance across time and space as to what attributes are stigmatized (Crocker et al. 49 1998; Jones et al. 1984) and that stereotypes are widely shared among members of a particular culture (Crocker et al 1998; Major and O'Brien 2005).

Goffman (1963) introduces three universal forms of stigma: abominations ofthe body, blemishes of individual character, and tribal stigma of race, nation, and religion.

Abominations of the body refer to physical deformations in appearance such as a physical handicap or severe scarring. This could be expanded to include tattooing and body piercing. Blemishes of individual character refer to personality flaws such as controlling behaviors, mental illness, or criminal activity. Lastly, tribal stigma refers to group membership in a particular racial, national, or religious category that may be passed on through generations or socio-historical contexts. These types of stigmas are more outwardly visible, refer to an entire category or group, and sometimes point to individual stigma. While not part of his universal forms, Goffman (1963) also discussed the concept of courtesy stigma. Courtesy stigma occurs when people who associate with the stigmatized receive a stigma as it relates to associating with people who are discredited, or what Neuberg et al (1984) call a "stigma by association". This stigma is afforded to close associations such as friends and family (Miller and Kaiser 2001). Often people will limit or forego association with the stigmatized in order to avoid a courtesy stigma.

Implicit in the discovery of the break between the two identities that Goffman

(1963) identifies is the degree to which a stigma is visible to others in an encounter.

Goffman (1963) asks:

Does the stigmatized individual assume his differentness is known about already or is it evident on the spot, or does he assume it is neither known by those present nor immediately perceivable by them? (p. 4) 50 Goffinan (1963) refers to the degree ofvisibility as discredited (where the stigma signal is outwardly or potentially visible and detectable) or discreditable (where the stigma signal is neither visible nor detectable). The degree of visibility is very important with respect to stigma because it influences the direction of the social encounter whereby the stigmatized must engage in either tension management (if discredited) or information management (if discreditable).

Because ofthe importance ofvisibility, Goffinan (1963) disentangles three types of perceptibility of a stigma mark which have very different implications for interaction: known-about-nesss, obtrusiveness, and perceived focus. Known-about-ness refers to the degree of knowledge about an individual's stigma. If a stigma is very visible, merely coming into contact with others will cause it to be known about. However, this is compounded by what others actually know about the individual through previous contact or gossip. Obtrusiveness refers to the degree to which the stigma interferes with the flow of the interaction. He provides an example of a person in a wheelchair where everyone is seated at a large table in a business meeting. Since everyone is seated, this does not interrupt the interaction at hand. But if the person had a speech impediment and was expected to speak, this might signal a failing on his part and interrupt the interaction.

Lastly, Goffinan (1963) considers perceived focus where there might be impact based on the focus area of the interaction. For example, if a job candidate is considered ugly by the potential employer, this may have an impact on the perceived capabilities of the job candidate causing them not to be hired. Therefore, audiences decode the degree of visibility of a stigma. 51 For the discredited, or when the sigma is known to normals prior to the interaction, the social encounter will be approached from the point of tension management whereby the stigmatized will try to manage any resulting tensions in the interaction resulting from the awareness of the stigma (Goffman 1963). Yet, not all stigma marks are outwardly visible and these actors enter encounters assuming the stigma mark is unknown. For those stigma marks that are not clearly visible, there is always the chance that they will be exposed during the course of social interaction. This causes anxiety and a certain degree of social danger; the discreditable may not face immediate social rejection, prejudice, or discrimination, but must face an unsuspecting acceptance by those they know will be prejudiced about the kind of person that they may eventually be revealed to be. As such, those who are at risk of being exposed by normals engage in information management to control social information about them in order to thwart or mitigate the discovery of the stigma. This dissertation draws upon these widely accepted and tested conceptualizations of stigma and uses them as the conceptual foundation for this study.

Strategies of Action for Information Management

Goffman (1963) identifies three key properties of social information: information about an individual, information about abiding characteristics, and information conveyed by bodily expression in immediate presence of others who receive that expression (p. 43).

Further, social information is conveyed through social signs or what Goffman (1963) refers to as symbols. Symbols also have properties which must be considered during the course of information. They may be permanent (e.g., skin color), impermanent (ascribed 52 or achieved), or designed by man to convey information (e.g., insignia). Symbols and their meanings may change over time. In the course of managing information, symbols have a dual purpose: they must be considered by the stigmatized in order to fully manage information and they point to how normals interpret the meanings about others. Scholars have identified a variety of techniques that actors use to manage social information in interactions where there is the possibility of a spoiled identity (Goffman 1963; Kusow

2007; Snow and Anderson 1987; Spradlin 1995; Yoshino 2006). This is at the heart of this study because the actor who is managing social information must unpeel the multiple layers of meaning that exist in a social interaction in order to make decisions about disclosure or non-disclosure of social information that could result in stigma.

Goffman (1963) introduces two important techniques used to manage the flow of information in an interaction: passing and covering. Passing refers to concealing the potentially discrediting information from other parties to the interaction. Here, the information is managed through secrecy; as the individual is often in a position where they do not have to disclose information about him or herself in any given interaction or where they work hard to conceal the information. The second technique that Goffman

(1963) introduces is covering. Covering refers to an individual's readiness to admit the discrediting information but "make great efforts to keep the stigma from looming large"

(p. 102). Here individuals try to minimize the tension related to the revelation of the discrediting characteristic. While passing and covering have similarities, their main difference is that passing refers to the visibility of the stigma and covering refers to its obtrusiveness. Yoshino (2006) provides an example that distinguishes between the two techniques: Franklin Delano Roosevelt used to hide his wheelchair behind a desk before 53 his cabinet would enter the office for meetings. He was not passing, as everyone knew he was disabled. He was covering in that he was playing down his disability so that his more Presidential attributes would be in the foreground. There is an interesting link between the two techniques: not everyone can pass but everyone can attempt to cover.

Passing is most often used by those whose stigma may not be clearly visible and who are put in the position to "tell or not to tell, to let on or not let on, to lie or not to lie, and in each case, to whom, when and where" (Goffman 1963:42). I am working from the premise that passing is intentional and that it requires awareness and skill on the part of

"the passer". Goffman (1963) confirms this awareness in his discussion of a moral career of the stigmatized as they move through various stages of understanding their stigma dilemma. That is, those who are trying to pass must be aware of the surroundings and interpret them as potentially stigmatizing, make conscious decisions about what to disclose or not disclose, and then manage the interaction.

Spradlin (1998) identifies six types of passing techniques that she personally used in an organizational setting to avoid the discovery of her lesbian identity: dissociating, distancing, dodging, distracting, denial, and deceiving. Disassociating occurs when the stigmatized try to separate themselves from the perceived stigmatized identity. This occurs by rejecting associations with members of the same group while affirming membership in an opposite group. Spradlin (1998) uses the gay and lesbian community as an example. In interactions, she notes that gay and lesbian individuals often go through great lengths not to associate with other gay and lesbians in an attempt not to be found out. Rather, they sought out the company of heterosexuals, affirmed heterosexual values and relationships through conversations, and were careful not to use language 54 indicative of a same sex relationship (such as the word partner or civil union). This technique also goes hand in hand with distancing.

Distancing refers to how the stigmatized avoid or remove themselves from intimate relationships, conversational settings, or group membership (Spradlin 1998).

For example, in their study ofhomeless individuals, Snow and Anderson (1987) found that homeless individuals physically distanced themselves from other homeless individuals and interventionist institutions in order to avoid being directly associated with being homeless.

When involved in an interaction, the person who is trying to pass may also evade the discovery of a stigma by engaging in topic shifts or even topic avoidance in order to keep the interaction away from the sensitive topic related to the stigma. Spradlin (1998) refers to this as dodging. She describes how she would move or avert others from uncomfortable topics that might lead to someone discovering that she was lesbian. She offers the example of a colleague asking "Do you live alone" with her response of"Who can afford to these days?" in an attempt to divert the discussion without actually answering the question at hand directly.

Another passing technique is that of distracting. Distracting produces confusion about the identity that may be stigmatized (Spradlin 1998). Here, the passer may give cues or messages that bolster a particular identity to foster authenticity, albeit that the cues and messages may be misleading. As an example, Spradlin (1998) was in a committed lesbian relationship, but did not want others at work to know that she was gay.

As such, she divulged that she had been married several years ago but was now divorced. 55 While this information was true, others assumed that she had been in a heterosexual marriage and did not clue in to the fact that she was currently in a lesbian relationship.

Denial occurs when the stigmatized withholds the confirmation of a particular identity (Spradlin 1998). For example, Spradlin ( 1998) notes how she listed her parents as emergency contacts rather than her partner, not having pictures of her partner at her desk, no personal phone calls during work, or visits to work. People may also try to manage information by engaging in deceit, the last passing technique that Spradlin (1998) identifies. When someone deceives, he or she is intentionally providing false messages to others in order to deceive them about an identity and these may be verbal or non­ verbal. For Spradlin (1998), verbal deceit came in the form of changing pronouns to refer to her partner as "him". Non-verbal deceit occurred when lesbians would have male friends attend functions with them so as to give the impression that they were a heterosexual couple.

An additional information management technique identified in the literature deals with how individuals disclose or not disclose information. Fisher (1984) defines disclosure as "verbal behavior through which individuals truthfully, sincerely, and intentionally communicate novel, ordinarily private information about themselves to one or more addressees". (p. 278). For individuals whose stigma is not outwardly knowable or visible, they have the option to assess social situations and weigh their decision about disclosing social information. As such, they have a choice about not disclosing any information at all, revealing tidbits of information, or providing full-disclosure.

Charmaz (1991) identifies two ways that people with an invisible characteristic that others might stigmatize accomplish disclosure. First, they may engage in protective 56 disclosing. Protective disclosure occurs when individuals make conscious decisions about who, how, when, and what information they will disclose in an attempt to protect themselves. In the case of the Hooters Girl, the woman may decide that the social risks of disclosure are too great and may only release certain bits of information like "I am a waitress" or completely withhold information and say that "I do not work". As Joachim and Acorn (2000) observe, protective disclosure is planned; it is controlled. On the other hand, individuals may engage in spontaneous disclosure. Spontaneous disclosure happens in the heat of the moment usually as an emotional reaction that does not give any forethought to the consequences of releasing the information.

Yet there is always the issue of being found out. In a study of epilepsy, Troster

(1997) identifies the concept of preventative disclosure. Preventative disclosure occurs when there is a stigmatizing characteristic that is not necessarily controllable. Thus, individuals make decisions about disclosure directly related to the risk of being found out. When epileptics can control their seizures they may not disclose their condition.

However, when their condition is not under control, they may have to tell people in order to prepare people for the possibility of witnessing and having to help in a seizure. In a broader social context for example, the Hooters Girl may have to automatically tell someone she works at Hooters if others that are party to the interaction will tell. Also, if she is out in public with some of her uniform in view, she may have no choice but to tell.

Another aspect of disclosure also deals with comfort level in a particular social context. Compartmentalization allows individuals to divide their social worlds into two parts: a smaller intimate world where they disclose their stigmatized identity to peers and family, and a larger impersonal world where the identity is concealed such as in formal 57 gatherings or work related settings (Kusow 2007). As such, individuals may disclose their stigma mark to their family and peers, but hide it from their workplace.

Managing information about oneself is well documented by scholars in a variety of stigmatized populations such as race and ethnicity (Marvasti 2005), homosexuals

(Hylton 2006; Shery 2004), transsexuals (Gauthier and Chaudoir 2004; Kando 1972) and those who have used alternative reproductive technologies (Becker et al. 2005). As the literature shows, stigma matters in society and people have conceived of a variety of ways to manage information about themselves in social encounters in order to save face or to accomplish a particular presentation of self.

Yet, while the techniques are generally presented as being called into play quite consciously, they are not presented as being appropriated in any systematic way. As such, this dissertation looks to identify a model of stigma strategies that identifies a variety of tools that individuals use to manage stigma and the way they use these tools in a methodical way.

Summary: Toward a Stigma Strategies Toolkit

This chapter has highlighted the most relevant theoretical perspectives that inform the present study. It began with an overview ofthe construct ofthe cultural toolkit and empirical studies that have validated and added to the construct. These studies have shown that individuals are indeed embedded in culture, but that they can also be thought of as separating themselves enough from culture in order to appropriate it during the course of everyday living. While the current thrust of the literature is to excavate the cultural toolkit, it still focuses on using cultural tools on improvisation. This exploratory 58 dissertation research seeks to show that cultural toolkits are also used in a calculated manner.

One aspect that this chapter has tried to inculcate with the construct of the cultural toolkit is the importance of meaning with respect to production, framing, and reception.

As such, I have presented relevant and predominate work in each of those fields. As the previous sections in this chapter have shown, meaning making, and its subsequent relation to stigma, is indeed a complicated social process. Meaning is produced and framed by cultural creators in a variety of fields such as the culture industry, political discourse, and media for various audiences. In tum, audiences either receive the meaning and the cultural object as the cultural producer intended or they refashion the meaning to include their own worldview, social backgrounds, and interpretive frameworks. One way that audiences may interpret a meaning is to attach a negative label or stereotype in the form of a stigma.

The research on stigma still has relevancy and currency. Most members of a particular culture are aware of cultural stereotypes that exist even if they do not accept them (Steele 1997). In fact, by the time a child reaches the age of 10, he or she is aware of cultural stereotypes applied to different groups (McKown and Weinstein 2003). As such, these common understandings are brought to bear by the stigmatized onto social situations and influences, the stigmatized appraisal ofthe social situation and subsequently, their behavior in the setting (Major and O'Brien 2005). Social situations vary in terms of the potential for stigma threat (Steele et al 2002). This is because an individual can never be sure which meanings they are dealing with in an interaction. On one hand, they may be dealing with someone who has interpreted the characteristic that 59 they possess positively. On the other hand, they may be dealing with someone who has interpreted the characteristic that they possess negatively. In addition, they may be dealing with several individuals in settings who have both interpretations. Those who are at risk for stigma must peel away the layers of a social interaction in order to understand how to manage the stigma threat. As such, I have presented both the historical and current knowledge of the construct of stigma as it is an important aspect of this study.

Clearly, then, actors are aware of meaning and the different groups who internalize different meanings. Further, through social processes and experiences, actors become aware of tools that are used to negotiate or mitigate these meanings when necessary. This is where the present research unites the literature. The impetus behind this research is my assertion that individuals draw upon their broader cultural toolkit to pull together tools/strategies in order to determine the meaning(s) they are dealing with and to navigate the possibility of stigma threat in making assessments about information management. Ultimately, a set of cultural tools will be identified that individuals use in the course of interaction to manage the information that others may find discrediting. CHAPTER3

METHODS OF INQUIRY

No one has ever asked me how !feel about Hooters. They just automatically assume it's a bad job. Elaine, Current Hooters Girl

The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between meaning, stigma threat, doing disclosure, and the cultural toolkit. As an exploratory study, it investigated the research questions: (1) What are the everyday consequences for those involved in the production of a cultural object? (2) How do actors experience the negative reception of the cultural object they have produced? and (3) In what ways do actors assemble and use cultural tools to manage stigma in everyday interactions?

These phenomenological questions were investigated through qualitative methodology that consisted primarily of in-depth interviews with women who have worked as a Hooters Girl, analysis of documents provided by key informants, and supplemented with observations from fieldwork. The description of the methods of inquiry for this study includes the following: why qualitative research, analytical framework, setting, sampling issues, the methods of data collection, explanations of the procedures of data analysis, and the discussion of the limitations of the methodology. I also present the demographic data of the participants in the study.

60 61 Why Qualitative Research?

This research project was grounded in the interpretive paradigm in that it sought to understand the realities that the women of Hooters generate for themselves and the how they negotiate the realities that others construct about Hooters. As the previous chapters and the nature of the research questions indicate, I am interested in social relationships, meaning, and symbols along with the processes that the individuals use to negotiate social interactions, particularly as it relates to stigma. The qualitative approach is well suited for investigating the experiences and interpretations of actors in their social worlds because it allows for the exploration of issues with depth, attention to detail, and accounts for nuances (Patton 2001; Silverman 2000). Further, qualitative in-depth interviewing is most appropriate for delving into lived experiences and for understanding meaning (Reinharz and Chase 2002). As other scholars working in the area of culture have commented, qualitative analysis is an important method for finding culture because it allows the researcher to analyze various different components of the phenomenon to be studied (Geertz 1973; Swidler 2001).

In this context, the qualitative approach is also appropriate because women's voices are often excluded from discussions about their work. Women's work, particularly that in the service or erotic industries, is devalued and often cast as dirty or tainted. The nature of their work is often defined by others that are in power or who act as moral entrepreneurs, leaving the women powerless to voice any objections to these definitions about their work. In this study, the respondents serve as the experts on their lives and provide a rich and detailed description about every day life occurrences, their 62 own categories of meaning, and how they use culture. Therefore, the qualitative approach is the most appropriate methodology for the research questions at hand.

Analytical Framework

Hooters Girl as Cultural Object

To begin answering the research questions, the Hooters Girl is treated as a cultural object. Cultural objects are a tool used to understand an aspect of the larger cultural system (Griswold 1994). Further, cultural objects are entities that are imbued with meaning. That is, a cultural object is created and has expressive attributes given to it by members of a particular society. Griswold (1994) describes the cultural object as "telling a story". Thus, the cultural object ofthe Hooters Girl tells a story and the story is different dependent on the audience.

The Cultural Diamond and Hooters Girl

The conceptual framework that I used to guide and organize this analysis is that of the cultural diamond (Griswold 1994). The cultural diamond is a heuristic tool that reflects all of the mechanisms that affect a cultural object. These include the cultural object, creators, audiences, and the social world. To show their interrelationship,

Griswold (1994) arranges these components in a manner resembling a diamond (Figure

3.1). The cultural object is produced by creators and is received by audiences in a defined social world. The diamond, in and of itself, does not imply relationships among these components; it is merely an "accounting tool". It is up to the researcher to make these connections via the data. 63

Social World Larger American Society World of Restaurants Value Placed on Women's Sexuality Economic Support

Receiver Diner Consumer Society Waitress as Hooters Creator Girl Franchisee Peer Groups Management (Friends, Relatives) Hooters Girl Potential Employers Spouses/Dates Activists (N.O.W.)

Cultural Object Hooters Girl

Figure 3 .1. Cultural Diamond of the Hooters Girl

In this study, the cultural object is the Hooters Girl; the producers/creators are the franchisers, management, training, and marketing staff, and the Hooters Girl herself. The parent company of the franchise sets the specifications and framing of the concept for each franchisee and the national marketing managers find new and innovative ways to market the concept. At the restaurant level (franchise), there are teams of management staff, marketing and promotional staff, and trainers who manufacture that experience via the Hooters Girl. Employee handbooks and training manuals prescribe appropriate appearance standards and service protocols. These handbooks ensure an identical dining 64 experience in every restaurant, regardless of location. As the Hooters Girl performs her job, she becomes the front line producer of the Hooters Girl. She is the face of the restaurant to the every day customer.

The receivers are the larger consumer society, the patrons of the restaurant, and the Hooters Girl herself. The first audience/receiver is American consumer society-at­ large as they are the audiences that receive messages about the restaurant. The second audience/receiver is the diner, who patronizes the restaurant. The third audience is the

Hooters Girl outside ofthe restaurant where she should be separated from her role as producer. Here I see the Hooters Girl as the recipient of the various perceptions of the role that she plays while at work. That is, as she interacts with others that are audience members of Hooters, she receives the meanings that they impart onto the cultural object she produces. While a thorough analysis would involve describing the relationship of all of the actors in the diamond, this study's main interest is in two particular relationships: the Hooters Girl as cultural object, creator, and receiver, and the receivers she encounters on a daily basis.

The important nexus here is that the waitresses of Hooters are simultaneously creators and receivers. As I will outline in subsequent chapters, the Hooters Girl exists within a complex social world; one that cherishes the dining out experience yet one that devalues women's work, particularly that ofwaitressing. Because of the sexual innuendo that pervades the work, the position is also further devalued. Thus, the cultural diamond is a useful tool to help organize the overall research design, data collection, and analysis process. 65 Gaining Entree

In order to recruit participants for this study, I enlisted the help of key informants at a franchise that owns and operates more than five Hooters restaurants located in various cities that comprise a major metropolitan area in the eastern part of the U.S.3

This particular Hooters franchise has several unique characteristics that make it ideal for use in this research. First, while it is not the largest franchise, it is one ofthe few franchises to have so many stores in such close proximity. Secondly, it ranks among the top producers within the larger corporate structure in terms of gross sales. There is clearly a demand for the Hooters concept in this region and the Hooters Girl, the respondents in this study.

Lofland and Lofland (1995) state that two barriers of conducting qualitative research is the process of"getting in" and "getting along". I have overcome these barriers on several accounts. First, I have a personal relationship with several key upper level employees who work in this particular franchise and several of the owners ofthe franchise. It is this relationship that gave me entree into this unique population and access to corporate information that was useful for this study. Further, these key relationships helped establish a credible and trusting relationship with the women who were potential respondents for the study. Because of the negative interactions they have with others about Hooters, they are suspicious of outsiders, particularly those asking questions about their experiences as a Hooters Girl. It was through my longstanding affiliation and friendship with the key informants, managers, and owners that validated

3 In order to protect the identities of my key informants and interviewees, I have chosen not to disclose any specific identifying information about the franchise. 66 by trustworthiness to the women, who became open, excited, and enthusiastic about talking with me.

Sample Design and Selection

The sample for this study was drawn from two distinct populations: women who currently work as a Hooters Girl, including women who worked as Hooters Girls but who currently work as managers or supervisors, and women who used to work as a Hooters

Girl. From July through October 2007, I conducted in-depth interviews with 25 women

(n=25): 15 who were working as Hooters Girls at the time ofthe study, 2 who had previously worked as Hooters Girls but who were still employed with the company in managerial roles, and 8 women who used to work as Hooters Girls but who no longer worked for the company in any capacity.

I employed convenience and purposive sampling to recruit the sample of women who currently worked as a Hooters Girl at the time of this study. Convenience sampling is not random and includes those participants that are readily available (Patton 2001 ).

Each year the franchise has an annual mandatory employee meeting at each of the restaurants. I was invited to come to one of the meetings to announce my study and recruit participants. I attended my first meeting in late July 2007. At the beginning of the meeting I was introduced as a friend of Hooters and was allowed time to explain the nature of my study to all in attendance at the meeting. I also announced the $30 incentive for participation. Several women were especially excited to tell me about the negative reactions and interactions they had and saw me as someone who was not only interested in those reactions and interactions but as someone who would understand them. At the 67 end of the meeting I took names and telephone numbers of interested participants and scheduled interview times. I also handed out business cards made on my home computer with my contact information (Figure 3.2). Further, I placed some cards on the employee bulletin board in the break room right next to the Hooters Girl schedule so that when women checked their schedule, they would see the cards and be reminded of the study.

Attn Hooters Girls! Earn Easy Cash! $30 for a 60-90 minute interview

Interviews are CONFIDENTIAL!

Questions are about your experience as a Hooters Girl. Questions are easy and there is no right or wrong answer! Get paid right after interview!

Contact Michelle@ (540) 287-8783

Figure 3.2. Recruitment Card

Outside of the announcement of my study at the meeting, I relied heavily on my contacts who are managers to help me identify possible participants who were currently employed as Hooters Girls. Several managers announced my study in 'jump- start".

Jump-start happens at the beginning of each shift (morning and evening) and it is where the manager on duty for the shift announces specials and promotions, contests, policy and procedure issues, and where the women choose the section of the restaurant where they 68 will be working for that shift. I also attended jump-starts for both shifts to recruit participants. Even with my connection to key informants within the franchise, some women remained skeptical about being interviewed. However, after women who participated in the interview told them that the interviews were "easy" or "not that bad", several more women signed up to be interviewed.

In addition to convenience sampling, I also employed purposive sampling because it allows for the selection of individuals who are information rich (Patton 2001).

Specifically, purposive sampling allowed for the recruitment of individuals for this study that represent diversity in age, race, and experience. I was able to use purposive sampling to ensure that I accounted for a wide range of continuums within the sample: the newest and longest working Hooters Girl, the youngest and oldest Hooters Girl; unmarried, married, and divorced; women who are in the calendar and on the billboard; and those who do not participate in any of those kinds of promotions, etc. Purposive sampling allowed me to cast a wide net to capture the differences among Hooters Girl and also served in allowing me to try to capture the negative cases. In conjunction with my key informants, I established contact with some women that I thought would provide rich narratives because of their age, race, or length of time working at Hooters.

On the other hand, women who no longer work at Hooters were a hidden population and it proved challenging to recruit them. One useful sampling strategy for studying hidden populations is snowball sampling (Heckathorn 2002). Snowball sampling occurs when people refer other people to participate in the study. In order to recruit women who no longer worked at Hooters, I asked the respondents who currently 69 worked at Hooters if they could recommend someone for the study. Indeed, many were able to refer others who no longer worked there to participate in the study. I also had personal relationships with several women who no longer worked at Hooters and I sent out emails requesting their participation and also asked that they forward my email to women they may still be in contact with that used to work there. Even though the women may no longer work at Hooters, their social networks may include women with whom they befriended while working together. These strategies worked well and garnered several participants.

While the sample size may appear small in contrast to that needed for representativeness, the richness of the cases selected are far more important with respect to qualitative inquiry than representativeness. As such, it was the data that drove the sample size within each population until I achieved redundancy, also known as saturation

(Babbie 2001; Lincoln and Guba 1985).

Comparisons

When designing this study, I intended to compare and contrast the experiences of women who currently work as Hooters Girls with those who no longer worked there. I had many reasons for wanting to make these comparisons. First, I sought to get the perspectives of women who were away from the environment in order to see if they constructed different meanings about the concept as opposed to the women who still worked there. In other words, I wanted to see if distance and major occurrences in life such as marriage, childbirth, moving forward with careers, and the aging/maturation process would have any influence on the way they interpreted the Hooters Girl. Further, 70 I wanted to understand how Hooters manifested itself in interactions with women who had significant time away from the job of Hooters Girl and who were more likely to be able to hide the fact that they worked at Hooters because it was not their most current job and was less likely to be called into play in an interaction.

While the women who no longer worked at Hooters did not experience the same immediate anxiety of having to reveal that they worked at Hooters because they could hide the fact, when they did tell someone they worked at Hooters, they experienced the same kinds of reactions that the women who currently work there did. And they employed the same kinds of cultural tools to handle the reactions after the disclosure. In the end, I received the same narratives from all the women. While I am not able to make contrasts between the two groups, their experiences were the same and as such their experiences remained salient even if I could not compare and contrast them.

Methods of Data Collection

For this study I employed multiple methods of data collection, or methodological triangulation, to enhance not only the richness of the data, but to enhance the richness of examination of the Hooters Girl and my subsequent findings. While the primary method of data collection was in-depth interviewing, I also engaged in participant observation at the annual franchise meeting in Las Vegas, NV in July 2007, as well as collected pertinent corporate documents that allowed for a richer description of the Hooters

Corporation, as well as, the Hooters Girl. In this section, I explain the collection procedures used for this dissertation. 71 Participant Observation and Document Collection

In order to ground the experiences of the women in the larger context of the

Hooters concept, it was important to understand the corporate mindset and structure to understand how the corporation seeks to produce the Hooters Girl persona. While the

Hooters of America (2007) website provided some valuable insight into this, it did not provide the depth that I needed to fully capture how Hooters produces and markets the

Hooters Girl. I was fortunate to be able to attend the annual Hooters International

Swimsuit Pageant and Franchise Convention in Las Vegas, NV from July 15 -18,2007 as a guest ofthe franchise I studied. This meeting consisted of the parent company, Hooters of America, and all ofthe franchisees of Hooters.

The meeting opened with a general assembly where we were addressed by Coby

Brooks, the CEO of Hooters of America, who provided an overall report on the current status of the company along with upcoming events for the company. The general assembly was also addressed by Lee Corso, an ex-football coach who is currently a sports analyst and broadcaster for ESPN. Mr. Corso is also a paid celebrity spokesperson for

Hooters and is featured in many of their marketing materials. The general assembly provided an interesting overview ofthe company's state and future vision.

There were four days of meetings, consisting ofbreak-out sessions on several topics. I attended two break-out sessions that were the most relevant to my dissertation: the "no-train-no-gain" session and the "marketing war room" session. The no-train-no­ gain session focused on best practices for training Hooters Girls to include training budgets and schedules. In this session, I was able to observe the companies commitment 72 and emphasis on an in-depth training program to see how they standardized the Hooters

Girl image throughout the franchise and franchisees. The marketing war room turned out to be the most informative to my dissertation. I was given front-row access to the companies' marketing vision including new marketing campaigns and budgets for major media outlets. In this session I learned how the company frames itself to its targeted audiences.

Over the course of the meetings I had conversations with other franchise owners, upper level executives of the company, as well as managers, trainers, and promotion managers at several franchises. By taking notes in the sessions, from memos that I made on my digital recorder regarding conversations I had, and the handouts/documents provided at the meetings and from key informants, I was able to get a clear picture regarding the company as a producer of the Hooters Girl. I present the information on the corporate context ofHooters in Chapter Four.

In-l)epthlnterviews

According to Patton (2001), the purpose of interviewing is to be able to gain entree into the other person's perspective. Given that I wanted to hear the voices ofthe participants regarding their experiences as Hooters Girls and the reactions they faced when managing information about their work, the interview was an attractive method to capture these lived experiences. Further, an advantage to the interview method of data gathering includes flexibility. Interviews "allow the interviewer to determine the wording ofthe questions, clarify terms that are unclear, control the order in which the questions are presented, and probe for additional information and detail" (Frankfort- 73 Nachimas and Nachimas 1992:227). Because I knew that the women had interesting and rich experiences, I wanted to ensure that the interviews were flexible so that I could adjust to unanticipated themes or experiences that arose in their narratives. In many situations the interviewer may be presented with data that were previously unconsidered.

Interviewing allows for the exploration of such information and its inclusion in subsequent interviews.

In order to examine the lived experiences ofthe women of Hooters in this study,

I chose the standardized open-ended interview format in combination with an interview guide approach. I combined these strategies in order to overcome the weakness ofthe standardized interview format which generally allows for little flexibility and the weakness ofthe interview guide approach, which can reduce the comparability of responses (Patton 2001 ). This combination allows for standardized questions to be asked of each interviewee while also allowing flexibility in probing, follow-up, or for the exploration of subjects that may come up that were not part of the original interview guide format. Further, this approach more fully includes participants in the process of discovery, by encouraging "free interaction between researcher and interviewee"

(Reinharz 1992: 18). In this way, open-ended questions may elicit more in-depth information from the interviewees as a result of the conversational atmosphere created.

This format also allows respondents to report what they deem relevant, at a level of disclosure determined by the interviewees.

The interview guide used for the interviews was developed in order to extract information that would answer the research questions (the interview guides are included 74 in the appendix). However, I also included questions that would elicit data that would help provide a broader context to understanding the Hooters Girl. The interview guide helped frame the interview interaction and also allowed for flexibility in asking follow-up questions or exploring interesting themes raised by the interviewee. The guide was a five page document that included six sections: (1) questions regarding the decision to become a Hooters Girl including reasons for applying, perception of Hooters before working there, and reactions of family and friends; (2) issues related to working as a Hooters Girl such as training, promotions, the uniform, sexual harassment, and general feelings about working as a Hooters Girl; (3) situations related to revealing working as a Hooters Girl such as the types of social situations where they would or would not feel comfortable telling someone they work(ed) at Hooters, how they assess social situations, and misconceptions about Hooters they have encountered; ( 4) questions related to how people reacted to the disclosure of employment at Hooters and how they handled those situations; (5) outcomes related to working as a Hooters Girl such as positive or negative consequences of working there; and (6) demographic information related to age, race/ethnicity, marital status, children, length of time at Hooters, job experience, and level of education. Question verbiage (such as tense) had to be modified for those who no longer worked at Hooters, but the interview guides mostly asked the same questions.

The interview guide also included probes when clarification was needed or to stimulate a response to the question asked. The interview guides are contained in Appendix A and

B. 75 To ensure that my respondents were protected from physical or emotional harm, the interview guides were submitted to the Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects at American University for approval. The project and interview guides were approved on May 1, 2007.

Research Setting and Interviewing Women

In an attempt to create a non-threatening and neutral interview interaction, I allowed the women to choose the place that they desired to be interviewed. This allowed the respondent to feel that she was in a safe environment, which I believe allowed for a more forthcoming discussion (Patton 2001). The only restriction that I imposed on the interview setting was that the interview needed to be conducted in a place with minimal distraction to include no background noise or interruptions such as that from children, animals, or telephone/pagers.

Because I do not live in the area where I conducted interviews, I rented a small condo close to the research setting. Several women chose to come to the condo to be interviewed. Many of the women who worked for Hooters found it to be easier logistically to complete the interview directly before or after their shift. Many women requested that we do the interview in my car or on the patio of the restaurant (that was closed to customers). Others requested that I come to their residence, which I obliged. I completed all interviews with the women who currently worked at Hooters in a face-to­ face format (n=17).

However, when dealing with women who no longer worked at Hooters, it became clear as I tried to get more participants for the study that face-to-face interviewing was 76 not going to work for their schedules. Many of the women were juggling full-time corporate jobs, family commitments, and dealing with child care issues that made it hard for them to break away for the interview. All of the women who contacted me desperately wanted to participate and many asked if I could conduct the interview over the telephone. I secured a telephone conversation recording device that worked with my digital recorder and conducted several interviews over the telephone during their children's nap times or when their spouse was home from work and watching the children. Further, three of the women who no longer worked at Hooters who were referred to me lived out of my state of residence. The telephone made the interview interaction with them possible. Because I was not particularly interested in body behaviors or demeanor, the telephone interview was an appropriate method by which to capture the stories of the women's lived experiences and how they "do disclosure".

While, it was a trade-off to do the telephone interviews, I completed seven out of the eight interviews with women who no longer work at Hooters over the telephone.

Regardless of the interview format (face-to-face or telephone), all participants were required to sign the informed consent (Appendix C) document before being interviewed acknowledging that they understood that their participation was voluntary and confidential. Further, the women also acknowledged that the interviews were being recorded. Warren (2002) notes that recorders can affect the interview in terms ofwhat the respondent wants to say and will say knowing that they are being recorded. While this is clearly a disadvantage with respect to this process, the information that could have been lost if left to interviewer memory is far more harmful. I found the women in this 77 study to be incredibly forthcoming with me and it seemed that the only time the recorder entered into the equation was when the women wanted to use a curse word or a more vulgar descriptive word such as "tits" or "ass". I encouraged the women to use the verbiage that they wanted to without any concern or embarrassment. In addition to recording the interviews, I took notes during the interview process to enhance the interview data by providing description, perspective, and context of the interview and the participants (Creswell 2002). In general, interviews lasted anywhere from 45 minutes to one hour and 45 minutes.

Feminist researchers have indentified the interview as an appropriate medium for inserting women's voices in the social sciences where they have often been invisible or marginalized (Reinharz and Chase 2003). As such, the interview can be a powerful experience in that it may help women find their voice or it may be therapeutic or validating. I certainly encountered these issues when recruiting and interviewing the participants for this study.

As described earlier in this chapter, I announced my study at an annual meeting.

In an effort to pique their interest, I stated that I understood that they enjoyed working at

Hooters but that not everyone they encountered thought that Hooters was appropriate or even a "cool" place to work. I asked if anyone had ever reacted negatively to them working at Hooters. After describing the study, I closed by making a statement that I bet no one has ever asked you about how you feel about Hooters or what your experiences at

Hooters are. These statements/questions got a rise out of the women who were nodding their head in agreement or making comments out loud like, "Right on", or "Yes, that's 78 happened to me!", or "No one cares what I think about Hooters, it only matters what their opinion is". I could tell that several women wanted to tell me their story and many of the women commented that they thought my research was interesting and that they wanted to read it when I was finished. Further, many women thanked me for giving them a platform for telling their stories. This same enthusiasm was communicated with those who no longer worked at Hooters via email or in phone messages. All of this happened before I interviewed anyone.

This is in stark contrast to the reception of the study by DiNenno (2003) by potential participants who used Hooters Girls as a case study, but who broached the women from the aspect of sex work. Again, this may have been due to the fact that I was not viewed as an outsider, but it may have also been due, in part, to the fact that I wanted them to tell me their stories and how they categorized their work along with the negative reactions they have encountered without any preconceived notions about how to label them.

Reinharz and Chase (2003) note that some women may not be comfortable with the interview because they have never been given the opportunity to speak and may not know what to do when they are given the opportunity. Overall, the women in my study were able to answer the questions and provide rich data, although they were nervous about the interview at first. Many of the women commented that they were happy to

"help me out" and that being interviewed was "neat". Even with their enthusiasm about participating in the interview and research process, they manifested many of the behaviors that are attributed to women such as that of nurturing or caring. In fact, after 79 many of the interviews, the women asked if they gave me "what I needed" or if they did

"it right". I did my best to reassure them that they were of great help to me and that there was no right or wrong answers to the questions; there were only their answers and expenences.

Data Analysis

Qualitative research involves massive amounts of data in a variety of formats with no general prescription on how to approach data analysis (Patton 2001). The interviews were reduced to textual form by a professional transcriber that was recommended by several members of the Sociologists for Women in Society list-serve. The transcriber was instructed to give verbatim transcription and to make notations of pauses, urns, stuttering or laughter so that I could capture the entire interview. All participants were assigned a pseudonym that is used when referring to a particular interview passage or story throughout this study. Transcripts, as well as the original tapes and digital files, are kept in a fire-proof and locked safe.

In order to further facilitate data analysis, I followed Creswell's (2002) suggestion to start analyzing the data by taking a full account of all information collected. This included jotting notes in the margins of the text of the transcripts, interview notes, and other documents gathered as well as reflective remarks (Miles and Huberman 1994). This process helped start the "sorting out" process and allowed me to get reacquainted with the data. Further, this sorting out process also allowed me to pay attention to phrases, metaphors, and ideas that were useful in converging and reducing the data. 80 Coding and Memoing

As Seidel (1998) notes, qualitative data analysis is a process of noticing, collecting, and thinking. Coding is one way that helps make the data manageable and encourages the process of noticing and thinking (Bailey 2007). The coding process is an analytical process that assigns "units of meaning to the descriptive or inferential information compiled during a study'' (Miles and Huberman 1994:56). Further, codes are used to generate themes and stories from the data. In order to help manage and organize the coding process, I used the qualitative data analysis software QualRus. Additionally, memoing works in combination with coding. While I was reading and coding the data, I also made memos about reflections or connections that I found in the data.

At first I disaggregated the data into segments regarding the answers to a particular question. For example, when asked the question, "What is a Hooters Girl?", I created the code "What is a Hooters Girl" and coded all of the answers to the question under that code. For this study I also employed data-driven categories; that is, I allowed the categories to develop from the data from the bottom up (Richards and Richards

1995). This occurred via two phases. First, I used initial coding, also referred to as open coding (Strauss and Corbin 1990). This involved multiple readings of the transcripts and the assignment of codes when possible. Along with disaggregation, this helps further reduce the data into specific categories. Secondly, I employed focused coding, also referred to as axial coding (Strauss and Corbin 1990). During the focused coding phase, I linked codes where appropriate so that one coding category might include several subcategories. For example, in initial coding, I coded the types of promotions the women 81 participated in at a very specific level such as that of "calendar", "bikini contest", or

"canvassing". But, during focused coding, I collapsed the categories where necessary such as putting canvassing under "promotions outside of the restaurant" and collapsing bikini contest and calendar into "promotions inside the restaurant". I continued this refining process until I believed that I reached saturation.

Presentation of Demographic Data

Descriptive statistics identify the demographic characteristics of the respondents.

At the beginning and end of the interview, I asked the respondents several questions about their demographics including their age, race, marital status, educational level, work experiences, and income in order to provide insight to social and cultural characteristics that the women who currently work or have worked at Hooters but no longer work there.

Women Currently Working As Hooters Girls

As discussed earlier in this chapter, I interviewed 17 (n=17) women who are currently employed with the company: Fifteen who work as Hooters Girls and two who worked as Hooters Girls but are now in management positions. Prior to working as a

Hooters Girl, six women did not have any previous restaurant experience, while two had worked in a restaurant as a hostess (but not a waitress), and nine had previous waitressing expenence.

The age of my respondents in this category ranged from 19-37, keeping in mind that a couple of women were in managerial positions. The average age of the women when they started working at Hooters was 20 years old. The length of time that the 82 women reported working at Hooters ranged from two months up to six years, with those in the managerial positions having been affiliated with the company for 15 years. The women reported working, on average, four-five shifts per week and average earnings were reported as $500-$600 per week (approximately $100-$150 per shift).

Most ofthe women identified themselves as white or Caucasian (59%, n=10).

One of the respondents identified herself as Asian; two identified as Filipino; and two identified themselves as Hispanic. Several ofthe women self-identified as multi-racial: one woman identified herself as white, American Indian, and African American whereas another woman identified as African-American and Filipino. While the majority of the sample identified as white or Caucasian, given the nature of Hooters as predominately catering to a white clientele, I was pleased to have some diversity in the sample.

At the time of the interview, 71 percent (n=11) were single and had never been married. Two of the women were legally separated and one of the women had been divorced. Three of the women were married at the time of the interview. Seventy-six percent of the women (n=13) did not have any children; one woman reported having two children and two women reported having one child.

When asked about education level, every single woman in this particular sample had graduated from high school or its equivalent and had attended college at some point in her life. In fact, 76 percent of the women (n=14) reported being matriculated in community college or a four-year institution. For all of the women, their fields of study varied. Five percent (n=7) reported studying a business related field to include marketing, finance, management or accounting. Two (n=2) were studying education with 83 aspirations of becoming teachers, two (n=2) reported their field as criminal justice, and two (n=2) cited communications. One woman reported studying computer science and another reported equine science. Finally, one respondent did not report the field in which she had studied. As I will discuss in the following chapter, waitressing is not considered to be knowledge work and those who work as waitresses are thought to be uneducated.

My sample shows the exact opposite; the women are formally educated and many of them are in quantitative fields.

Women Who No Longer Work As Hooters Girls

I also interviewed eight (n=8) women who worked as Hooters Girls but who no longer worked for the company at the time of the interview. The age of my respondents in this category at the time ofthe interview ranged from 24-37. All but two of the women stated that they left their position as a Hooters Girl to "move on" to their chosen career paths. When I asked them to identify their current career or occupation field, the following responses were given: marketing, information technology, modeling, purchasing, property management, bartending, and cosmetology. Most of the women in this category worked at Hooters for a range of one to three years, with three women working six years or more. The average age that the women reported that they started working at Hooters was 20.5 years. All but one had prior waitressing experience before working at Hooters, and like the women who currently work as Hooters Girls, these women also reported working an average of four to five shifts per week with earnings of

$500-$600 per week (approximately $100-$150 per shift). The women had been separated from their position at Hooters for an average of seven and a half years, with 84 one woman recently leaving the position within the past three months prior to the interview.

In terms of self-identification of their racial or ethnic category, five ofthe women identified as white, one identified as Pacific Islander, another as American Indian, and the other respondent identified herself as bi-racial (African-American/white). All but two of the respondents reported having children at the time of the interview. Five of the women were married, two were single, and one was divorced.

When asked about educational background, all of the women had graduated from high school or its equivalent. Three of the women reported having a conferred bachelor degree and one had a conferred associate degree. Two of the women reported having some college and one had vocational training. Fields of study were reported as: general education, business administration, medical, information technology, communications, and psychology.

Summary

This chapter has described the conceptual framework, research design, methods of data collection, and the procedures of data analysis that were undertaken for this study. It also presented the initial qualitative findings with respect to the demographic characteristics ofthe respondents who participated in this study. The next three chapters represent the substantive findings of the dissertation. Chapter Four examines the Hooters of America Corporation through the lens of the culture industry and describes how the corporation endeavors to produce the Hooters Girl in accordance with its corporate vision and mission. Next, Chapter Five reveals the voices of the women and their experiences 85 "in uniform" as they produce the Hooters Girl in the every day context of the restaurant.

These findings employ sociologist HowardS. Becker's (1963) concept of conventions to show that the production of any cultural object, such as that of the Hooters Girl, occurs as a result of collective activity. Chapter Six presents the theoretical findings related to the question of the cultural toolkit and managing stigma. It describes the tools that the women used to make decisions about revealing their position of Hooters Girl to those outside the restaurant and how they also call upon cultural tools to deal with the reactions they receive to disclosure. Finally, Chapter Seven is the conclusion to this dissertation project and it summarizes the major findings as well as provides implications for future research. CHAPTER4

HOOTERS AS A CULTURE INDUSTRY SYSTEM: PRODUCING, MARKETING, AND DISTRIBUTING THE HOOTERS GIRL

We are committed to providing an environment of employee growth and development so that we can provide every guest a unique, entertaining dining experience in a fun and casual atmosphere delivered by attractive, vivacious Hooters Girls while making positive contributions to the communities in which we live. Hooters Restaurants Mission Statement

It's the girls. The girls are what we're all about. Coby Brooks, CEO, Hooters, Inc.

Introduction

In order to position the experiences of the women in the larger context of the

Hooters Corporation, it is important to understand the corporate mindset, culture, and structure in order to fully appreciate how the corporation produces the Hooters Girl persona. The concept of the Hooters Girl has been widely heralded as a brilliant marketing tool, business strategy, and as an international brand "with legs" (Helyer

2003). Conversely, the concept ofthe Hooters Girl has also been widely criticized as being degrading and exploitive by various social groups such as women's groups, parents, citizens, and pubic officials. Thus we can see that the Hooters Girl is at the center of a complex system of production and audience reception.

In this chapter I use Hirsch's (1972) model ofthe culture industry as an analytical framework to examine how the various processes and procedures of the organization drive and constrain the production of the image of the Hooters Girl. This multi-faceted

86 87 system works to ensure that the Hooters Girl persona is produced in a way that fits the company's conceptualization of her and to ensure that the persona continues to resonate within larger consumer markets. Ultimately, the Hooters Girl is a corporate product and commodity.

Unlike books, songs, or art, the Hooters Girl is not an inanimate cultural product.

Inanimate cultural objects do not suffer real life consequences because of the varying meanings attributed to them (meaning is often transferred to the artist or the production company of the object). The Hooters Girl is distinctly different from other cultural forms because even though the image is a corporate product, it is produced by a human actor and she must exist in a social environment where she is simultaneously both the creator and receiver of meaning. In addition, there is a deliberate production of culture that differentiates the Hooters Girl from other stigmas. Given that the Hooters Girl is received differently depending upon the audience, it is also important to understand how cultural objects can spark both positive and negative reactions in others. Therefore I use sociologist Michael Schudson's (1989) analytical model of how culture objects can influence action in audiences to analyze the interaction between the Hooters Girl as object and the reactions she provokes.

The latter part of the chapter steps out of the organizational context of Hooters and positions the Hooters Girl in the occupational literature on waitressing. This is important because waitressing is the duty of the Hooters Girl. Waitressing is a marginalized occupation and this may lie beneath some of the negative reception ofthe

Hooters Girl both in and out of the restaurant. 88 Hooters as a Culture Industry System

As discussed in Chapter Two, certain cultural objects are produced within a culture industry system. Hirsch (1972) originally proposed the model of a culture industry system to refer specifically to the process of mass production of cultural objects such as music, books, and so on. This culture industry system is quite complex, consisting of different units that work to ensure that the cultural object is produced in a manner that will find resonance with the consumer market. However, with minor adaptation, the cultural industry system provides an appropriate lens by which to analyze

Hooters and the Hooters Girl. This lens allows us to situate the cultural object of the

Hooters Girl as a product for mass consumption and to analyze how the image is controlled through the various components of the system that work together to regulate it.

Further, it allows us to see how the industry system of Hooters relies on culturally constructed categories of feminine sexuality to do business and how it further reproduces and embeds those socially constructed meanings in the minds of the consumer. Figure

4.1 is an illustration of the components of the culture industry system:

The Culture Industry System

!~'i.~n~1:~ . Managerial Institutional (Crea~ive - F11ter #1 -+ subsys!em -Filter #2 -+ subsystem - Filter #3 -+ Consumers artists) (Orgamzat1ons) (Media) J Input boundary Output boundary l ----Feedback

Figure 4.1. The Making of an Industry System: Origin of Hooters Restaurants Source: This graphic was taken, with permissioin, from Griswold (1994) who adopted the model from the conceptualization provided by Hirsch (1972). 89 The first Hooters restaurant officially began operations in October of 1983 in the beach community of Clearwater, FL. It was owned and operated by six men, also called the original six, with no experience in the restaurant business. The original vision was simple: the owners sought to create a casual place where they could meet, drink, watch sports, eat good finger food, and be around beautiful women. It was these desires that conceptually, and quite haphazardly, led to the convergence of several factors that would give rise to the Hooters phenomenon.

The name Hooters was derived from a monologue given by comedian Steve

Martin, who was very popular at the time, during the course of hosting an episode of

Saturday Night Live (Martin 1980). In the monologue titled, "I Believe", Martin (1980) parodies many serious and not so serious aspects oflife. He stated: "And I believe it's derogatory to refer to a woman's breasts as "boobs", 'jugs", "Winnebago's" or "golden bozos" and that you should only refer to them as "hooters". One of the owner's wives sketched the logo that superimposes the word Hooters over an owl in an attempt to create a double entendre that conflates slang used to describe a portion of the female body with that of a nickname of the owl.

Certainly, the question of whether Hooters refers to an owl or to a part of the female body has received a lot of attention. To be sure, Mike McNeil, the marketing director of Hooters of America (HOA), states that the company recognizes that "Hooters is an innocuous slang expression for a part of the female anatomy. We don't deny that.

We also realize that most people believe that that is the case" (HOA 2007). Therefore, this double entendre has a lot of cultural currency in terms ofhow Hooters goes about 90 producing meaning with respect to the Hooters Girl and the restaurant itself. In fact, the focus on the breasts does two things in terms of meaning for the Hooters concept. First, it fragments the female body and reduces the woman from an individual to parts, offering the breast as a body part for consumption (Howson 2004). Second, the female body becomes an object for show and as such women are expected to produce their bodies as spectacle for the male gaze (Frank 2002; Howson 2004).

As with any industry system, including the restaurant and its theme as a cultural object, there is demand uncertainty (Hirsch 1972). Even with proper business planning and market analysis, no one can be sure how their business will be received by the consumer population. During the time period of 1984-1986 two significant events happened that brought national media attention to the Hooters concept. The first happened in January of 1984 when Tampa Bay hosted the Super Bowl. The day before the game, John Riggins a famous player for the Washington Redskins, ate lunch there and liked it so much that he later returned with several teammates. Their visit to the restaurant received national media, as a part of publicity surrounding the game. Thus,

Hooters was thrust into national spotlight (Hooters of America 2007).

Two years later, the owners submitted the first Hooters Girl's, Lynne Austin, pictures to Playboy Magazine and she became a playmate of the month in 1986 and was also a feature girl in many playboy videos. Her popularity as a playboy playmate and as the simultaneous spokesperson for Hooters was also great for national publicity. Both of these events drew significant attention to Hooters and facilitated the success ofthe restaurant and, subsequently, the brand. Here we see the importance of the institutional 91 subsystem (the media) in terms of getting the cultural object to the consumer and how it influences the launch and success of an industry system. Secondly, we see how the image of the Hooters Girl became further embedded in the consumer consciousness as a sexual commodity because it was linked with the zenith of the sexualized female body,

Playboy Magazine.

In 1984, the original owners sold development and franchise rights to

Neighborhood Restaurants of America (now HOA). The original owners were paid royalties and retained rights to develop restaurants in certain areas and retained decision making authority regarding restaurant design and menu offerings. It was this transaction that saw the birth of the HOA culture industry system, examined below. Within two years, HOA had become a 16 million dollar chain and by the end of 1993, they had developed into 100 restaurants and 200 million dollars in revenues (HOA 2007). In

2001, the original six sold the trademark rights to Hooters of America for 60 million dollars (Helyer 2003). In fact, Hooters ranks 15th among U.S. full-service restaurant chains behind leader chains like Applebee's but ahead of other popular chains like

Romano's Macaroni Grill and Ryan's (Yee 2006). Today, the chain brings in about 900 million dollars in yearly sales and is expected to cross the $1 billion mark for the first time in 2007 (Yee 2006). In other words, sex sells. More specifically, the Hooters Girl and her body as an object of sexual commoditization sells and it translates into big money. 92 The Managerial Subsystem: Hooters Restaurants as a Franchise System and Theme Restaurant

The National Restaurant Association (NRA) (2007) estimates that approximately

935,000 restaurants are currently open for business throughout the country. In 2007 alone, the association predicted that restaurants would generate about 537 billion dollars in sales (NRA 2007). Indeed, 29 percent of consumers report that they dine out ofthe home in dining establishments about two times per week (NRA 2007). Franchised restaurants represent one kind ofbusiness model that exists in the dining establish industry. The International Franchise Educational Association (IFEF) (200 1) defines the franchise arrangement as "an agreement or license between two legally independent parties which gives a person or group of people (franchisee) the right to market a product or service using the trademark or trade name of another business (franchisor)" (p. 5).

One ofthe most common types of franchised arrangements is the business format

4 franchise (IFEF 2001) . In this model the franchisor expands the company by licensing their trademarked name, products, and established systems of operations to independent business owners. The franchisor is contractually obligated to provide support in various forms to its franchisees in order to support the business operation (IFEA 2001). In return, the franchisee pays fees and profit royalties to the franchisor for these rights. In most circumstances, franchisees are required to buy certain products or supplies directly from the franchisor.

4 The term franchise restaurant and chain restaurant are used interchangeably in the literature. 93 HOA, with regard to Hooters Restaurants, operates under this franchise model as

5 the sole franchisor of the Hooters trademark and brand . In the Hooters model, the franchise arrangement serves as the managerial subsystem in the culture industry model.

According to Hirsch (1972), the managerial subsystem is comprised of the organizations that produce the cultural object. In the case of the Hooters model, this would be the franchisor and the franchisee. Hooters restaurants are ranked as the 1oth largest full- service restaurant chain in competition with chains such as Applebee's and Chili's

(Helyer 2003). In 2003, the company's revenues were estimated at 750 million dollars with a vision of having 1,000 restaurants in the U.S. market alone. At this writing, HOA operates 475 units both in the United States and in international markets with plans to develop more stores in both markets (HOA 2007). These units are operated under the auspices of the 32 domestic franchisees and 25 franchisees in international markets (HOA

2007). In fact, the HOA Corporation believes that the U.S. market can fully support

1,000 units of Hooters alone (Heyler 2003). To date, all of the franchise territories in the

United States are sold and only franchise opportunities in international markets are available for development (HOA 2007). In fact, within the next two years (2007-2008), the company plans to sign franchise agreements and open units in Israel, Columbia,

Dubai, Guam, New Zealand, and India (Hooters of America 2007).

5 There is an interesting aspect of the HOA franchise model. Those who originally started the company, called the "original six", own several units as a completely separate entity as agreed upon when they first sold their development rights to HOA. This separate entity, known as Hooters, Inc or LAGS, operates Hooters restaurants in Chicago, IL, Manhattan, NY and the Tampa Bay, FL area without any contractual obligation to HOA. In addition, they own and operate the Hooters Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and have retained the rights to pitch Hooters in various forms (such as movies) to Hollywood. 94 In order to qualify for candidacy to become a Hooters restaurant franchisee, the applicant must have the capital to meet initial investment requirements such as the initial franchise fee of75 thousand dollars U.S. per location and an option fee of 15 thousand dollars for each additional restaurant option within a territory (HOA 2007). In addition, the company estimates that the initial investment to open one unit is between 8 hundred thousand dollars to one million five hundred thousand dollars. Other qualifications include the financial capability to develop three to five restaurants within the franchised territory, two million dollars in liquid assets, and five years experiences as a multi-unit restaurant owner or operator (HOA 2007). In other words, it takes financial wherewithal to become a franchisee of Hooters Restaurants.

Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English (2003) defines a theme restaurant as "any eating establishment designed around a concept, esp. sport, time or era, music style, etc." Large scale themed restaurants, such as the Hard Rock Cafe,

Rainforest Cafe, and Planet Hollywood, have been nicknamed "eater-tainment" establishments because they provide the consumer with a dining, retail, and entertainment experience (Pate 2000; VanHouten 1998). Pate (2002) defines an eater-tainment venue as "restaurants that mix food with games or that tells a story through decor." (p. 2).

While Hooters does not match the grandiosity of some of the decor or even the square footage of some of the eater-tainment units, it can certainly be considered a themed restaurant on account of the fact that it offers a dining, retail, and entertainment expenence. 95 Hooters describes itselfto be a casual beach-themed establishment. The menu consists of a variety of items to include seafood, soups, sandwiches, salads, chicken wings, and beer/alcohol (HOA 2007). Each store also has an area that showcases Hooters merchandise/restaurant memorabilia that consists of anything from Hooters apparel such as t-shirts, sweatshirts, and hats, to more novelty items such as cups/glasses, a calendar, and golf balls. Throughout the franchise, food constitutes 72 percent of sales, with 5 percent coming from merchandise sales, and 23 percent stemming from beer or wine

(HOA2007).

In terms of entertainment, Hooters accomplishes this both in the restaurant and as a major leisure brand. The restaurants are often a venue by which to watch major league sports such as football, baseball, basketball, golf, and NASCAR racing on big screen televisions. As a national brand, Hooters also entertains in the form of sponsored sporting partnerships such as the National Golf Association Hooters Tour, the United

Speed Alliance Hooters Pro Cup racing series, Formula One powerboat racing, and an

AMA Motorcycle Team. Further, Hooters has its own airline, casino, credit card, and food line in grocery stores. As such, Hooters uses several outlets to connect its products to the consumer. Undoubtedly, the major attraction to the restaurant and an integral part of the brand concept is the Hooters Girl.

The Technical Subsystem: The Hooters Girl

The company formally states that, "The essence of the Hooters concept is entertainment through female sex appeal" (HOA 2005:4). It acknowledges that it is the

Hooters Girl that makes the concept and theme ofHooters distinctive and it is the 96 Hooters Girl who serves as the primary representation of the restaurant and corporate brand. The company conceives of the Hooters Girl as embodying the All-American

Cheerleader, Surfer, and Girl-Next-Door image (HOA 2005). This characterization reflects the Hooters Girl as carefree, beautiful, friendly, and young. The fantasy that

Hooters seeks to create with this construction is that the Hooters Girls are the women that the men could not date or who would not give them any attention in school, but whom they can interact with now (DiNenno 2003). This reduces the woman to something childlike in order to project the Hooters Girl as innocent and wholesome, yet sexually inviting and available. Further infantilizing is the use of the term girl rather than women, noting that those who fill the position of Hooters Girl must be 18. In a court opinion, a judge described the function of the Hooters Girl as "to provide vicarious sexual recreation, to titillate, entice, and arouse male customers' fantasies" (Hooters of America,

Inc. v. Winghouse of Florida, Inc. 2004). In other words, the Hooters Girl is a medium to provide erotic pleasure to men.

While the principal role of the Hooters Girl is table service, she also participates in charity work connected to the restaurant, promotional events for the restaurant such as working at sporting events, photographing for the annual calendar or magazine, and local swimsuit contests. The Hooters Girl then, in terms of job description, performs duties above that of table server and is not only the main attraction of the restaurant; she is often the face of the franchise outside of the restaurant itself. She has been featured on a variety of Hooters novelty items from billboards, trading cards, the Hooters Magazine, and the annual Hooters calendar. 97 One of the hallmarks of the culture industry system is that there is a constant supply of talent that is fed into the larger managerial system through the technical subsystem (Hirsch 1972). Those who enter the system are often found by boundary spanners (agents, talent scouts, and so on) and have passed through a filtering process before getting into the system. With respect to the Hooters Girl, boundary spanning happens in two distinct forms. The company actively recruits both in the national market and in local markets with particular emphasis in advertising in Cosmopolitan magazine because the readership is of the age demographic they want to employ as a Hooters Girl.

In addition, the company also encourages its current employees to act as boundary spanners, asking that they refer good candidates for the position (this might include friends or women who come into the restaurant to eat). Further, the restaurant also has in-store recruitment campaigns to include signage, recruitment cards, table tents, and banners.

Before any woman is hired as a Hooters Girl, she must cross through the first filter in the system, which is the interview process. If the woman is deemed an appropriate candidate for the position, she is entered into the managerial subsystem.

Those who are not appropriate are filtered out and excluded from hiring. For those that do pass through the filter and get hired, the units of the managerial subsystem work to turn the new employees into Hooters Girls as "predictable, marketable packages"

(Griswold 1994:72). To date, the company estimates that there have been roughly

250,000 who have passed through the system and who have worked as a Hooters Girl

(Heyler 2003). 98 A primary characteristic of a franchise or chain restaurant is to ensure that the dining experience in one location is the same as the dining experience at another location.

The emphasis is on replication: the dining experience of eating at Hooters in New York should be the same as the dining experience at Hooters in California. As such, the company invokes strict appearance guidelines to ensure that the Hooters Girl is a duplicated in all of its locations. These expectations are explained in the employee handbook and apply to the uniform, the physical appearance of the female in the uniform, and through the scripts that they are required to use when greeting and servicing a table.

It is through these expectations that feminized and sexualized attributes are ascribed to the Hooters Girl image.

The Hooter Girl as Woman

The law has officially sanctioned the female as the appropriate gender and sex for a Hooters Girl. The corporate literature on Hooters articulates that the business concept is founded on female sex appeal. In 1991, the Equal Opportunity Employment

Commission (EEOC) brought forth a commissioner's charge that investigated Hooters for denying men employment opportunities as Hooters Girls. In their findings report, the

EEOC officially took the stance that "no physical trait unique to women is required to service food and drink" (Hayes 1995). In response to this charge, Hooters launched its own campaign to end the inquiry. It dressed up a local manager as a Hooters Girl and distributed the image in various media forms under the slogan, "What's wrong with this picture?" The company also organized a march on the nation's capital. These two campaigns drew a lot of media attention and the public heavily criticized the government 99 for wasting taxpayer's money. In 1996, after several years of litigation, the EEOC stated that it would not pursue action (HOA 2007).

Hooter's official stance on the investigation was that the Hooters Girl provided more than table service; she also provided a form of entertainment. Hooters sought protection of the female as Hooters Girl under the Bona Fide Occupational Qualification

(BFOQ) section ofthe Civil Rights Act (HOA 2007). As Title VII of the Civil Rights

Act of 1964 states:

It shall not be an unlawful discrimination practice for an employer to hire and employ employees ... on the basis of his religion, sex, or national origin in those certain instances where religion, sex or national origin is a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of that particular business or enterprise .... (Civil Rights Act 42 U.S. 2000e)

The BFOQ, with respect to employment discrimination law, allows an employer to take certain characteristics or attributes into consideration when making hiring or firing decisions about employees that in other contexts would be considered discrimination.

Hooters, Inc. was granted legal protection for only hiring females for the Hooters Girl position under this clause of the Civil Rights Act.

Hooters Appearance Guidelines

In business, success and power is conveyed via the business suit (Chapkis 1986;

Dellinger 2002; Molloly 1980; Wolf 1991 ). The corporate world has culturally defined standards of how women should dress at work. In her analysis of cultural values of appropriateness with respect to how women are supposed to look in society, Chapkis

(1986) asserts that notions of"dress for success" for women at work are based on masculinity. Women are expected to convey a serious appearance while wearing the 100 typical masculine colors, such as grey or blue, and avoiding bright colors or looking exotic. One emphasis ofbusiness dress is on separating the sexual world and the professional world (Dellinger 2002). However, even in the "appropriate" business suit, women's gestures and behavior are considered to be sexual in nature (Wolf 1992).

Hooters, Inc. removes the business suit as a mask of femininity and sexuality and turns corporate ideals of professional dress upside down. Rather than masking female sexuality or masculinizing it, Hooters overtly calls it into play. In her analysis of how cultural definitions of beauty hurt women, Wolf (1992) asserts that standards of dress such as stockings, make-up, jewelry, hair, breasts, legs, and hips have been culturally appropriated as pornographic accessories. To be sure, Hooters takes these subjective associations and makes them the objective accessories by flaunting them in every aspect of their appearance standards. Thus, for the company, the body is both subject and object. The company requires a significant amount of gendered performance through body work and beauty work as a part of the requirements to be a Hooters Girl. The women who work as Hooters Girls turn these requirements into physical capital.

The handbook states that when the woman is wearing the uniform that she is

"literally playing a role; having being cast for that role, you must comply with the image and grooming standards that the role requires" (p. 4). The role is that of a sexy, fun, and beautiful woman. The company fully prescribes the standards for physical appearance of the female all the way from hair to shoes in order to ensure that the women play the right part. Underlying these appearance mandates is long standing culturally defined categories and symbols ofwhat constitutes feminine beauty and sex appeal. 101 Hair is an important symbol of femininity and sex appeal (Cooper 1971; Leach

1958; Synott 1987). Leach (1958) made one ofthe earliest associations ofhair and sexuality in the literature arguing that long hair is associated with unrestrained sexuality while short hair was associated with restricted sexuality. In her ethnography of strippers, anthropologist Katherine Frank (2002) discovered that male patrons who consume erotic labor distinguished women with desirable hair as authentic and glamorous. Hair, in its own right, is a sex symbol. In order to project the sexy image, Hooters draws upon cultural interpretations ofhair:

Hair is to be styled at all times. No ponytails or pigtails are to be worn. The image to be projected is one of glamour. No bizarre hair cuts, styles, or colors are acceptable. No hats or headbands are to be worn. No large clips or scrunchies. (HOA 2005:4)

While the company does not stipulate whether hair should be short or long, the implication is that hair should be worn down and in a free falling manner in an attempt to create the appearance of glamour and sexiness.

Attractiveness, femininity, and sexiness are also associated with the application of make-up. Scholars have found that wearing make-up is also linked with confidence, health, and greater work rewards in terms of earning potential (Dellinger and Williams

1997; Frank, 2002; Nash, Fieldman, and Hussey 2006). In fact, in a study of exotic dancers, Trautner (2005) finds that women pay attention to their hair and make-up because it conveys sexiness and serves to maximize earnings. Yet, the over application of make-up can signify laziness, trashiness, or cheesiness (Frank 2002). Hooters requires women to wear make-up as a part of their uniform and understands the dichotomy between too little or too much: 102 Make-up is to be worn always to best accentuate your features. Hooters Girls are to be camera-ready at all times. This is show business, just like the modeling industry. Make-up is not to be too extreme, nor too minimal. (HOA 2005:4.

Playing upon themes and symbolism associated with popular culture standards of beauty, the company conveys that part of playing the role of a "beautiful woman" is being made up (Chapkis 1986; Hansen and Reed 1986; Wolf 1992).

The company also dictates other aspects of body work with respect to adornment through jewelry, body piercing, finger nails and tattooing:

Jewelry is to be minimal. It is not to draw attention away from the Hooters Girl or her uniform. Our LOOK is wholesome, yet sexy, and the uniform is athletic by design. Two earrings per ear maximum. Two rings per hand maximum. ONE NECKLACE MAXIMUM, and it is not to be too wide, long, or heavy. NO CHOKERS, BEADS, OR SIMILAR NECKLACES. Two bracelets maximum. No other body piercing is to show. Tongue piercing is not allowed. (HOA 2005:4)

There are several possibilities for this prescription with respect to jewelry. The first is that in order to project an athletic uniform, one must bear in mind that athletes wear minimal jewelry. The second is to understand that Hooters is not in the jewelry business and they do not want this kind of adornment to distract from the body parts that they are commodifying. Another interesting dichotomy exists in this kind of adornment, the one between jewelry as tacky or gaudy and jewelry as sophistication (Frank 2002).

Fingernails and manicures have also been a locus of eroticism of the female body

(Entwistle 2000). In her ethnography of strippers, Frank (2002) found that women with very long fingernails or those who painted their fingernails in loud colors were thought to be tacky or even "ghetto". Certainly, these descriptions are not in line with the 103 wholesome look that Hooters wishes to convey. As such, they regulate body work with respect to the presentation of the hand:

Fingernails are to be well-maintained and clean at all times. If false nails are worn, they are to be maintained. If polish is worn, the colors are not to be extreme, no black, gold, silver, purple, blue, green, yellows, etc. All nails are to be painted the same color. No jewelry in the nails, or nail art is allowed. Excessively long nails distract from the wholesome look and will not be allowed. (HOA 2005:4)

The last way that the body is scripted as youthful, wholesome, and sexy is through covering up oftattoos. Tattoos have long been associated with masculinity and with low brow and gritty activities such as female bikers (Armstrong 1991). In fact, men and women have negative attitudes toward women with a visible tattoo (Hawkes, Senn, and

Thorn 2004). In order to thwart these negative perceptions, Hooters does not allow any tattoo to show through the uniform (HOA 2005).

The uniform is the medium by which Hooters entertains with sex appeal and maintains the image of the All American Cheerleader, Surfer, or Girl Next Door. The

Hooters Girl uniform is described by the company as athletic in nature (HOA 2007).

Thus, along with the physical appearance requirements above, it is important for the

Hooters Girl to abide by uniform stipulations.

The first piece of the uniform is the tank top. The owl logo is printed across the tank top along with the name of the restaurant location (although Hooters Girls often trade tank tops with women from other stores or customers bring tanks from stores that they have visited). The original uniform tanks were made of cotton and tied in the back to expose the midriff and to create cleavage. Today, the tops are made oflycra and are to be: 104 Tucked in to the Hooters Girl shorts, (NO MIDRIFF IS TO SHOW) and the shirt must meet the Hooters Girl shorts. No portion of the bra is to show. A white or nude-colored bra must be worn. Shirts are not to be cut or altered, faded, or have any stains or tears. A long sleeve shirt may be worn when weather conditions dictate and at manager's discretion. All shirts must be sized to fit, NO BAGGINESS. (HOA 2005:5)

The second component of the uniform is the orange Hooters Girl shorts. As the company prescribes, "Only approved orange Hooters Girl shorts are to be worn, sized to fit, and should not be so tight that the buttocks show (HOA 2005:5). Interestingly, the color orange has been associated as low brow; it is seen as obnoxious and aggressive. In fact, Margaret Walch, director of the color association of the United States, states that,

"Orange was always considered a low-life color: fast food, construction, very abrasive," and that "It had all kinds of, if you will, unpleasant connotations" (Barker and Caddon

2006). Sheer suntan pantyhose are also a required part of the uniform as directed by health code. The rest of the uniform consists of a name tag, white athletic sneakers, and white athletic slouch socks. The Hooters Girl must also wear a brown ticket pouch that is used to carry pens, pads of paper, and money (tips and payment for foodlbeverages). 6

As I discussed above, the uniform of the waitress is often appropriated to convey sexiness (Erickson 2002; 2004; Ha111993). In a study of strippers, Trautner (2005) states, "The attire of the waitress makes it clear that these clubs are places in which all the women present are legitimate and permissible sex objects that there are no boundaries

6 The primary uniform is that of the orange shorts and white lycra tank top. On Fridays, the uniform consists of the black owl logo tank top and black shorts. Different locations also have different variations of the uniform tank top for special occasions such as a camouflage logo owl tank top for military days or a special football owl logo tank top during the NFL season. Further, Hooters does not include the brown ticket pouch in its promotional pictures of the Hooters Girl. 105 placed on men's desires and curiosities" (p. 785). Hooters overtly decorates the female body in an attempt to create a sexualized atmosphere that conveys sexual availability.

Hooters Girl Serving Scripts

Hall (1993) argues that one way that restaurants engender labor is through the use of serving scripts. Scripts are a component of emotional labor where the waitress is expected to exhibit certain emotions that the restaurant deems as appropriate for fostering the kind of dining experience that it seeks to provide (Hall1993; Hochshild 1983). These scripts help shape the customer-server interaction and ensure that service standards such as friendliness, deference, and flirting are incorporated into the service transaction (Hall

1993). In fact, the serving scripts of friendliness, deference, and flirting were found in all types of restaurants, particularly those in low-prestige restaurants (Hall1993). Hooters restaurants provides servers with scripts that shape the Hooters Girl customer service exchange. These scripts appear in two primary forms: the general work scripts that provide a broader context for interaction and the actual script that the women must incorporate into the discussions with customers at the table.

In its training materials, the company provides each new employee with the "Ten

Commandments of a Hooters Girl" (HOA 2007):

I. Thou shalt always SMILE. II. Thou shalt always greet arriving and departing guests and never place back towards the front door. III. Thou shalt always treat other staff members as you wish to be treated. IV. Thou shalt always inform the customers of promotions. V. Thou shalt always suggest merchandise. VI. Thou shalt always practice responsible alcohol service. VII. Thou shalt always arrive prepared for work. 106 VIII. Though shalt always live by F.A.T. (Fun, Attitude, Teamwork) IX. Thou shalt always refer to Commandment One

These commandments serve as a broader structure for interaction in the restaurant and emphasize corporate values. The first two commandments emphasize the ways in which the employee creates and sustains a warm and welcoming environment for patrons. The company stresses suggestive salesmanship in order to generate profit in commandments

IV and V. The remaining commandments highlight work ethic and team building.

Hooters Girls are also provided with a franchisor or franchisee script for interactions at the table. These may manifest themselves differently depending upon franchise, but the general premise is the same. During the course of interaction with a table of guests, the Hooters Girl is expected to incorporate the following into the service transaction as prescribed by the company (HOA 2007):

1. State your name, "Hi my name is _____, I'll be your Hooters Girl today." 2. If there is more than 1 customer, ask "Will this be on 1 check or separate checks?" 3. Suggest a specific feature beer, "Our feature beer today is ------" 4. Suggest a specific appetizer, "Our feature appetizer is ______" 5. Suggest a specific Entree, "Our feature entree is " 6. Always suggest the "Add Ons" that are outlined in your menu descriptions such as the ones listed below: "How about some curly fries to go along with your meal?" "Would you like any cheese, grilled onions, mushrooms or green peppers on your sandwich?" "Our mild sauce is basically a butter sauce. Even if you don't like spicy food, you'll probably like our medium sauce." "Would you like Ranch/Blue Cheese and Celery with your wings?" 7. Suggest dessert or coffee as you clear the plates. 8. Always suggest merchandise at some point during your customer's visit. 9. Always suggest Happy Hour Specials during Happy Hour. 10. Explain current Promotions and Charity Events. 107 The above script incorporates the values exhibited in the commandments, with emphasis on suggestive selling in order to increase check amounts. It is in these scripted contexts that Hooters structures customer service.

The Institutional Subsystem: Marketing and Media

The output boundary of the culture industry heavily relies on the media to connect the cultural object with the consumer. Hirsch (1972) refers to this component of the culture industry as the institutional subsystem. The cultural producer employs boundary spanners, namely marketing personnel, to make appropriate media contacts in order to conduct consumer outreach. HOA generates awareness about the Hooters concept, products, and promotions through a variety of mediums to include radio, television, billboard, newspaper and magazine print, websites, charity and sporting sponsorships, and celebrity spokespeople. HOA hires marketing directors and managers as well as media buyers at both the franchisor and franchisee levels to act as boundary spanners and filters in order to gain local and national attention. The media representatives also provide feedback about media campaigns and what consumers are saying about the product.

For the 2008 budget year, the HOA franchise proposes to spend

13,695,000 dollars on media, promotions, sponsorships, public relations, marketing production, and the swimsuit pageant at the franchisor level (HOA 2007). Franchises may also have their own marketing budgets and these vary according to each franchise.

Media represents 64 percent ofthe franchisor budget and Hooters advertises on national television channels such as ESPN, Style Network, CBS, and Fox Sports Net. 108 They also have print ads in Maxim magazine, Cosmopolitan (for recruiting purposes), and in their own Hooters Magazine. The Hooters Girl is also the subject of television programs such the Hooters Best Damn Dream Girl Special and the Best Damn Hooters

International Swimsuit Pageant. All of the media either feature the Hooters Girl in a swimsuit, the Hooters Girl Uniform, the female silhouette, or in a glamorous gown (for the pageant). All oftheir ads convey the sex appeal of the Hooters Girl. The company estimates that through commercials alone they will create 67.7 million impressions in the male age demographic age 18-49 to drive sales and 30 million impressions among women age 18-24 to drive recruitment (HOA 2007). According to industry research, they do make impressions (Helm 2007). In fact, in a study of commercial viewing habits using the TiVo system, Hooters ads are more likely to be watched by viewers and less likely to be forwarded through (Helm 2007).

Promotions constitute 11 percent of the proposed budget and include fees for celebrity spokespeople such as Dick Vitale and Lee Corso (HOA 2007). They will also spend marketing and advertising dollars to promote football and meal specials, the swimsuit pageant, and Hooters merchandise and gift cards for the holiday season. They also sponsor a variety of sports affiliations to include bass fishing, softball, the collegiate golf challenge, and Decamp Motorcycle road cycle team. These sponsorships amount to

8 percent ofthe proposed marketing budget (HOA 2007)

The budget has also allotted 315 thousand dollars (2 percent of their budget) on public relations in the form of press releases, promotional supplies, the corporate website, and the Hooters hotline (a forum for frequently asked questions). Lastly, the company 109 will spend about one million dollars (7 percent ofthe budget) on the annually televised swimsuit pageant. The remaining 8 percent of the budget is spent on production of in­ house marketing materials, mostly in print form such as table tents, television ads, billboards, coupons, etc.

The total budget seeks to create awareness of the Hooters concept in the cultural consumer to drive recruitment and sales. To place this budget in the context of the restaurant industry, Hooter's budget is significantly less than that of Applebee's

($146,627,000) or Chili's ($97, 041,000). However, in order for large chains such as

Hooters to be able to compete for consumer's attention, a significant amount of effort and financial capital must be invested in the marketing and media systems to ensure that their products are in the mind of and resonate with consumers.

Consumers and Industry System Feedback

The purpose of the industry system is to sell products for consumption. In order to be sure that the products they are producing are attractive to customers, the industry system relies on feedback from a variety of sources such as reviews, general media attention, and sales (Griswold 1994). HOA relies on feedback in order to gauge consumer demands and so that they can develop more strategies (menu, pricing), products, and promotions to reach new audiences and keep the customers returning to purchase its products. This feedback is primarily garnered through in-house customer service surveys, professional industry services, and sales projections and comparisons.

It is noteworthy to mention that Hooters has been well received among popular cultural forms with respect to awareness and feedback. In fact, a search of the Internet 110 Movie Database website shows that Hooters has been a part of the plot of several movies such as the Bad News Bears, Bid Daddy, Basketball Man, and The Drive. Hooters has also been mentioned in the monologues oftelevision show hosts Jay Leno, David

Letterman, and Bill Maher (HOA 2007). However, the primary way that Hooters receives feedback is via the customer.

The Customer

In 2006, several franchisees retained the services of an industry research company to provide analysis on guest satisfaction, key experience factors (food, menu, and atmosphere), and visit frequency and repeat visit intent (BrandiQ 2006). This research is invaluable because it presents a profile of the demographics of who consumes Hooters restaurants and the Hooters Girl, their experiences, and their expectations from the company. 7 Who is the Hooters customer?

When looking at party composition, 92 percent of the tables that are seated in the restaurant contain men, 44 percent contain women, and only 14 percent have children. In other words, fewer than half of the parties contain women and very few parties contain children (BrandiQ 2006). Of no surprise is the fact that the largest Hooters customer demographic is the male between the ages of 25-54 (HOA 2007). When people come to

Hooters, they typically come with two other people, 46 percent come with friends, 30 percent come with their spouse or partner, and 14 percent come with co-workers

7 Over a three month period in 2006, BrandiQ conducted surveys of eight franchises in the Hooters system. The sample consisted 100 guests per restaurant for a total sample ofn=800. Interviews were conducted on weekday and weekend lunch and dinners. 111 (BrandiQ 2006). As such, the typical party that comes to Hooters is the friend or co- worker party, rather than the family party. This fits the way that Hooters perceives itself:

Hooters characterizes itself as a neighborhood place, not a typical family restaurant ...... Hooters does not market itself to families, but they do patronize the restaurants. Ten percent of the parties we serve have children in them. Hooters is in the hospitality business and provides the best possible service to anyone coming through the door. For this reason, the chain offers a children's menu. (HOA 2007)

Interestingly, most of the customers feel that Hooters has a socially acceptable amount of sex appeal. However, only one in three customers feel that it is an appropriate place for families with children (BrandiQ 2006). Thus, Hooters customers consider it appropriate for adults but not for children.

Moreover, Hooters has high customer loyalty. Most of the customers at Hooters are considered "regulars", meaning that they come in very frequently (BrandiQ 2006;

DiNenno 2003). In fact, Hooters estimates that about 78 percent of the people who visit

Hooters have also visited within the same month (BrandiQ 2006). The Hooters concept resonates with men and it also draws them in several times per month. Clearly Hooters is not the only restaurant that consumers have to choose from. Yet, consumers repeatedly choose Hooters over other chain restaurants such as Chili's, Applebee's, Outback

Steakhouse, the Olive Garden, and TGIF (Brand IQ 2006).

While they have high levels of customer satisfaction with the food and menu offerings, guests choose Hooters because they describe their visits to Hooters as a social occasion rather than a meal occasion. They characterize Hooters as high energy, fun, and welcoming (BrandiQ 2006). They also come to the restaurant because of the Hooters

Girls, noting that they like the visibility of the Hooters Girls throughout the restaurant, 112 the service that the Hooters Girls provide, and the All-American Cheerleader look and attitude (BrandiQ 2006). Men come to Hooters to drink, watch the sporting events on television, hang out with their guy friends, and consume the Hooters Girl.

Consumers, Cultural Objects, and Action

Hooters, Inc. goes to great lengths in order to ensure that the restaurant's concept or theme resonates with consumers. Not only does Hooters rely on the sex appeal of the

Hooters Girl, it also wants to be seen as a lively and fun place to eat and hang out. This is evident in one of their corporate slogans: "Hooters makes you happy" (HOA 2007).

Nevertheless, just because the producer of a particular cultural object wants an audience to attach a particular meaning to the object in question, does not guarantee that they can control what meaning the audience will attach to it. Regardless of effort, a cultural object may not work with the intended audience. Audiences simply are not affected by objects in the same way (Schudson 1989). Any cultural object does not simply point to one single meaning, it points to a multitude of meanings.

Take, for example, the history of the bicycle as it developed from the ordinary bicycle commonly depicted in Victorian pictures to that of the safety bicycle which serves as the prototype of the modem day bicycle (Bijker 1995). The ordinary bicycle, by historical accounts was not very practical because it was unsafe and difficult to master. Yet, it was seen as a means to go fast, impress women, and to engage in sport; it was primarily a way to show off for one audience .... "young men of means and nerve"

(Bijker 1995:41). Not all audiences were impressed with the ordinary because of safety issues and because most individuals, including women, could not ride it. In order to 113 appeal to a wider audience, several more versions of the bicycle were created that eventually lead to the creation ofthe safety bicycle. The safety bicycle did not "take off' because it was seen as slow and the preference was still for speed. The ordinary and safety bicycle coexisted for years and it was only after riders of safety bicycles started winning races that the safety bicycle caught on and edged out the ordinary bicycle. Here, the safety bicycle became defined as the standard. This shows that an object's value, or non-value, lies in the meaning that is applied to it by various audiences in society.

As the bicycle example illustrates, different audiences may have competing meanings about any given object. These competing meanings arise from cultural lags, cultural leads, and cultural innovations (Griswold 1994). To be sure, competing meanings are problematic to someone who has a potentially discrediting characteristic that can bring about stigma. This is because they can never be never sure which audience and which meaning they are dealing with in any given social situation. That is, they can not be sure how a cultural object works with the particular audience that they are dealing with.

Cultural objects simply do not work the same way with everyone. Sociologist

Michael Schudson (1989) has explored the question ofhow culture works within particular social environments. More specifically, he has explored how cultural objects influence the ways that people think and act. He explains that cultural objects do not affect people in the same way and that no one producer can control which audience receives a particular meaning or the nature of the meaning that is received. Further, even members of the same audience will not receive a cultural object the same way. 114 Schudson (1989) has identified five dimensions by which to assess the influence of a cultural object on audiences. This hierarchical "5 R" model includes: retrievability, rhetorical force, resonance, institutional retention, and resolution. The more dimensions a cultural object has, the higher the cultural potency of the object. It should be noted that the dimensions are cumulative. Thus, if an object has achieved resonance, then the object must have achieved rhetorical force and retrievability. This is represented in the following graphic:

~ "' Resolution Institutional retention Resonance Rhetorical force Rellrievability

Figure 4.2. Schudson' s Five Dimensions of Cultural Power

In the following discussion I will use the "5 R" model to examine some of the ways that the cultural object of the Hooters Girl inspires action in American society. This sets up the context for the following chapters which presents the results from the qualitative interviews about the types of meaning that the women have encountered surrounding their work and how they use culture to negotiate those meanings.

According to Schudson (1989), cultural objects must reach an audience, or audience member, in order to have any influence. Underlying this premise is the object's accessibility to the audience; it must be available to them in order for it to exert any kind of influence. Schudson (1989) refers to this accessibility as retrievability. Retrievability 115 encompasses several sociological dimensions that help a cultural object reach an audience: economic, social, and spatial or temporal fields. Hooters, Inc., as a producer, invokes all of these dimensions in order to create physical and mindful awareness of the

Hooters Girl in the audience.

Price can serve as an economic barrier to getting a cultural product into consumer's hands. In general, a cultural object is more economically retrievable if it is inexpensive.

Hooters price points are reasonable and compare to that of popular chains like Chili's or

Ruby Tuesday (HOA 2007). In fact, Hooter's customers often choose Hooters as a place to eat over Chili's, Applebee's, Olive Garden, TGIF, or Outback Steakhouse (Brand IQ

2006). Hooters is an affordable dining out option and is highly competitive in terms of patronage by those who dine out at other national chains. Clearly, when dining in the restaurant, the customer comes in contact with the Hooters Girl. Hooters and the Hooters

Girl are viable for economic retrievability for vast audiences because they have access to the Hooters Girl as a part of an inexpensive dining experience.

Along with economic availability, cultural objects also need to be socially retrievable. That is, it must not have physical or social barriers that prevent people from accessing or utilizing it. Given the number of units that Hooters operates and their domestic affiliations with major sporting events, audiences have a variety of opportunities to come into contact with Hooters in terms of visiting a physical unit. Of course, more isolated cities may not have a physical location of Hooters in their particular market. Additionally, there appears to be ideological social barriers at play that keep certain social groups from utilizing the Hooters and Hooters Girl concept. 116 The first social barrier to consuming the Hooters Girl is the environment of the

Hooters restaurant. In a survey of those who frequently patron Hooters, three out of four customers felt that Hooters has an acceptable amount of sex appeal (BrandiQ 2006).

However, only one out three felt that it is an appropriate place for families with children

(BrandiQ 2006). Customers cite the limited menu and the bar-like atmosphere as hindrances to patronage by families with children. In addition, the party composition of guests that visit Hooters restaurants are predominately male with less than half of the parties that come to Hooters consisting of females. Here we see Hooters and the Hooters

Girl as being more socially retrievable to men. On the other hand, Hooters is not readily socially available to women and families who may not see Hooters as an appropriate place for their respective groups based on the sexual appropriation of females.

In addition, many audiences attach class considerations to Hooters as it is often referred to as a low brow cultural form, connoting that it is derogatory for those of lower class or oflow taste. The company acknowledges this low brow association particularly in reference to their NASCAR affiliation with which they still have a strong relationship.

As McNeil, the director of marketing states: "NASCAR, they kind of embraced us, maybe they were a little politically incorrect, too. They were sponsored by a tobacco company. One oftheir tours was sponsored by a beer. Along comes Hooters: Well, let's introduce sex to it" (Tierney 2007). Another interesting example of class distinction with respect to Hooters is its annual sponsorship ofwomen's college golf. As Fowler (2007) observes, the Hooters sponsorship is odd because of the "high-society atmosphere cultivated by the sport of golf' connoting that Hooters is of lower class. In August 2007, 117 McNeil caused quite a stir when he made the following comment about the female golf athletes: "They may not be wearing orange shorts," And they may be into "swings" instead of"wings," but we are proud to call these athletes Hooters girls" (Fowler 2007).

The National Golf Coaches Association did not have any problem with the quote.

But, the coach ofthe Brigham Young college team, Sue Nyhus, said ofthe quote: "I guess I don't want them to think (the golfers) are just pretty girls and anybody could do it." She also said, "Not everyone can do what they do. These girls are talented, smart and driven, and I would hate to see them belittled in any way or portrayed as anything else than great students and athletes" (Fowler 2007). Conversely, Arizona State coach

Melissa Luellen observed:

There's definitely a stigma as to what a Hooters Girl is; Ifyou talk to someone at Hooters, they'll tell you Hooters Girls are much more than wearing orange shorts. It's all about perspective, but Hooters really does a lot of charity in the public eye. For women's golf, it's a great opportunity for a sponsorship. And we're proud to have them as our sponsor. (Fowler 2007)

These examples highlight both class and gender differences with respect to reception of

Hooters and the Hooters Girl.

Space and time also influence the retrievability of cultural objects. Quite simply, the restaurant and the Hooters Girl must be physically accessible to audiences. Hooters,

Inc. accomplishes this through its national marketing campaigns, the number of physical units that it has operating, and through major sporting events that it sponsors. As such, many people, especially the male audience in the United States will come into contact with the Hooters concept and the Hooters girl through the course of every day living.

Schudson (1989) posits that cultural objects have greater temporal awareness if they are 118 connected to an institutionalized event that corresponds to the calendar. Calendars are a knowledge activating mechanisms that help embed a cultural object with audiences

(Schudson 1989). Hooters, Inc. markets its products and the Hooters Girl on many significant calendar events: sports seasons (to include football, baseball, and racing), St.

Patrick's Day, and in its advertisement of merchandise and gift cards for the Christmas holiday season. Audiences are aware of and retrieve the Hooters concept and the Hooters

Girl because it corresponds to a variety of culturally salient times like that of holiday and sport seasons.

The second component of the 5 R model for understanding how a cultural object works with an audience is that of rhetorical force. Rhetorical force refers to the degree to which a cultural object is memorable or powerful (Schudson 1989). Some cultural objects are more memorable or powerful with some audiences and others fade away. The question is why. Schudson (1989) provides us a baseline from which to answer this question:

.... cultural objects do not exist by themselves. Each new one enters a field already occupied. If it is to gain attention, it must do so by displacing others or by entering into a conversation with others. The power of a cultural object or message exists by virtue of contrastive relationships to other objects in its field. (p. 166)

What is it about the Hooters Girl that is so memorable with audiences and that has captured their attention since it's opening in 1983? As Mike McNeil, the director or marketing states: "The essential ingredient that makes Hooters different from every other restaurant out there is the Hooters girls and the element of socially acceptable sex appeal" 119 (Yee 2006). This is certainly true and it is certainly one of the main reasons the Hooters

Girl is memorable.

The long lasting appeal of Hooters may also lie in its ability to couple sex appeal with sports and food. The Hooters Girl is undoubtedly one of the most contemporary sexualized table servers in contrast to routine waitresses. And she is more economically and socially accessible to the public than the Playboy Bunnies who work in the Playboy clubs. The Hooters Girl represents the middle of the continuum between these two.

Hooters also has rhetorical force in that it builds upon the love of sports. Hooters, Inc. sponsors a variety of professional sporting events and even has (had) pro-sports figures as celebrity spokespeople (Lee Corso a head football coach, Alan Kuwiki a deceased

NASCAR driver, and John Daly a pro-golfer). All of these sports figures appear in advertisements or host events in which they are surrounded by the Hooters Girl. Food is also one of the nation's pasttimes. According to survey research by the Pew Research

Center (2006) that asked people ifthey eat out at least once weekly, 71 percent of men say that they do. Hooters, and the Hooters Girl, have rhetorical force because it is a triple threat: women's bodies sell, sports sell, and food sells, particularly to men.

As I have highlighted in a few examples above, Hooters is memorable to different audiences for different reasons. It is memorable to some male audiences because of sex appeal. It is also an affront to some men because it is too suggestive. Similarly, some women patronize Hooters, but some women's rights groups argue that the chain exploits women and is disrespectful ofwomen. For example, Taina Bien-Aime of the New York based group Equality Now states that Hooters normalizes the female body as an object to 120 be consumed (Yee 2006). It is important to recognize that not all men see Hooters as acceptable and not all women see Hooters as inappropriate. In any event, the Hooters

Girls as simultaneous producers and receivers must situate themselves and negotiate these dichotomies in every day interactions.

Once a cultural object has retrievability and rhetorical force, it may also acquire resonance. Resonance refers to the degree which a cultural object resonates with a particular audience (Schudson 1989). As Borer (2006) notes, "Ifthe cultural object is not relevant or useful to its audience, its cultural capital diminishes" (p. 217). In this context, resonance does not refer to the relationship between the object and the individual.

Rather, it points to the way in which the cultural object fits into the broader culture and its way of life. In the same way, this relates to the fourth dimension, institutional retention. Most cultural objects come and go, but one that lasts has staying power because it has become institutionalized in some aspect of cultural life. As I have highlighted throughout this chapter, the Hooters concept resonates and is institutionalized because it is grounded in three culturally institutionalized phenomena: the social consumption of food, the social consumption of sport, and the social consumption of the female body.

The fifth and final dimension ofSchudson's (1989) 5 R model is resolution.

Resolution refers to the object's capacity to influence action. For example, an advertisement influences action because it tells the consumer to buy something, connoting a specific act. When that consumer buys that product, the object has reached resolution. On one level, when a customer enters a restaurant, then we can say that 121 Hooters marketing efforts have helped the Hooters concept reach resolution. It has directed action. However, there are other kinds of action that has resulted in the Hooters concept and the Hooters Girl reaching resolution. For example, on its website, the

National Organization of Women links to an organization that has called for people to mobilize and picket places such as Hooter's that exploit women's bodies. Further, local governments have denied Hooters, Inc. beer licenses on the account of the Hooters Girl.

This happened recently in Arlington, TX where the Mayor stated: "It's the uniforms and the merchandise they sell, it's all very sexually suggestive. It's inconsistent with the standard of decency in this community" (Y ee 2006). In contrast, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, thousands of people marched on Capitol Hill in response to a lawsuit against

Hooters to allow men to become Hooters Girls. The marchers supported the company's right to hire women only to fill the position of Hooters Girl. The Hooters concept has achieved resolution; people are willing to act on its account.

Hooters and the Hooters Girl as a cultural object has reached a variety of audiences, created mindfulness in those audiences, achieved resonance, became institutionalized, and stimulated action. Dependent upon the way a particular audience has received the Hooters Girl concept, different actions have resulted. Ultimately, this examination has shown that there are multiple meanings that surround the Hooters Girl and they can be positive or negative.

Situating the Hooters Girl as Waitress

The idea that women's work is gendered and sexualized is well established. This is particularly true for the entertainment, leisure, and service industries where the body, 122 or a particular part of the body, is offered as the product for consumption (Adkins 1995;

Cobble 1991; Dellinger and Williams 1997; Halll993). Many industries, such as that of erotic labor, actively promote and capitalize on the spectacle of the female body (Chapkis

1997; Frank 2002). In tum, women also use their body capital for economic gain, such as in the case of the Hooters Girl.

In general, table service or waitressing has not been specifically classified as erotic labor, although it certainly encompasses erotic elements such as sexualized uniforms (Cobble 1991; Erickson 2002; Halll993), emotional labor (Halll993;

Hochschild 1983 ), and aspects of a sexualized performance (Donovan 197 4; Sanders

2005; Spradley and Mann 1975; Steinem 1983). There are distinct forms oftable service, particularly in the entertainment business, that are more overtly sexual than that of routine waitressing. In fact, these waitress-as-entertainer positions specifically exploit female sexuality in order to draw in customers and maximize earnings. This is evident in several adjunct forms of table service such as cocktail waitressing, the Playboy Bunny, and cocktail waitresses and bartenders at Coyote Ugly, to name a few. For purposes of this study, I also place the Hooters Girl in this category.

While the Playboy Bunny (Hearn and Stolll975; Steinem 1983) and the cocktail waitress (Spradley and Mann 1975) have been studied as unique populations within the domain ofwaitressing, the Hooters Girl has not been the central focus of any one published study but has appeared as a subject in a dissertation examining a sex work continuum (DiNenno 2002). The Hooters Girl presents a unique form of erotized labor.

She does not work in an age-restricted environment as does the cocktail waitress, 123 stripper, or women of Coyote Ugly. She performs routine duties associated with table service. Her femininity and sexuality are overtly called into play during the course of her job duties in the same manner as those who participate in erotic labor albeit not within the confines of adult entertainment venues.

The restaurant industry is big business in American society and it is one that is reliant on table servers. In fact, the restaurant industry is the largest employer in the

United States, after the government (National Restaurant Association (NRA) 2004). The

Occupational Outlook Handbook (2007) estimates that there were about 2.2 million waiters and waitresses working in dining establishments, with the expectation that opportunities will grow at the same rate of all other occupations from 2004-2014. Nearly half of all adults will have worked in the restaurant industry at some point in their life; with 32 percent of all adults getting their first job experience in a restaurant (National

Restaurant Association 2007). Unfortunately, little empirical analysis exists on the occupation ofwaitressing, with most studies conducted over a decade ago

Waitressing as Low Prestige and Deskilled

Despite the industry's labor reliance upon those in the table service profession, the culture surrounding the occupation of waitress is marginalized for those who undertake it as a career (Cobble 1991; Ehrenreich 2001). Currently, women comprise 55 percent of the labor force in food service (NRA 2004) and comprise 70 percent of the full-time positions in the occupation ofwaiter/waitress (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2004).

In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) (2004) reported that in 2002, waitressing was one of the 20 top leading occupations ofwomen employed on a full-time basis. 124 Unfortunately, society often ascribes negative connotations to table service by women, particularly along the lines of occupational prestige. Two dominant themes emerge in the literature as explanations for this marginalization: occupational segregation vis-a-vis supply and demand side explanations.

Gross (1968) created the concept of occupational sex segregation to describe how women and men are concentrated in different occupations based on gender. The term is also applicable to study how sex segregation occurs within an occupation, such as in the case of table service. The occupational double standard in the field oftable service with respect to gender has received attention in scholarly work (Cobble 1991; Hall1993;

Neumark 1996; Paules 1991). While sex segregation at large is well documented in the workplace (Charles and Grusky 1995; Reskin 1993) and within occupation (Bielby and

Baron 1986), there are only a couple of empirical studies on the topic of sex segregation specifically related to table service (Hall1993; Neumark 1996).

Supply side and demand side explanations underlie occupational sex segregation in table service. On the supply side, human capital theory is a possible explanation contributing to sex segregation in table service. On the demand side, restaurateurs and hiring managers prefer certain attributes, one of them being gender, and include these preferences in their hiring practices. A theory of occupational choice, the human capital model rests on the premise that men and women make certain investments in themselves in terms of education and skill in order to gain employment and maximize lifetime earnings (Becker 1985). The focus of human capital is on the supply side, suggesting 125 that women do not make the same investments as do men and consequently receive lower rewards for their skill in terms of salary or occupational prestige (Becker 1985).

The job of waitress is further socially attenuated because of the belief that the duties associated with it require little education or skill to perform the job. The

Occupational Outlook Handbook (2002) confirms the sentiment in which it states that

"there are no specific educational requirements for food and beverage service jobs, although many employers prefer to hire high school graduates for waiter and waitress" (p.

311 ). Because of the notion that there is no skill to perform the job, many believe that the women who perform the job are uneducated and have little human capital to acquire a better job considered as knowledge work.

Given that waitressing is not viewed as knowledge work, it often leads to the stereotyping of the waitress as "uneducated" or "unskilled" (Cobble 1991; Einehrich

2001; Erickson 2004; Paules 1991). This idea is not lost on employers and subsequently those in this profession often have jobs with no benefits, limited growth opportunity, and low pay. In fact, the median hourly earnings (without tips) for a waitress in 2000 was

$6.42 (BLS Statistics 2002). For those employed on a full-time wage/salary basis, the median weekly earnings in 2002 were $300 (BLS 2004). These statistics are in stark contrast to what many consider being a benefit ofwaitressing: fast money and an abundance of cash in the pocket.

On the other hand, those in fine dining (predominately men) tend to make more money in terms of upwards of 50 thousand dollars or more (NRA 2004). This is in stark contrast to the salaries earned by women in table service. Given the occupational 126 segregation that exists in Census Bureau of Labor Statistics (2004) notes, women still are only earning approximately 75 cents to every dollar a man earns.

A second supply side explanation is that of sex stereotyping. Today, table service is widely regarded as women's work and has been called the quintessential female job

(Cobble 1991). Yet, women were not always the status quo when it carne to performing table service. In her historical account ofwaitressing, Cobble (1991) described how, even after travel and lodging became highly profitable industries, men continued to be the standard for employment as the food service worker. However, entrepreneurs soon realized the benefits of hiring females as food service workers: cheap labor, reliability, obedience, tact, and attractiveness (Cobble 1991). Women soon became the standard for table and counter service and a status quo that still pervades the industry today.

There is a long-standing history of the devaluation of women's work and waitressing has not escaped this precedent. As Hall (1993) notes, waitressing is conceptualized as negative because it has culturally feminized attributes such as service and subservience. In table service, women are simply doing gender (West and

Zimmerman 1987). That is, they are performing nurturing work such as caring, feeling, and serving that are ascribed to the female in society. Domestic service ranks low in social prestige and many view waitressing as performing duties ascribed to domestic service (Hall 1993). This same sentiment is echoed in studies of other forms oftable service occupations considered women's work such as flight attendants (Hochschild

1983) and the cocktail waitress (Spradley and Mann 1975). Perhaps a quote by Hall

(1993) on women's work provides the best insight: "When we say waiting is women's 127 work, we mean that most of the workers are women and that the work tasks have been gendered as female (p. 342).

On the demand side, different types of restaurants prefer one gender to the other dependent upon the kind of services offered. Hall (1993) categorizes restaurants as offering either "formal" or "home style" types of service. Since the early 1900's, men have primarily occupied the more prestigious and formal type of service found in prestigious restaurants oriented to finer dining (Cobble 1991 ). Many restaurateurs cite the formal tuxedo uniform, nurturing personality traits, and lack of physical strength as deterrents for hiring women, all the while claiming that they do not discriminate. These attributes are often considered masculine, an attribute expected during the course of formal dining service (Hall1993). Women have historically been concentrated in more

"home style" forms of table service at family restaurants, casual dining, and coffee shops

(Cobble 1990). Restaurateurs cite women as the status quo for this type of service for their nurturing and friendly personalities (Cobble, 1990; Paules 1991).

In fact, her study of engendering table service work, Hall (1993) found that integrated wait staffs were present in all prestige ranks of restaurants, albeit most frequently in the middle prestige restaurants. While this study shows that women have broken the barrier in terms of more prestigious table service, it also shows that wait staffing in lower prestige restaurants is almost exclusively female and that men are still the preference in the more prestigious restaurants. This same sentiment is also confirmed by a study of sex discriminatory hiring practices in the restaurant industry (Neumark

1996). When a male-female pair of applicants went into restaurants with different pricing 128 points, men were most often offered a position at the highest priced restaurants and women were most often offered positions at the medium and lower priced restaurants.

Sex discrimination along the lines of sex stereotyping contributes to occupational sex segregation. In other words, women participate in lower brow cultural forms of table service such as counter service in coffee shops, cafes, and chain restaurants. Men, however, tend to work in more upscale dining establishments. In fact, Hooters has been called the working class equivalent to the affluent man's Playboy Club (Heyler 2003). It is evident that Hooters recognizes its low brow distinction in the slogan "Delightfully tacky, yet unrefined" (HOA 2007).

Waitressing as a Lack of Moral Constitution

Another negative meaning that continues to plague table service is that those who waitress are seen as morally inferior. This negative perception has roots in the advent of the travel and hotel industry, when women began to have a large presence in the domain of table service. This growing opportunity for female employment in the public sector did not escape the shaming and demeaning by society that often accompanies women's work outside of the home. Waitressing was often thought of as improper or unladylike because it was undertaken in environments that were not consistent with behavioral prescriptions of what women should be doing. As Cobble (1991) noted, waitressing allowed women to engage in conversation, professional interaction, and personal/intimate interaction with countless male strangers. These new female social freedoms violated long standing social conventions about appropriate interactions between males and females. 129 In her ethnography ofwaitressing in the 1920's, Donovan (1974) observed that there is a "sex game" that occurs between the waitresses and the patrons. One aspect of the sex game is the prevalence of "constant stimulation of dirty jokes and unclean conversation" (p. 218). Further, she observed and noted that certain waitresses engage in suggestive behavior in order to maximize tips, calling this behavior semi-prostitution.

The reliance of the waitress on the tip adds further to the notion of unladylike behavior (Donovan 1974). Women that perform table service understand that flirting, smiling, and touching can produce larger tips (Cobble 1991; Donovan 1974; Stephen and

Zweigenhaft 1986). Donovan (1974) noticed that if the waitress smiled at a male patron she would make a quarter as a tip. This is notable as the standard tip in the Chicago area at that time was a dime. More recent studies show that when a female waitress touched a male patron, she was likely to receive a 15 percent tip (Stephen and Zweigenhaft 1986).

Conversely, when a male waiter touched a female patron they received an 11 percent tip and yet, when there was no touching, the average tip was 11 percent. Clearly, intimate touching is a way to maximize tipping behavior, at least for females when working with a male patron (Stephen and Zweigenhaft 1986). Ultimately, the service between the female waitress and the male patron is reduced to a money transaction for gendered intimacy. In her ethnography ofwaitressing, Ginsberg (2000) fluently describes:

Her livelihood is not determined so much by whether or not she takes an order correctly, brings the food on time or smiles often. Rather, she must gauge a customer's mood, pick up cues as to his background, and based on all of this, anticipate his needs and wants. The server is, effectively, the customer's private dancer for the two hours he sits at her table. (p. 29)

Here, we see how table service and sexualized labor are conflated. 130 Indeed, feminized table service is eroticized and sexualized. Ginsberg (2000) describes the world surrounding table service as conducive to sexual activities.

This is accomplished through interactions that seem to promote sexual exchanges

(Erickson 2002; Hall1993). As Hall (1993) observed, the duties associated with waiting tables are sexually objectified through the uniform. Restaurants typically hire young attractive women and dress them in revealing uniforms. In turn, they perform the routine tasks of serving food: taking orders, bringing food, engaging in small talk, and flirting.

In her study ofwaitressing, Erickson (2002) explains that these duties, coupled with the uniform, blur the lines of the service exchange. Male customers misread this exchange and often feel that the female waitress is sexually available to them (Erickson 2002).

Therefore, women who undertake waitressing, particularly in the form of a

Hooters Girl, are socially marginalized on two accounts. First, they are marginalized based on their job as a service worker. Second, they are further marginalized on the basis that their job involves overt sexual overtones. Many of these women are "slutified"8 on these two conditions, and face dual social sanctions from larger society. Hooters engages in ascribing dominant cultural standards and expectations about feminine sexuality to the women who take on the role of the Hooters Girl. In other words, Hooters intends to create and promote the Hooters Girl as a sexualized commodity. This is important to note because it is precisely the kinds of assumptions about waitressing that I have which

8 I have fashioned the term "slutified" to signify a process of reinforcing a negative social interpretation that builds on the deeply ingrained stereotype that women who waitress or who perform overt sexual labor are "loose". 131 described above, particularly those that involve nuances of eroticism and sexualization underscore the production and the reception of the Hooters Girl as cultural object.

Summary

The Hooters Girl is produced, marketed, distributed, and received within the context of a culture industry system. As shown in this chapter, the system is quite complex and is comprised of various subsystems which work in concert to regulate the cultural object of the Hooters Girl. The industry is thriving because all of the subsystems understand the concept, buy into the concept, and constantly monitor the consumer in order to create avenues by which to capitalize off of market demands. More specifically,

Hooters as a culture industry has capitalized on consumer demand for food, sport, and women. Indeed, the Hooters Girl helps draw in business and the system works hard to control the image of the Hooters Girl as she is essential to the success of the industry.

Many have marched and mobilized in favor of the concept, while others have sued and protested it. These calls to action were analyzed via the lens of sociologist

Michael Schudson's and his 5 R model. In general, we can conclude that the Hooters concept and the Hooters Girl is a powerful cultural object; she inspires action in a variety of audiences and connotes very different interpretations based on variations in the audience. This is important to the dissertation as I am interested in how the women use cultural tools to manage these impassioned reactions.

The negative reception may be somewhat influenced by the position of the

Hooters Girl as a waitress. The occupation of waitressing which has a long standing history of being devalued because it is primarily women's work, it is not viewed as 132 knowledge work and is seen as socially and economically inferior. Additionally, both the

Hooters culture industry system and certain social groups ascribe negative connotations to the Hooters Girl and the women who perform the work as Hooters Girl because it is a highly sexualized form of employment.

The production, marketing, distribution, and reception processes are a double­ edged sword for the women of Hooters because they are simultaneously producers and receivers. The image of the Hooters Girl is created and maintained by the thousands of women who do the job on a daily basis. They cannot control how a particular audience will receive their performance or association with the job. In the end, when the woman leaves her shift at the restaurant, she is still a Hooters Girl in the mind of many audiences ... even when she is not in the uniform. Further, even after she has completely exited the position of the Hooters Girl, she may not escape the reception of the Hooters

Girl in audiences she comes in contact with.

This chapter has tried to provide a broader context for understanding the production and the reception of the Hooters Girl. The ensuing chapters will present the results of the interview data and begin answering the research questions: (1) What are the everyday consequences for those involved in the production of culture? (2) How do actors experience the negative reception of the cultural object they have produced? In order to answer these questions, I now turn to the experts themselves - the women of

Hooters. CHAPTERS

PRODUCTION IN UNIFORM: CONVENTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES OF DOING HOOTERS GIRL

The perfect Hooter's Girl would be really pretty, in really good shape. Have a good happy personality and get along with people well and also be smart when it comes to being a waitress. June, Current Hooters Girl

The previous chapter looked at the broader context of the Hooters organization, with an emphasis on processes, procedures, and the rules and regulations by which the company directs the production ofthe Hooters Girl. In this chapter, I move the analysis ofthe cultural object ofthe Hooters Girl out ofthe organizational level and into the level of face-to-face interaction. This interaction includes the exchanges among the women, between the women and the customers, and between the women, customers, and the management staff on a daily basis within the restaurant while "in uniform". It details the experiences of the women as producers of the Hooters Girl, or what I refer to as "doing

Hooters Girl".

In order to examine these interactions, I draw heavily from sociologist Howard

Becker's (1982) work on art worlds. Becker (1982) describes how social organizations are comprised of various networks of people that work together in a cooperative manner to allow for the production of cultural objects. Specifically, he addresses the world of art where he describes the various processes and networks of people that must come together to allow a work of art to come to life. Becker (1982) ultimately describes the production

133 134 of the cultural object of art as a collective activity. This activity begins with the conception of an idea for a particular art work that must then be executed into action by people within that system. Becker (1982) notes that artists must have materials and equipment in order to manufacture their form of art, support of various talent such as editors, producers, and stage hands who help advance the art form, as well as an audience that responds to it. In essence, for an art work to come to fruition, it depends on the collective activities of an entire art world. Also key to the production and distribution of the art form is the producer and the receiver of the cultural object.

What does art have to do with the Hooters Girl? In the previous chapter, it was illustrated that the different systems must come together to produce the Hooters Girl. In this chapter, I delineate this concept of art as collective activity to the activity that is involved in the production ofthe Hooters Girl at the level of interaction. The cultural object of the Hooters Girl is brought to life at both the organizational and individual level via a complex system of activity that includes those who design and make the uniform, manufacture and distribute the food to the restaurants which is then prepared for the customer, manufacture and assemble the materials to build the restaurants, marketers who sell the concept, managers who run the individual locations and the corporate offices, the women who work as Hooters Girls, and the customers that patronize the restaurants. The daily business of Hooters and the production of the Hooters Girl are all accomplished amid a network of cooperation between people and organizations (Becker 1982).

This cooperative activity is made possible because of conventions. Becker (1982) defines conventions as "customary agreements that have become part of the conventional 135 way of doing things" (p. 29). Conventions can be thought of as the understood rules of engagement for a particular activity that allow for efficiency in production and consumption. There appears to be two levels of conventions: those between the various producers of the cultural object and those between the producers and audiences ofthe object. I use conventions as my analytical category for showing how the women "do

Hooters Girl". Analysis of the data reveals that there a wide range of conventions about how one goes about the business of doing Hooters Girl to include conventions of appearance, customer service, work ethic, and so on. Customers come into the restaurant with their own conventions and expectations of environment, service, aesthetics, and so forth. The results of the in-depth interviews are reported and relied heavily upon their voices to present and explore these conventions in order to answer the research question:

What are the everyday consequences for those involved in the production of culture?

It is in these contrasting, and sometimes competing, conventions that the women develop a sense that there are indeed conflicting meanings applied to their work and that there are those who think less of the women who perform the position of Hooters Girl, even by the very people who patronize the concept. These tensions cause the women to develop strategies of action (cultural tools) that they use to negotiate the meanings given to their job outside of the restaurant (as explored in the next chapter).

What is a Hooters Girl?

In the previous chapter, I examined the Hooters Girl from the organizational level and how the company works as a cooperative entity to create the image and message of the Hooters Girl. As a part of the interview process, I asked the respondents, "What is a 136 Hooters Girl?" The women described the Hooters Girl in a way that coincided with the corporate vision in terms of performing table service with youth like qualities and sex appeal. Amy, who has worked as a Hooters Girl for several years, related a description that captures the essence of the Hooters Girl:

I think a Hooters'Girl, I feel bad for saying this, but I think it should be an attractive 20 yearish old girl, woman, who is in shape, and she's bubbly and friendly and work oriented.

The women also used words like "all American cheerleaders" or "the girl next door", which is how the company frames the image of the Hooters Girl.

Like Amy, many conveyed that a Hooters Girl is someone who is physically attractive. Others focused their description of a Hooters Girl on the table server aspect.

June, who is new to the position of Hooters Girl described:

I don't necessarily think it's that different than being a waitress. It's just the fact of you getting to actually sit down and get to know our customers and it's really easy to bond with your fellow Hooters Girls because we have opportunities to do things together and talk and stuff. She's a friendly waitress.

Ultimately, they understand that the Hooters Girl really is a waitress as entertainer and it involves playing a part. Raegan, one of the older Hooters Girls still working in the restaurant, adequately captures this:

Everybody here is a Hooters Girl that has to play the part, and if it was a movie production and you're supposed to be playing a part if you are not playing the part, then they call cut. Get out of here.

As a part of the interview, I also asked the women to describe the perfect Hooters

Girl. Ninety-percent of the responses had to do with physical appearance. Nadia, a calendar and billboard model for Hooters, conveyed: 137 Well, I just came back from San Diego and their girls like literally look like they are about to go on a photo shoot. They have the fake eyelashes, the curly, big curly hair, you know, big boobs busting out everywhere, you know. All their uniforms were like neat, not saying that ours aren't neat, but all the girls were like, you know, in shape and stufflike that.

Carly, also relates the importance of physical appearance:

Guys don't want---I hear guys always when they get the girls that are kind of frumpy or, you know, not as attractive as the other one and you hear them, oh, I'd like to have that one or I'll have friends that would be like, oh, I went into your Hooters and I got the pregnant one or I got the old one, the grandma Hooter.

These descriptions fit in with how the company conceptualizes the Hooters Girl and reflect how the training program has also constructed how the women think of the

Hooters Girl. The company and the women construct the Hooters Girl as youthful, fun, energetic, easy to talk to, and beautiful- the girl next door. However, as I will show throughout this chapter, not everyone that the Hooters Girl comes into contact with constructs Hooters Girls the same way.

On Becoming a Hooters Girl

If we are to view the production of the Hooters Girl as a network of collective activity, it is important to understand how the woman enters the network and the processes she goes through to learn the conventions among the producers, as well as the conventions expected by the customers who are the receivers. In order to understand how the woman views herself as a Hooters Girl and the meaning she and others give to her work, it is important to understand how she came to be a Hooters Girl. This next section presents the findings about the accepted conventions among the women-as- 138 producers and how they experience several conventions that are the foundations of doing

Hooters Girl.

Appearance as Convention: Getting In

Recall the cultural industry model by Hirsch (1972) presented in the previous chapter. In order to become part of the culture industry, "talent" must get input into the system. Unlike most jobs where the filtering process involves human capital such as education, skill, and availability, Hooters requires both human capital and body capital such as that of those associated with the earlier periods of the airline industry with respect to airline stewardesses (Taylor and Abbott 1998). But, in terms of"getting in", body capital is the primary deciding factor. While it has been documented that appearance matters in the broader job market and it is true that certain jobs have physical requirements (weight, ability to lift, and so on), the filtering process of applicants at

Hooters is overtly based on appearance factors such as weight and social demeanor for the purposes of conveying sexuality and not physical labor.

When a woman comes into the restaurant to apply for the position, she is immediately thrust into an unwritten but widely understood and agreed upon visual screening process by the women who are working that shift and the manager on duty:

Sometimes when people come in and ask for an application, you know, they are very selective on the girls they want to hire just based on their looks when you first walk in. So, that's hard when someone asks for an application and, you know, I know ahead of time that they are not going to get hired (Paige). How does Paige know ahead of time that someone is not going to get hired? The women of Hooters have internalized the company's convention of appearance, or what the company manuals and the women of Hooters refer to as "the look". Not only are the 139 women of Hooters trained to internalize and perform the convention of appearance, they are also able to recognize it in others where they apply this convention to other women, particularly applicants. Thus, the convention of appearance teaches women to view other women as objects, making it possible to make decisions about another's body as an object. Hope, who worked for Hooters for 12 years, captures this by saying, "If you are there to make money at a job that promotes sex appeal, and everybody's taste is different, but overall there's this general look that you've got to have. I mean, you can't be overweight and work at Hooters". Consequently, the women and managers of Hooters have not only internalized the corporate vision of "the look", they use this convention as a gate keeping tactic: to either let people in or to keep people out. Why would someone subject themselves to such scrutiny? The respondents reported several reasons for wanting to "get in".

Interestingly, most of the respondents (but not all) in the study reported that

Hooters was not in the forefront of their minds for employment. Rather, Hooters was suggested to them in some form or fashion as a place they should consider by another person. Essentially, most of the women were "turned on" to "getting in". Indeed, the majority of the respondents were co-opted into the position through contact with current employees of Hooters within the current social networks they had. These current employees acted as boundary spanners, recommending Hooters as a viable choice for the women in this study. Boundary spanners, as discussed in Chapter Four, scout out talent for the culture industry system and for the women of this study, the boundary spanners came in different forms (Hirsch 1972). 140 Several women had friends or family members who were already working as

Hooters Girls who championed the job as a great place to work because of the fun social environment. Kyra left her employment as a waitress at Applebee's in order to become a

Hooters Girl based on the recommendation of her cousin who was working as a Hooters

Girl at the time. Kyra describes her family members influence on her decision: "My cousin works here [at Hooters] and she's always told me it's a lot of fun and I thought it might be a break from the whole not really fun life of Applebee's". In fact, about ten of the women had waitressing experience and two had hostess experience prior to working for Hooters. Like Kyra, several made the decision to leave other restaurants like

Applebee's, Friendly's, IHOP, Outback Steakhouse, Ruby Tuesday's, Texas Roadhouse, or locally owned restaurants to work at Hooters citing the fun and upbeat atmosphere as reasons for making the switch.

To be sure, the company prides itself on providing a fun atmosphere and this is evident in two of their recruiting slogans "when is work like play'' and "take this job and love it" (HOA 2007), and it is a theme that resonates with the women who have performed the duties of the Hooters Girl. When asked what they liked best about being a

Hooters Girl, the most often cited was the atmosphere. Paige, who has only worked at

Hooters for three months, likes the fact that they "play games and shoot water guns across the restaurant. You don't find that in any other restaurant". In fact, several of the women state that the atmosphere is so fun that it really does not feel like they are at work.

The reality may very well be that the company, by portraying Hooters as a fun place to work, may be masking the harsh realities of performing erotic/sexualized labor. After all, 141 businesses would not survive if they had slogans that highlighted some of the negative aspects of work such as: Do you want to stand on your feet for long hours and be objectified by men all day? Do you enjoy dealing with crude comments about your body? If, so Hooters is the place for you. Clearly, the women have fun working at

Hooters, but are not aware that this may be a motivational tactic to distract from the negative things about working at Hooters and service work in general.

The atmosphere "of work as play" also provided an opportunity for social interaction and the ability to forge friendships, some of them lasting over a decade.

While many of the women already knew someone that worked there, they also cited the ability to meet new people and make new friends as one of the reasons they wanted to

"get in". Margo, who had recently moved to the area, saw it as a place to "meet a lot of girls and make friends fast". In fact, many of the respondents talked fondly of the camaraderie among the women who often "hung out" socially when off the clock and who became each other's best friends. In general, many of the women described their co­ workers (managers and cooks included) as family, although noting that there were times when the environment was full of drama such as that of a dysfunctional family.

Similarly, the women also enjoyed the ability to engage with customers and to meet and talk with people from all walks of life. For June, who considers herself a people person, the ability to talk with people, get to know who they are and where they are from is a welcomed aspect ofthe job. These revelations square nicely with an early account of working in restaurants by sociologist William Foote Whyte who states that those who seek out waitressing may "require a high rate of social activity and changes in physical 142 activity in order to be happy in their work. The restaurant fills this need for them"

(Whyte 1948: 13 ). Hooters was viewed by the respondents as work as a social occasion rather than work for work's sake and it was hard to discern if Hooters was intrinsically a fun place to work or if the women had internalized the way Hooters constructed itself as a fun place to work. Regardless, the respondents were adamant that they enjoyed working at Hooters.

Women were also drafted into the system as a result of being a patron at Hooters, where the Hooters Girl serving their table made the suggestion that she should consider

Hooters as a place of employment.

I had never been to Hooters. I had a guy friend who had his 18th birthday party and I went up there to hang out to celebrate his birthday. Actually, I was the only girl there. I was kind oflike, you know, I don't know, I felt kind of. .. I wasn't uncomfortable, but I felt overwhelmed. A lot of women feel that way apparently when they come in. I was quiet, but the server that was waiting on us walked right over and slammed this piece of paper down in front of me and was like fill this out. And I looked at her, my eyes, I'm sure I looked like a deer caught in the headlights and I said what is it? She said it's an application. And, I said how much do you average a night? She said, I make anywhere from $180-250 per night. I said, sign me up! I left the Texas Roadhouse restaurant to come work at Hooters. (Haley)

The above story also highlights one of the other main reasons that women want to get into Hooters - the money. In fact, next to the fun atmosphere it is the primary attraction to the job and one of the things the women report that they like best about working at Hooters. The respondents worked an average of five shifts per week, with a range of earnings between $100-$200 per shift (shifts are four-seven hours long).

Women in the study who worked at Hooters years ago reported earning $15 0-$3 00 per shift. Ultimately the women understood that their job at Hooters was a great way to get 143 cash quickly and for minimum effort. As Emma states, "One of my really good friends worked there. She said, you know you could work less and make more money at Hooters than an hourly job". The money, coupled with the benefit of flexible scheduling was a huge draw to the position. In the end, while they view the job as fun, the women are ultimately there to earn a living. So, while it is a fun job, in the end it is 'just a job".

Regardless of reason (knowing someone, being referred, and so on), the women would not have gotten in if they did not meet the convention of appearance.

While the women were excited that they were able to get in, not everyone in their immediate social circles shared the same enthusiasm regarding this accomplishment. For the women, part of becoming a Hooters Girl was telling friends and family that they had gotten hired and were going to be working at Hooters. Generally speaking, the majority of women did not face any negative reactions from their friends. In fact, the common reaction was either a non-reaction or something as simple as "that's cool". A few of the women reported that they had friends who saw Hooters as degrading or objectifying women or flat out immoral.

However, family presented a major dilemma for many of the women. While several parents were fine with this decision and even encouraged it, most of the women received negative feedback about their decision to work at Hooters from one or both of their parents and grandparents. Whereas their mothers were largely fine with it, the fathers were very upset about the prospect of their daughters working at Hooters. The common theme in their father's reactions mirrored Hughes (1951) concept of "dirty work". They saw Hooters as tainted connoting that there is something about the work 144 that is degrading or undignified. Negative reactions from fathers (and sometimes mothers) had themes of embarrassment or issues of morality.

Wendy, who has only been working for Hooters about a month, received negative reactions from both her father and grandfather that were quite severe. Wendy's father, whom she describes as a businessman, asked her why she would do something like that to herself saying that it was degrading work and that he was embarrassed and humiliated that she would work there. In fact, he equated it to not having a level head on one's shoulders. At the same time, Wendy's mother told her grandparents that she was going to start working at Hooters. The grandfather responded, "I hope her father smacked her". Clearly, Wendy's father sees Hooters as low brow and reserved for those who would objectify themselves, but not his daughter. Indeed, this was not the convention of appearance that he wanted his daughter to display.

In fact, Wendy states that she now lies to her extended family, including the grandparents, and tells them that she works at Applebee's. Similarly, Margo was at a family gathering for Thanksgiving. At the dinner table, family members asked if she was still in school. When Margo replied that she was taking some time off from school and that she was working in a restaurant, her grandmother shouted, "As long as it's not at damn Hooters"! Many of the women have decided not to tell family members that they work at Hooters for fear of this kind of reaction.

Katherine, who has worked at Hooters for about four years, recalls the characterization of Hooters as immoral when her cousins "found out" that she works at

Hooters: 145 I have an Uncle that's a pastor and his kids are very sheltered. They have never been into a Hooters so when my 17-year old cousin found out she asked if that was like prostitution .... And, my other cousin could not even say the word Hooters. He could not utter it aloud.

Amber also recalls an interesting family reaction:

My mother mentioned that I was a Hooters Girl at my cousin's funeral. I was like that is completely inappropriate right now. Interviewer: Why is that? Just because, I mean, it's a time of mourning and like my, one side of our family is extremely conservative. Interviewer: What ifyour mother had said something like my daughter is an accountant? They probably wouldn't care.

At first glance, it would seem that Amber was concerned about the appropriateness of place of disclosure rather than the nature of the disclosure itself. But, upon further inspection, it is clear that Amber was concerned of the reaction of the family to the revelation that she worked at Hooters and that the funeral was not the time to possibly have a heated discussion over it.

Margo recalls arguing with her sister's boyfriend about her working at Hooters:

And then he's like I don't understand why you'd want to be a Hooter Girl. Guys come in there for one reason only -- to stare at you. I mean the name is Hooters, it's obvious that they come in to check out your hooters. I tried to explain to him it is a family restaurant, a neighborhood restaurant, and that we have a kid's play area, we sell kid's merchandise, we have a kid's menu, we have a changing table in the women's bathroom. It's obviously, you know, a family restaurant, and he just wasn't having it, and he started arguing, and he was like what do you guys wear? People don't go to Applebee's to check out the girls there. They come to Hooter's to check the girls out. I was like well -- and he tried to say because what we wear, and I was like, yeah, we wear tank tops and shorts, but, you know, I compared it to the beach, we wear less at the beach. He was like this is nothing like the beach. You don't serve people at the beach and everyone is wearing it at the beach. So, we started arguing some more about it, and it just got to the point to where-- oh, and he said people who bring their kids into Hooter's have no morals. 146 Simply put, many friends and family members attached a different meaning to getting in than did the women. Immediately upon "getting in" to the position at Hooters, women are not only conscious of and indoctrinated into the convention of appearance, but through their own intimate social networks come to realize that different people apply different meanings to Hooters. There are many who do not see it as fun, friendly, or as an appropriate option to make money in the same way that the women do. The women are already evidencing the fact that there are issues with respect to meaning constructed about the Hooters Girl and issues related to disclosure and spoiled identity. And, they have not even stepped out onto the restaurant floor to work yet.

Sex Appeal as Convention: Serving It Up

The reactions from family members described above are in some way related to the overt sex appeal and sexual objectification of the female body required as part of the duties of working as a Hooters Girl. The fact that the women would put their body on display for the male gaze was quite troubling to many family members who see it as degrading. Yet when I asked the women of Hooters how they felt about working in a sexually charged environment where sex appeal was an integral part of the job, 90 percent of the women stated that "it doesn't bother me at all" or "I don't have a problem with it".

Indeed, one of the requirements to becoming a Hooters Girl is to sign a statement

9 of acknowledgement regarding the level of sexualization they will encounter :

9 It is noteworthy that the women revealed that they had not been sexually harassed by another employee but that they had experienced harassment by some 147 I hereby acknowledge and affirm that (1) my job duties require that I wear the designated Hooters Girl uniform; (2) my job duties require that I interact with and entertain the customers; (3) the Hooters concept is based on female sex appeal and the work environment is one in which joking and innuendo based on sex appeal is commonplace.

I also expressly acknowledge and affirm I do not find my job duties, uniform requirements, or work environment to be offensive, intimidating, hostile, or unwelcome. (HOA 2005)

This acknowledgement signals to the women that in order to become a Hooters Girl, they must adjust to, or be fine with, sexualization. However, none of the women spoke about signing this agreement and offered several other reasons as to why they don't consider sex appeal or objectification an issue.

As June observes, "It's on television and radio, you can't really escape it and they

[Hooters] are just acknowledging it, it's just part of everyday life." This statement suggests that there is a level of desensitization to the objectification of women in larger culture and that several women see this as natural or "the way it is". In fact, Jillian sees this as not exclusive to the concept of Hooters by noting, "When you're a girl anyway, a lot ofthings are based on sex appeal. You can work at Applebee's and if you're good looking, guys are going to hit on you". Thus, the women do not distinguish the level of sex appeal required at Hooters as different from that which they are subjected to on a daily basis.

customers. Further, some of the stories that they conveyed would be viewed as harassment by the outside observer but the women did not classify it as harassment. There appears to be a normalized degree of what is acceptable to the women in terms of what they consider to be harassment. This normalization is common to restaurant work (Erickson 2002; Ha111993; Spradley and Mann 1975). 148 In the same way that money is an attraction to "get in", it is also used as a rationale for participation in the sexually charged environment. Kyra says that, "She's fine with it, I guess in a way it does help get us money". On the other hand Katherine is not fine with it but understands that it is a way to make money:

I don't really care for the idea of that. I'd rather be in a job where I'm just-it's all about your brains and what else you have to offer besides your sex appeal, but at the same time that's the way our society is, and you kind of have to learn to go with it, I guess, and may as well give in and use your sex appeal to make money if you can do it.

These quotes reveal that while on the one hand the women think that using sex appeal is not conventional for women, they also go through a process whereby they justify the exchanging of their body as object for financial reward.

For a few other women in the study, the sex appeal on display at Hooters is less than other kinds of sexual labor they have performed on other jobs. For example, Carly also works at a local night club where they wear swimsuits as a uniform and obviously wears much less than the uniform of Hooters. Likewise, Tamra has modeled lingerie, swimsuits, and has participated in bikini contests. She remarks, "I'm already comfortable with, you know, showing off my body". It is worth mentioning that several of the women stated that they would be comfortable participating in (or had already participated in) more revealing ways of showing off their body such as competing in bikini contests, posing for the Hooters annual calendar, stripping, modeling lingerie, or Playboy layouts.

As such, some women seem to have a boundary of sexualized labor they are willing to perform with Hooters as either the least sexual or the most sexual. 149 Not surprisingly then, very few considered working at Hooters exploitation of females. While women who are objectified are often thought to be cultural dupes, the respondents in my study recognize agency and rational choice as a means of resisting the label of exploitation that often comes with doing sexualized labor.

I don't think it's exploitation of females because it's a woman's choice to work there. She chooses to work there, she knows what the uniform is, the strict training that goes on, so you're fully aware of what your job will be and what the uniform is. Even before you go in there you know what the uniform is. It's their choice. (Hope)

The women do not feel as if they were duped into this and believe that the decision to work at Hooters was that of informed consent and individual choice.

In the same way that they reject the label of exploitation, they boldly reject the application of the label of sex work. When I asked how they would respond to the labeling of Hooters as sex work, the majority ofwomen rolled their eyes in disgust and stated that it was categorically the wrong way to label what they do. Hooters, as a company, works hard to disaffiliate the Hooters Girl with sex work by constructing the

Hooters Girl as the "All American Cheerleader" or similar to the "Dallas Cowboy

Cheerleader" who project the image of a "nice girl" rather than being that kind of girl.

What I immediately recognized was that the women conceived of sex work or sexual labor as either stripping or prostitution and did not see the commodification or objectification of their body as being similar to either.

A couple males drinking too much made reference to we're just, you know, wearing orange shorts and tank tops, but we're the same thing as a stripper or a prostitute. And I said, well, do you always get a meal when you pay for your services? You know, I mean, it's a completely different world. I said you're not getting my phone number, you are not getting me naked, and I'm not a stripper and I'm not a prostitute. I'm a waitress! (Margo) 150

The respondents pointed to the fact that Hooters is a restaurant where people come in to have a meal and/or drinks and that it is a restaurant environment and not an adult entertainment environment. Second, the women also related that it was the level of intimacy that differentiated the two. They acknowledged that they may "flirt and sit down with you", but that they are not "shaking anything", simulating a sex act, inviting sexual overture, or engaging in sexualized conversation. Therefore the women distanced themselves from the notion that their work was either exploitive or sexual.

We see how the women rally around the convention of sex appeal as harmless flirting, but where some customers inside the restaurant have already received and interpreted a completely different meaning such as that of sexual availability. In fact, one of the main reasons the women wanted to be interviewed for this study was because they wanted to tell me how they constructed their work as positive, fun, and harmless.

Panoptic Management as Convention: Body Technologies

For many of the women in this study, achieving the convention of appearance

("the look") requirement served to validate their self appraisals with respect to body image, signaling that they were desirable or "hot". Indeed, many of the women reported that they did not think they would pass muster with respect to getting in because they did not have confidence in their looks or because they misinterpreted the convention of "the look" to mean tall, blonde, and a large bust- what several called the "Barbie doll" (based on what they had seen in Hooters marketing materials). This does not describe my sample and many of the women recognized the beauty came in all different forms. 151 Basically we're just what my mom said we are like Skittles. All of us are all different colors, shapes, and sizes, whatever. Never in the bag do you ever have the same one. It's just a big melting pot of everybody. (Addie)

While celebrating this difference, they all agreed that appearance was an important part of the job and that it had to be maintained because it was constantly under surveillance by management, the customers, the women themselves, and the other women they work with. Taylor and Abbott (1998) refer to this type of surveillance and self-appraisals as panoptic management. The women of Hooters understand that their appearance is what the company and they capitalize on and in order to do Hooters Girl properly, appearance must be managed and maintained. In order to "do Hooters Girl", the women adopt the convention ofpanoptic management.

The main vehicle of panoptic management is the Hooters Girl uniform. When asking questions about the uniform, I soon realized that it was not only the vehicle for panoptic management, it was also the main source of contrasting and sometimes competing meanings surrounding the Hooters Girl. When asked how they felt about the

10 uniform, most of responded about the uniform style, fit, and comfort .

I think it's outdated. But, I don't have any major gripes about it. It's not comfortable. The pantyhose situation: we hike them all the way up to our boobs and tuck them under the bra and you are constantly messing with them, fishing with them, pulling them up. The shorts, just that elastic in them will squeeze you to death. (Addie)

10 It is worth mentioning that some of the women who used to work at Hooters worked there when the uniform requirement was that the cotton tank tops had to be tied up; creating cleavage and exposing the mid-drift/stomach. The women who work there now do not tie their shirts and wear a lycra tank top that is tucked into their shorts (no stomach showing). 152 I didn't mind it [the uniform]. I hated wearing the pantyhose and at the very beginning they used to knot our shirts and it was so tight, and you'd have to sit there and the manager would yank you and squeeze and twist it to get it tight and knot it. That part of it I didn't like. (Hope)

In fact, most ofthe women commented that many aspects of it were not comfortable or flattering. However, even though they comment that it is not comfortable, most of the women are used to wearing it and "it is just another uniform".

I think just because I've worn it so much that it doesn't even bother me anymore. (Haley).

After a while you just get comfortable in it like wearing normal clothes. (lillian)

I don't think about it too much. It's just what I wear. (Amy)

But, the women do think about the uniform; at least they think about what they look like in it as a result of the constant surveillance and self-appraisals. This starts from the moment they put it on. Katherine stated that she "didn't want to come out of the bathroom" after putting the uniform on for the first time stating that she "felt weird" and that she "started comparing herself to other girls and it was just like, oh my God, I don't look right". Several women reported not wanting to come out of the bathroom onto the floor for their own fear of how they looked in the uniform or for fear of how the other women, managers, and cooks would think they looked in the uniform.

But, being self-conscious about myself am I justified in thinking I'm too big? Do other people think I am too big? (Raegan)

They also report being conscious of how management thinks they look in the uniform and know that management will let them know if something is not correct about the uniform.

Or they are conscious of the male gaze from the customers. Addie says there is a lot of focus on the fit of the uniform: 153 Other girls wear them different, they fit everybody different. Some of them you can see their butt cheeks and what not. Depending on body type it can be even more revealing. The managers do see that and have you get the next size to where they are fitting you where they're supposed to, but some girls can't help it. And I've come to find out that guys are butt men so as soon as you walk away they all watch you or they are watching somebody, right?

In an effort to extract more information about how the women felt about the uniform, I specifically asked them how they felt in the uniform while wearing it on the floor as opposed to how they felt about the uniform in general. Interestingly, the women can be divided into three groups with respect to the uniform: those that feel self conscious in it, those that feel sexy or empowered in it, and those who are both self-conscious in it but who also feel sexy and empowered in it at the same time. Amy falls into the category of women who feel self conscious in the uniform. When I asked her how she felt in the uniform on the floor her response was simply "fat". Paige and Haley convey other feelings:

It's kind of fun to put on that uniform and be able to walk out there, you know, when we are coming out onto the floor for our shift and I feel, I mean I feel good about myself. I love wearing the uniform. I feel sexy in the uniform. I like it. (Paige)

If you sit down the wrong way, those pantyhose are going to cut right into your stomach and it's going to give you rolls [fat rolls] whether you have rolls or not. So sometimes you might be a little more self conscious of what do I look like when I'm walking around? But, other times I feel good in the uniform. I feel sexy in the uniform, yeah. (Haley).

The women definitely construct different meanings about the uniform: it is comfortable, it is uncomfortable; they like it, they hate it; they feel sexy in it, or they feel fat in it.

Management constructs the uniform according to policy and procedure, and, many customers construct it as a uniform to be gazed upon. 154 The women of Hooters are aware that the uniform has been a controversial one for many people and they recognize that some people think it is fine and others do not.

Haley captures this nicely: "The uniform itself shows cleavage, it shows, you know, the curves of a woman's body and some people perceive that as good and some perceive it as raunchy." When asked why they thought there was so much controversy over the uniform, the women noted that the uniform is quite different from what you would find at other restaurants. They remarked upon the fact that in contrast to other restaurant uniforms that might consist of pants or shirts and appear to fully cover; the Hooters Girl uniform might appear skimpy. Yet, one Hooters Girl was careful to point out that they, too, are covered from head to toe because of the pantyhose.

While the majority felt that it was the skimpy uniform that was controversial, they did not find it to be too revealing at all. They responded that they wear less to the beach or that their regular clothes were just as revealing. Isabella offered an interesting observation when I asked her about why she thought the uniform was controversial.

I don't really think it's actually the uniform itself. I know this because I've tried to break it down in simple and stupid form when I talk to people. I think it's [the controversy] is a combination of a lot of things and the first thing people resort to that come out of their mouths is the uniform. The reason I say that is because there's a lot of other restaurants or even restaurants at the water front where girls may wear clothes skimpier than that and I've had people say, well, yeah, it's their uniform. I've brought that up to people, well, have you ever been, you know anywhere at one of those bars? They wear skimpier clothes, and come to find out yes they have [been there]. Now, why doesn't that uniform offend you and ours do? Then they'll go into other reasons. I think it's the name. I 100% think it's the name. I think if the restaurant was called something completely different then you wouldn't have any type of controversy.

Ultimately, Isabella is still pointing to meaning. In her story she conveys how people attach meaning to the name Hooters and to the uniform of Hooters. She further 155 highlights how that may be different from the meaning they give to other places where the waitresses wear even less than they do at Hooters.

In order to negotiate and work within the convention of panoptic management, the women employed various body technologies to become a Hooters Girl or to be a better

Hooters Girl. Body technologies are the methods that people use to enhance or modify their appearance (Wesely 2003). As Wesely (2003) described in her study of erotic dancers, there is a continuum of body technologies that women adopt and this ranges from changing make-up and hair to more drastic technologies like cosmetic surgery. For the women of Hooters in this study, this involves two paths: ways that they have changed their appearance already and ways in which they would like to change their appearance.

In terms of the continuum, the women reported employing the same strategies that

Wesely (2003) found in her study: panoptic management resulted in body technology strategies such as changing of hair and make up, losing weight, and breast augmentations.

Hope and Haley changed their approach to make up or their hair in order to enhance their looks. In fact, the management of Hooters encourages this by providing an information packet on how to correctly apply make up (this information is also found on the Hooters website).

Actually, when I first started working for Hooter's, I think I only wore like foundation and eyeliner. Honestly. That is it. And so, my trainer when I started working was like, you know, I'll help you with it because I didn't know what to do. I was 19 and I had never really worn makeup, but now I'm more conscious of what I look like when I go to do something and put it on. (Haley)

It enhances your natural beauty, you know, the makeup. (Hope) 156 The women come to understand that make-up is an accessory to feeling and being beautiful and it is required as a part of doing Hooters Girl. Others changed something about their hair to capture the construction that long hair is sexy and glamorous.

I got hair extensions. My hair was shoulder length and I got them. It was impressive the difference that it made, having really long hair. (Raegan)

I kept up with my nails you know. It's nice to be girly and have to go get a manicure and pedicure. And, I used to never wear my hair down ever. I hate wearing my hair down. It gets in my face, but you know, that's the only thing we can do at Hooters, is wear our hair down. (Paige)

Similar to the airline industry (Taylor and Abbot 1998) or the Borgata Casino employees (Hesse-Biber 2007), the primary panoptic management focus is on the issue of body weight. Amber described the pressure she felt that this focus put on the women:

Maybe because like other jobs they don't point out as much and you don't have to worry about getting on the fat list and being put on a diet. They will be like your uniform doesn't fit the way it did when we hired you, and you have 30 or 60 days to get back to the way you looked or you will be let go.

In order to meet the body weight demands, many women turned to the body technology of dieting.

I'm always self-conscious about weight, hence, the South Beach Diet. My weight does not bother me outside of work. When I'm in regular clothes, I feel fine. But, when I put on the uniform, it shows every flaw. (Amber)

Customers (both men and women) are also critical of weight and this also makes the women fixate on it:

I went up to them and it was I think three guys and three girls, and it was like, hi, my name's Tracie, and I started putting down beverage napkins, I'll be your Hooter Girl today, and he's like, whoa, donut shop, and I was like donut shop, what is that supposed to mean? And he's just like oh, nothing, I was like is that a fat joke, you know, I'm just kind of curious of why you would say that. He was like well, you're not fat, you're just really, really, really chunky. They just all stared at me. Everybody just stared at me. No one said anything to him that he 157 was being a jerk. No one did anything to make me feel better so I was like all right, I'll go find you a skinnier waitress, and I'll try to choose between getting them kicked out or, you know, giving them to someone else. So, I got another waitress that was, it's my buddy, she was in a section next to me, and she's teeny, and I told her if they, you know, give her any crap to let the manager know.

Raegan understands that if you do not fit the image, you cannot continue in employment:

Ifl can't stop dropping the weight, then I'll leave. I'll leave. Because ifl don't feel like I fit the image, I don't want to be here. I don't want to be scrutinized or judged if I don't look like a Hooters Girl.

I should note that my own observation is that none of these women were remotely fat or overweight. Yet, most of them reported being conscious of their weight because of the male and female gaze. Thus, customers apply their own panoptic management either by making crude comments, staring, or asking for a completely different Hooters Girl to wait on them. Clearly there is an understood aesthetic about the Hooters beauty ideal and this mirrors current cultural standards of female beauty, particular that of thinness. One ofthe consequences about the convention of panoptic management is that the women are obsessed with their bodies and appearance, particularly that of weight.

Engaging in the body work required at Hooters both gave them self-confidence in their looks, but at the same time made them feel negative about their looks. This contradiction was a direct result of comparing themselves to the women they work with, reinforcing the need to use body technologies to measure up to the task of doing Hooters

Girl or to "compete" with other women they worked with on the floor. Therefore the women constructed their self image as a Hooters Girl based on their interactions with the other women on staff at the time. That is, they constructed their image based on what 158 they saw reflected in the other women and what they thought women reflected onto them.

Sociologist Charles Horton Cooley (1962) refers to this as the looking glass self.

When I first started working there I had really great self esteem and self confidence. Then you are seeing yourself around all these beautiful girls everyday. And, you become very critical of yourself: your butt, your boobs, your hair, your face, your make-up, everything. You get critical of your looks and you compare yourself to a lot of people. You see one girl getting hit on more than another girl or you see guys being mean to another girl and you know it makes you pay attention to every little detail of everything. (Haley)

Well it certainly gave me a lot more confidence. I certainly felt better about my self-image. I felt prettier, you know. Well, I definitely took more time you know, making sure my make up looked good, made sure my hair looked good, you know. I worked out a lot more to make sure my physical appearance was good. Because, you know, there are a lot of gorgeous girls that worked at Hooters and I didn't want to be the one that wasn't pretty and that didn't have as nice of a body. (Tali a)

This comparison and unspoken competition encouraged a lot of women to consider the body technology of plastic surgery as an appropriate route. In fact, several of the women had either already gone "under the knife" or were planning on it. A few of the interviewees were considering a tummy tuck. However, the primary cosmetic surgery of choice by the women was breast augmentation. Katherine, who has worked as a

Hooters Girl for some time, had just had a breast augmentation prior to our interview.

I guess I've kind of always wanted it, but I don't think I would have gone through with it, but I was a lot younger then, too. I mean it was, that sort of came from being through so many bad relationships and me just wanting to do something for myself.... So, I don't really know how much working at Hooters had to do with it. .. but seeing the girls in the calendar with them and how good they looked and other girls that I work with, I think probably helped motivate me to do it more.

For those who had not done it, the thought was appealing:

Everyone is getting breast augmentations and you can't help but want them, too, because they do look really good and you want to be able to look just as well as your co-worker. (Tamra) 159

Therefore, the constant pressure to look good in the uniform through panoptic management and the subsequent comparison that ensued between themselves, their managers, their customers, and their coworkers, made them consider everything from changing their hair, make-up, nails, and to consider more drastic, and sometimes dangerous, cosmetic surgeries as body technologies. Despite the pressure (real or perceived) to maintain or change their appearance, the women adopted the convention of panoptic management.

On Working the Floor

After a woman gets hired as a Hooters Girl, the company has a training program that she must complete in order to go out onto the floor and wait tables unaccompanied.

When a Hooters Girl is working her shift in the restaurant, this is referred to as being "on the floor". The training program generally consists ofworking in different positions in the restaurant: in the kitchen, as a hostess, and as a service bartender. Once they complete this rotation, they are paired with a trainer to learn the floor. They shadow the trainer for several days and then for a few days wait tables while the trainer follows them.

They must also pass the menu test. In general, the women report that the training adequately prepared them to go out on the floor and that the other women they worked with, as well as their managers, were supportive of them getting to the floor and remained supportive while they worked on the floor.

While "the look" is a huge part of producing the Hooters Girl, another key element of doing Hooters Girl is in the everyday interactions with the customers during 160 the course of table service. Thus far I have talked about the process ofbecoming a

Hooters Girl and the conventions that underlie that process, at least as the women experience it. I have also illustrated the different meanings that the women construct about the Hooters Girl and how this often conflicts with those whom they have encountered both inside and outside of the restaurant. In this section of the chapter, I will report the results about the additional conventions that allow the women to produce the

Hooters Girl while on the floor.

Emotional Labor as Convention

As a part of their customer service expectations, the company requires that the

Hooters Girls project a certain emotional demeanor as a part of performing their job duties even when the required emotional demeanor is not consistent with how that person feels or how that person normally acts. Therefore, there is a certain kind of labor that is required to perform emotion. Hochschild (1983) refers to this as emotional labor and defines it as "the management of feelings to create a publicly observable facial and body display" (p. 7). Emotional labor is often found in occupations that are gendered, such as that ofwaitressing, particularly with respect to the Hooters Girl. This is because there are certain emotions that are expected to be projected by women, particularly in waitressing, such as smiling, friendliness, and deference (Hall1993). This is reflected in the Hooters

Employee Handbook where new hires are told repeatedly throughout the document to

"Smile!! A BIG smile is important (HOA 2007). Hooters also requires the Hooters Girls to sit at the table with their customers and engage in conversation (which is distinct for this restaurant as it does not occur at other places). Emotional labor is important to the all 161 American cheerleader image and the waitress-as-entertainer. The women of Hooters have adopted the convention of emotional labor.

A Hooters Girl is a host, somebody, you know you go to Texas Roadhouse or Applebee's, your waitress isn't going to sit down and talk to you and you know, us, we're going to make you, we're going to go that extra step. We're gonna talk to you, were going to have a little chit chat and talk about the game, we are not just gonna be like what do you want to drink, here's your food, is it okay? Oh, it's gross. I'll take it back. Where is my money? (Haley)

Part ofthe emotional labor that the women perform is dealing with sexual advances and innuendo. As I discussed earlier in the chapter, the women must sign an acknowledgement that this could happen. But, many of the women report being shocked by what some of the male customers have said to them. The interviews reveal that the men receive signals from the Hooters concept that these kinds of comments are appropriate or they simply feel that the women must put up with it and continue with the expected SMILE. Jillian, who worked for Hooters for a very long time recalls:

I went up to the table and the guy was like speaking of busts. And I just pretended like I didn't hear him and he said it again and again. I think I kind of blew it off and then I went away and made the mistake of talking about it to one of the other girls. So, when I went back, he complained to my manager that I was talking bad about him to other girls. My manager told him he wasn't allowed to talk to me that way. And the customer basically said if I'm going to work somewhere like Hooters, then I should expect to be talked to that way.

Nadia relates a similar story:

There was an older guy, probably in his 40's with his wife and daughter there and he made spitballs. And every time the waitress would go up to the table, he would spit a spitball down the girl's shirt. In front ofhis wife, in front ofhis daughter, and I couldn't believe it so I went over to the table, and, you know, refilled their beers. I was like if this guy does it to me; I'm going to let him have it. Sure enough, he tries to spit a spitball down my shirt, I just reamed him. I was like to you know like how old are you? Like, you are going to try to embarrass me in front of your wife and your child? I mean, if you do that to them it's one thing, but you are not going to come in here and try to humiliate all the girls that work 162 here by degrading them like that. He was like, well, you know, you guys get this treatment all the time and we are like, no, we don't because I wouldn't get this ticked off if we did.

We see from the two stories that the customers may read the meaning of Hooters in a completely different manner than the women give to the situation, expecting subservience, smiling, and deference. There are certainly plenty of opportunities for mixed messages: the uniform, the casual theme, the fact that the women sit down at the table and talk with customers.

Many of the women reported that some of the crude comments do not bother them as much because they felt as if they were subjected to the same thing outside ofthe restaurant; out of the context ofHooters. That is, many reported being desensitized to this kind of treatment or saw it as natural, given that it has occurred outside of the restaurant.

Every once in a while you get someone drunk that would probably say rude comments every once in a while, but not any more rude than I would get at a gas station. (Isabella)

I went into the supermarket yesterday and some guy was like, hey baby, and tried to grab my arm. (Wendy)

The respondents have developed coping strategies as a result of being required to perform intense body work and emotional labor and to put up with some of the situations as described above. Whereas the customers expect the smiling, friendliness, and deference, the women have developed the emotional labor tactic of the "smart aleck" or

"smart ass". This is not to say that the women do not engage in traditional emotional labor; rather, they recognize that with some customers the traditional tactics simply are not going to work. 163 I just have a smart aleck attitude so if they made like a little joke at me, I would turn around and joke them right back and made the whole thing light hearted and then they knew that they couldn't do that to me. (Hope)

It takes a lot to offend me. I can brush off a lot whereas if you are a sensitive girl or a person that you might get offended by, I just brush it off and come back with a smart aleck comment right back to them. There was this one guy that when I first started. I asked if he wanted dessert and he asked me if we had breast milk and I saw that he had a wedding ring on so I said, why don't you go home and milk your wife. (Amber)

This kind of sexual tension often serves the women well in terms of money. In fact, some of the women conveyed that this smart aleck tactic helped gamer more tips, noting that the male customers liked it when the woman was able to hold her own against them or were "sassy".

Indeed, the women use emotional labor to maximize tips. Many ofthe respondents pride themselves on giving excellent customer service that they feel someone simply could not get anywhere else. Raegan uses emotional labor as a way to maximize earnings off of a table of guests.

A lot of girls ask me: How is it that you can make a $20 tip on a $30 tab and I'm making $5, you know? What's going on? Well, bring their drinks first, drinks first. Squeeze the lemons in their drinks. Ask ifthey want a to-go drink. Do their wings, you know, de-boning their wings is a big thing, and people love it. Oh, my God, they are like, oh, that's never happened before. Well, when you come in and dine with me, then I'll treat you special.

In fact, other women have tried to employ some of the same tactics they use at Hooters while working at other restaurants, with no success.

So from seeing how the Hooters Girls talk to you and react with the customers, I would kind of try to do that at IHOP. I would sit with the customers and take their order and I would kind of joke with them. I remember one time I sat down and talked to my customers to get their order, and I could see our manager telling me, like lifting their hand and telling me to get up, like what are you doing? Because, I was trying to do what a Hooters Girl would do at IHOP. 164

The Hooters atmosphere creates different social boundaries for interaction between the

Hooters Girl and the customer than is common in other restaurants. Again, this may be why customers attach a completely different meaning to the customer/Hooters Girl interaction. The women recognize that there is something about the Hooters atmosphere that is ripe for demeaning treatment.

Regardless of how nice you are to a person, some people are just mean natured people. And there are days, sometimes, where I question, you know, how can that person treat me like that or talk to me like that? Like, do they not understand that I'm someone's daughter? I'm someone's sister? I'm someone's grandchild? I'm someone' s wife? How can someone talk to me like that? Would they treat me that way if I was their waitress at Texas Roadhouse? (Haley)

Within the convention of emotional labor is that the women must also learn to cope with the male gaze and the male touch. The women I interviewed understand and expect that men will stare at them, even though it makes some of them (not all) uncomfortable. Consider the following from Amy:

I try not to pay attention to the fact that there are guys blatantly staring or things like that. Like, I'll notice it with other girls like if they walk by, yes, and I'll tell them and I'll be like, oh my gosh, those guys are completely just checking you out or whatever. And, the normal response is, Eww. Everybody say, Eww. Eww. Interviewer: Do you find that an interesting response given what you are wearing? I don't think we think about it like that though.

Elaine recalls when the male gaze actually reduced her to tears:

I was putting in a table's order and I could here these two older men, they were sitting at a table and they kept shouting bubblicious and juicy and they kept looking at me and smiling and laughing ... and I could tell they were looking at my body, like my butt and stuff. I went in the break room and I was just sitting there and crying. They thought it was a compliment.

It makes me feel attractive, because especially when guys are giving me their phone numbers, you know, it's always nice to be hit on like that. (Paige) 165

Here we see that the women and the customers interpreting the male gaze quite differently. Often the men saw their stares as complimentary or justified, while often the women saw their stares as objectifying. Yet, there are times when the women like the stares.

On the other hand, respondents largely reported that they do not like being physically touched by customers, whether it is in a well-intentioned or degrading way.

When I asked the women if they had ever been sexually harassed, other than the comments, they noted that physical touch is sexually harassing. Emma had a customer slap her butt and she had him removed from the restaurant. Margo also reports her disgust at being physically touched by customers:

Sometimes the people keep saying things and you kind of laugh and walk away and they are like, come over here, you know, and you are like no, and sometimes somebody has so much strength they'll kind of grab you, and put their arm around you. I've also had a guy kiss me on the forehead and I was like, eww, too much, back off.

The women of Hooters also have to deal with the female gaze when female customers visit the restaurant. Many of the women that I interviewed understand that there are women who come into the restaurant that are uneasy about being there. The company recognizes this as well and encourages the Hooters Girls to establish rapport with women at the table by complimenting something about them to try to make them feel more at ease. That is, they are to compliment them on something, even if it isn't something the Hooters Girl would want to give a compliment on. For example, the

Hooters Girl may hate the shoes a woman has on, but she compliments them anyway in order to try to establish a rapport and put the female patron at ease. 166 For the most part, my respondents conveyed that there was certain uneasiness when there were women in a party. And, often, the Hooters Girls would pick up on a negative vibe from the women at the tables. The respondents reported having women at tables that would not even look at them or speak to them and would have other guests at the table speak for them to the Hooters Girl.

Especially the women. They'll come in there and they'll have the look on their face and they'll just, you know, you go to their table and you say hi, you know and you say your script and they are just kind of looking at you and I'm like can I get you something to drink? And they still don't say anything. (Nadia)

They sit with their heads down the whole time and have another person order for them; I believe it was her boyfriend---talked for her. She never actually spoke to me. She talked to him and he ordered for her. And the other girls noticed it and you know, wanted to play games with the kids and she was completely offended and she wanted to leave and she told him that's why I did not want to come here. (Addie)

The Hooters Girl must engage in emotional labor to try to bring some of the female customers around or to make them comfortable, more so than they report having to do with the male customers. In fact, it is a completely different type of emotional labor skill that they have to employ when dealing with women.

In addition to the very forward comments and actions by some of the customers, the women must also use emotional labor to negotiate the different levels of "taste" that customers have in terms of whom they prefer to be their Hooters Girl for their restaurant visit. These preferences are most often based on expectations about what they find attractive and what they believe the Hooters Girl should look like. Most of the women I interviewed did not have a customer refuse their service directly. However, they reported several situations in which customers have walked in and pointed at particular Hooters 167 Girls that they want (or do not want) to wait on them based on physical appearance or situations where customers that were being waited on by a Hooters Girl asked for a different Hooters Girl. In several circumstances the women related that people wanted different Hooters Girls based on body type such as weight or facial appearance, but the two most often cited situations where customers requested a different Hooters Girl dealt with physical appearance related to pregnancy or skin color.

When a woman who works at Hooters becomes pregnant, she continues to work throughout her pregnancy modifying the uniform as needed (such as at-shirt instead of a tank top). Several respondents related that they knew that some customers were not happy about having a pregnant Hooters Girl.

We've had pregnant girls in the store and stuffbefore and I've heard, you know, comments from customers like why do we have to have the pregnant girl? (Haley)

Tables would say, why is that girl working here? She's pregnant. It's mostly young guys and they think it's gross. People are like, I don't want her to wait on me, she's pregnant. (Amy)

The women related how, in general, the male customers do not see a pregnant Hooters

Girl as sexy. Further, it may go against their expectation that a Hooters Girl should be available to them for flirting and pregnancy signals that the female is "off the market".

The women are aware of this issue, as Talia states, "You are going into a Hooters and you expect to see, you know, pretty girls that aren't pregnant." For other customers, being pregnant while working at Hooters is interpreted as immoral:

There were two couples and I guess the grandchildren and when she walked up to the table she said [a female customer] oh, gosh are you pregnant? And, she was really out there. Almost in her 8th month. And she said, yeah, and kind of joking because she's a real goofy girl. She said either that or I swallowed something. 168 And the guys [at the table] laughed. The lady didn't think---she said how can you do that? How can you do this to your child? She said, 'it's just a job'. (Addie)

Race, particularly with respect to African Americans, appeared as another issue with respect to customer preference and emotional labor. Margo relates:

There was a girl who was Black and the customer asked not to have a Black waitress. Right when they walked in the door and it was actually her turn to be sat. So, we had to skip her and she didn't say anything, but it was really uncomfortable because I was like that's really obnoxious, and I can't believe that somebody would have the audacity to ask that.

Jillian, while a store manager, also describes a situation when she had to handle a customer who was already seated with a Black waitress:

Basically, well, she was already waiting -- basically he didn't come out and say it, but he was complaining about everything she did even though I watched what she was doing and there was nothing wrong. Basically he complained about her saying that she was taking forever to get his beer, and she had already told me that she thought that he was a racist. So, I made sure I watched in case he did complain. So, when I went to the table he's like, you know, we've been waiting 20 minutes on our beer, which was a flat out lie, and I told him, you know, I knew that he was lying. I had just watched her bring a pitcher over and then basically he kind of hinted towards it. And I said why are you not wanting her to wait on you? And basically he came out and said it, but his friends at the table were fine with it. It was just him. I asked him to leave.

Customers have expectations about female attractiveness and preferences about whom they want to wait on them. And, when they are faced with different circumstances this is problematic for them as a customer. The meanings that are attached to race by some customers are not shared by the women who work at Hooters nor the company.

The women in this study reported performing a variety of emotional labor during the course of their activities as Hooters Girl. On the one hand, they must present the bubbly and happy, welcoming, sexually available, and service oriented image of the

Hooters Girl. Yet, many of the interactions require that they exhibit more assertiveness, 169 which is not commonly thought of as an emotional demeanor that women should display.

However, many felt that they must be assertive or that they would be degraded, humiliated, or abused by some of their customers. However, in many cases, they only smiled and deferred. Similarly, women's appearance is called into question by customers and they must learn to deflect those circumstances as well. As I have illustrated above, the interviews revealed a number of ways that women must assume the convention of emotional labor in order to perform their duties on the floor.

Regular Customers as Convention

Many of the women reported having "regulars". Regulars are customers who come into the restaurant frequently (usually a couple oftimes per week) and who sit in their section almost exclusively. All of the women that I interviewed reported having regular customers. Regulars are attractive as customers for a variety of reasons. They often viewed regulars as easier to wait on because they were not perceived as requiring the same strict service guidelines:

My regulars aren't one of those regulars that tips me bookoo dollars. I have-- I mean I have regulars that come in and see me and they'll tip me, you know, they'll tip me good, but not hundreds of dollars, but I can always sit there and talk and be more slack with them. I don't have to, you know, use the script. I don't have to one minute, one bite-- I don't have to do any of that. I can forget about their order and then they'll be okay with it. (Carly)

Others have developed social relationships with their regulars and see regulars more like their friends:

I don't-- my regulars come back and see me. After two years a lot of them are like, I have their phone numbers, they have my phone numbers. A lot of them have met my family, whether they would just be here at the same time or like my [inaudible] is like, hey, do you want to go to the beach or go out to dinner? My 170 boyfriend knows most of them like I hang out with them because after two years they've become more friends. (Amber)

Regular customers often presented a break from the traditional conventions of doing

Hooters Girl. In fact, many of the women alluded to the fact that regular customers allowed them to feel as if they could be themselves when waiting on them, freeing them from performing "the act" of the Hooters Girl.

But when you start to develop regulars, you know, and you think these people might come back, and I want them to get to know me and that's what it is, it brings them back to me and say, realize, oh, my gosh, she's actually smart, too, we can have conversations with her. So, I try to show a little bit more than a sex appeal when people come in. (Katherine)

The women recognize that regulars are a good way to generate income and to break up the monotony of doing Hooters Girl as illustrated above. As such, the women take on the convention ofregular customers and try to attract customers to become their regulars.

While regulars are an attractive customer, not every customer is seen as desirable as a customer or a regular. In the same way that customers have preferences about who they want as their Hooters Girl, the women in this study also have preferences about the kinds of people they do and do not like to wait on. Carly, Addie, and Margo jokingly refer to this as profiling and it seems to capture the ways that some of the women categorize potential customers.

Which is kind of bad to profile them and make generalizations about them. Because that's what people do, and we hate it so much, and we are trying to make them not do that, but we do it to them so. (Margo)

Overwhelmingly, the respondents reported that they were happy to wait on just about any customer; particularly those who were happy to be at Hooters, who wanted to talk and interact, and who tipped. They cited businessmen, groups of men, and families 171 as their preferences. But several noted that there was at least one category of people that just did not seem to tip well and as such, they did not prefer to wait on them. After all, the Hooters Girl is there to make money. In general, those that were categorized as not tipping very well were the "young kids". In this context, young kid's means anywhere from the 12 -20 year old age demographic. The women saw groups of young kids as immature, lacking the financial resources to tip them, noting that they often order water to save money.

While this kind of"profiling" goes on in the restaurant on occasion, it mostly occurs outside of the restaurant when the women are thinking of who they would invite as customers to come to the restaurant. When I asked the respondents if they would recommend Hooters as a place to eat, all but one of the women I interviewed stated that they would recommend Hooters as a place to eat to other people. I then followed-up with the question, what kinds of people would you avoid recommending Hooters as a place to eat? Ninety percent of the women used phrases such as conservative or close minded to describe people they would not invite to Hooters.

The women had a hard time defining conservative to me. In general, they perceived someone to be conservative when they read them as wealthier, older, and proper. As such, women were making underlying class distinctions about whom they thought they could not recommend Hooters to.

I would say very hoity-toity people. You know I've met people in very nice, fancy restaurants, and you know, talked about Hooters and stuff like that and I get the vibe that that's really not the place that they would associate with. (Raegan) 172 Others defined conservative to mean moral philosophy or ideology, such as church goers.

The respondents also noted that they typically would not recommend Hooters to women.

Just women in general can be a little snooty and snotty and jealous, mean. (Emma)

I mean I don't mean to be stereotypical or anything, but I probably wouldn't recommend it to like, you know, those high class girls that wear pearls and collared shirts. (June)

This is because the women have had negative experiences with these "kinds" of people and see them as resistant to the Hooters concept.

In the same way that audiences make meaning about Hooters Girls, the women of

Hooters also make meaning with respect to current and potential clientele. On many levels, the women make these assessments based on prior experience with members of a certain audience.

Promotions as Convention

Part of working on the floor as a Hooters Girl is participating in promotional events outside of the restaurant. In order to continue to work as a Hooters Girl, she must accept that part of the job duties of the Hooters Girl is to represent the company outside of the restaurant at various promotional events. When participating in such events, she is often compensated at an hourly rate and is typically in a promotional uniform such as that of an orange jumpsuit that says Hooters in white lettering, shorts and a Hooters t-shirt, or jeans and a Hooters t-shirt. They rarely appear at an event in their traditional uniform because the company does not like the uniform to be worn out of the confines of the restaurant; where they can control behavior and appearances in uniform. As such, the 173 women have adopted the convention ofpromotions. Through their participation in promotions, the women report that they have encountered different meanings and reactions to their representing Hooters at variety of promotional events.

As I mentioned in Chapter Four, Hooters is often recognized for their charity and community works. The company expects the women to participate in many of the promotional events related to their charity or community involvement. Jillian recounts a negative reaction to seeing the Hooters van in the Toys R Us parking lot by one of the stores customers:

We were going to Toys-R-Us to get toys and this woman, we come out and she's taking pictures of the van, and she's like, oh, my God. I can't wait to tell everybody that Hooter's is here and was basically making fun of us. Had her phone out, was taking pictures and basically you could tell like how ridiculous that Hooters would be shopping and doing anything nice for anybody, you know?

Many franchises also sponsor an annual charity golf tournament to benefit the charity of their choice. The majority of my respondents reported that they participated in this event

(or would like to) because they recognize that it is a huge money making opportunity for them. However, not everyone gets to participate in this promotion and the Hooters Girls are selected by management based on looks, personality, and work ethic. Except for the occasional degrading comment or obnoxious behavior by some, the women generally felt that they were well-received at the restaurant sponsored event, in comparison to other events, mostly because those that signed up to participate in the golf tournament are familiar with the concept:

Extremely like two-- it was just two different worlds. We were-- almost like we were queens. Even though we were there to caddy for them and give them no beer and tee them up and get them their putter, they were almost like what can we do? And our guys were actually-- I didn't think that they would even care about, 174 you know, what we do outside of Hooters and anything else. I figured everything would revolve around Hooters, but they were asking questions about, oh, what school do you go to? What are you studying? How do you like this? And you know, really opening up. So, I felt like the roles were reversed rather than us asking them questions to get them to talk to us, they were really, you know, cracking into us. (Addie)

Given Hooters long standing affiliation with sports, the franchises often partner with local sport organizations and have the Hooters Girls participate at the events for marketing exposure. Haley, who served as a "ball girl" for one of the local sporting venues, recalls the differing reception among the venue's audience members:

Some people were like, oh, yeah, the Hooters Girls are here because, you know, they kind of see when you go out there and, you know, you get up with the mascot and do the Hokey Pokey or something like that out there every once in a while and throw -- like you get people throwing balls and sometimes people are really nice, oh, yeah, usually it's the older people, oh, yeah, the girls are here, you know, the younger boys they are kind of giddy, too, but sometimes people are actually really rude. I had people that would throw peanuts at me while I was sitting in the chair. The staff at the game, the female staff, and the security people that stand in the aisles that seat you, very rude to me...... They would have like Little League games and all these little boys would come up, and I think I signed probably about 200 signatures one day for Little League Day because we stayed for the game afterwards. It was a double header so we had already did one game and little boys would come up to us because, you know, we had to wear Hooters attire out there and had us sign their cleats and their baseball bats and their hats and stuff like that so for the most part it was fun. People, oh, yeah, hey, what's up Hooters Girl, you know, you wave and smile and stuff like that, but there was a couple oftimes where women or, you know, people would be rude and throw peanuts, you know, say rude things and stufflike that. ...

Other promotional duties involve making local businesses aware of in-restaurant food, beverage, or merchandise promotions in an effort to increase business and sales.

This is accomplished through "canvassing", or "winging". Canvassing and winging refer to the women going out into the local community, mostly to businesses, and hand out coupons and/or wings to introduce the restaurant and its promotions. This practice is met 175 with the same differing reception that I have illustrated throughout this dissertation; it is either positively or negatively received.

Like one day we went to the beach and then other times we just went around to local shopping areas. We did actually hand out wings the days we went to the businesses, but when we went to the beach we kind of just handed out the fliers and the coupons and whatnot. Well, we're not wearing our full uniform it's the, of course, the ugly orange jumpsuit. But when we go in they kind of, you know, they see us coming and we give them our whole little spiel and we are just wanting to hand out some fliers, and if we could put some up for your customers, and we'd like to give you free wings and some of them are just kind of staring at us like the deer in the headlights look while we talk to them and then they either deny the wings, no, no, that's okay, thanks. You can put your fliers, but no, it's okay. So they are almost embarrassed that we are there. (Addie)

Despite these highlighted stories, the women reported that in general they were treated well when participating in promotions outside of the restaurant. They conveyed that they had to negotiate the differing reactions by different audience members they came in contact with.

It kind of varies with people and their perceptions of the Hooters Girl for the most part. If you're out, you know, you may be around-- I notice it's generally the younger girls are kind of snotty. Oh, she's not cute or kind of [inaudible] maybe say rude things or roll their eyes, give me dirty looks. The older girls probably I'd say 20 to 30 year old girls are usually pretty friendly like, you know, they'll come up, oh, hey, you know, we want some passes or which one do you work at? They may actually chitchat with you. The guys are for the most part always, it's easier for me to talk to guys just because I don't -- I don't, actually I don't know why. For reason it's just easier for me to talk to guys. I feel like girls are more judgmental maybe, but guys are usually, you know, really easy to talk to. They treat you pretty much the same. Some guys will be rude just because -- I don't know-- they may have a perception that, you know, you're just-- they want to be rude to you just because they think they can get away with it. I have people that are rude to me just because they know I have to be nice to them especially at work and at promotions. When I'm out for Hooters I'm working at that point in time, and you know, you can't just cuss somebody out because they are being rude to you. You have to smile, kill them with kindness and complain after you walk away, you know. And so some people are mean because they know they can get away with it. (Haley) 176 The convention of promotions helps the company keep the Hooters Girl and the restaurant concept in the public eye. It also allows the company, along with the women, to give back to the communities in which they conduct business. However, the convention of promotion also serves as reinforcement that not everyone interprets the job of Hooters Girl or the restaurant concept in a positive and flattering way. The convention of promotion places the Hooters Girl outside of the comfort zone in the restaurant and opens them up to interactions with strangers with different perceptions of the Hooters

Girl.

Summary

How do individuals experience the systems of production? With respect to the

Hooters Girl, we see that the women accept and internalize a variety of conventions that are either required by the corporate collectivity, conceived out of interactions amongst the Hooters Girls as a collective activity, or take on as a result of interactions between the

Hooters Girl and its various audience members. These conventions, whether written or unwritten, spoken or unspoken are the vehicle by which the cultural object of the Hooters

Girl is produced for consumption and through which the women experience their work.

Most of the conventions directly related to working as a Hooters Girl ebb and flow from how we think about women in our society. The sex appeal convention seemed to say that a woman is to be umestrained in her sexiness and sexual availability, but at the same time perform the convention of emotional labor and be domesticated, deferent, and sexually pure. She can be sexy and that sexiness can be used and consumed by others, but she is not allowed to use it as a commodity for gain. 177 In addition, the convention of panoptic management forced women to constantly police their bodies. This suggests that a woman must be shapely enough to fill out her uniform, but that shapeliness should not cross the boarder of culturally accepted standards of thin. If it does, she better diet. The women of Hooters were also required to pay special attention to the application of make-up and to the styling of their hair.

Several even went as far as to have plastic surgery or were considering it. In general, the conventions seemed to reduce the women to objects and not subjects unto themselves.

I asked the women questions related to the consequences of working at Hooters in their everyday lives. They saw Hooters as having positive consequences in their personal, social, and financial lives. Hooters allowed them to forge deep, meaningful, and lasting friendships. Through social networking that involved the restaurant, many of the women were able to make contacts that would help them in their future careers or that helped them get out of Hooters and into their current career. Along the same lines, they also reported that working at Hooters developed and nurtured the skill set of dealing with different people from all walks oflife. To the women of Hooters, this is what really mattered to them. It was a job that provided for them in many ways. It was a job that they really enjoyed doing.

But when asked how working at Hooters has negatively affected them in their everyday lives, the resounding responses were related to dealing with the negative perceptions and reactions that others had to their employment at Hooters. Perhaps

Katherine captures this best when she states that, "I have the stereotype attached to me so 178 I feel like I constantly have to prove people wrong, which can be frustrating. I'm not stupid and I'm not slutty."

Therefore the women experienced production in both positive and negative ways.

The most negative consequences dealt with negative meanings about their work. The

Hooters Girl must negotiate this complex web of meanings while trying to fashion meaning with respect to her own self. And, these meanings have consequences. They have consequences in her work environment where she is either celebrated or dehumanized, they have consequences in her immediate social networks where her work is either supported or ostracized, they have consequences in her interactions with strangers where she is either fully accepted or stigmatized, and they have psychological consequences with respect to how she views her body, her personality, and ultimately her self worth. Indeed, meaning matters as it draws the fine line between social acceptance and social marginalization. In many instances, it is hard to know what line one may be treading on. It is not easy to be a simultaneous producer and receiver of meaning, particularly when the cultural object that is produced is contested in certain circles.

This chapter underscores that meaning is socially constructed and reconstructed through collective activities and transactions. In the stories and quotations presented above, I have used Hooters women's voices to show how they experience the social construction of meaning and the tensions that exist when meaning is not constructed along the same trajectory. I have illustrated how meanings vary within and across social groups. Even with a rigid marketing and training campaign, Hooters as a company can 179 not control how each audience interprets the concept of the Hooters Girl as audiences cast and recast meaning to fit their own worldviews and experiences.

In the next chapter, I focus on this tension and examine how the women use cultural tools to negotiate them outside of the restaurant. For the women, the positives of working at Hooters far outweighed any negative consequences they described. In fact,

100 percent of the women stated that if they had it to do all over again, they would still have worked at Hooters. Yet they know that in any instance they are susceptible to marginalization and stigma because of conflicting meanings. They are not always sure when or by who, but they know it is out there and they cannot control the reception of meaning; they can only negotiate it. CHAPTER6

RECEPTION OUT OF UNIFORM: USING THE CULTURAL TOOLKIT TO NEGOTIATE NEGATIVE MEANINGS AND STIGMA THREAT

As soon as we are out meeting people ... if the H-bomb [Hooters] gets dropped, we all just look at each other and just start laughing because none ofus want to say anything. Nadia, Hooters Girl

The previous chapter examined the cooperation within the restaurant that allowed for the production of the Hooters Girl. This chapter presents the findings related to how the women who have worked in the production of the Hooters Girl deal with the varying reception of their work in social interactions outside ofthe restaurant, when not actively engaged in performing Hooters Girls duties or what I refer to as "out of uniform" or "not doing Hooters Girl". When actors enter and become party to a social interaction, they try to ascertain certain information about each other (Goffman 1959). One way to ascertain information about an individual's social status is to pose the question, "What do you do for a living"? In general, this is not a threatening question but when you perform a job that others consider to be deviant or marginalized, the question can most certainly be threatening. Why? Because the disclosure of a possibly discredited aspect of one's social identity can lead to stigmatization and marginalization in that particular interaction.

According to the symbolic interactionist view, humans are practical actors that adjust and readjust their actions in response to social situations including the actions of other actors (Allan 2007). Actors are able to adjust to a particular situation or behavior

180 181 because they are able to interpret them. Thus, individual actors read social situations

(process meaning), and the way they read a social situation dictates the way they will act in that situation. Not every actor will read the situation in the same way. Disclosure of a particular characteristic depends on how an actor has read the situation. Meaning, then, is a tool for facilitating behavior (Allan 2007). For example, the word Hooters does not have any meaning until humans give it context. For some it is slang for a part of the female body. And, in certain interactions, the restaurant Hooters is seen as a fun and social place where people go to eat and watch sports. On the other hand, there are those who see Hooters as a degrading or immoral place. Regardless of which meaning is being conveyed or interpreted in a particular interaction, an actor can adjust his/her behavior to fit the situation. This is because humans can imaginatively rehearse alternative lines of action before they act in a situation. Through meaning, humans are active participants in constructing their social world. Meaning signals the kinds of action one should take.

Actors want to present themselves in a positive light and the dangers of disclosing a discredited characteristic run counter to this. That is, actors engage in idealization, trying to project the social ideal and not necessarily what really is (Goffman 1959).

Symbolic interactionist theorists, such as Erving Goffman (1959), view social interactions as performances that are shaped by the social environments and audiences that are party to the interaction. In these performances, actors try to create impressions that are in agreement with the goals of the social actor for that particular performance.

That is, if an actor wants to portray him/herself in a positive light (idealization), they will engage in action consistent with the social identity he/she is trying to project to 182 "convince" others in the interaction of his/her credible social identity. For those who are stigmatized, this might involve information management techniques such as covering and passing, as discussed in Chapter Two. Gof:fi:nan (1959) refers to the performative aspect of social interactions as the presentation of self or impression management. When the performance may involve the discovery of stigma, the actor must use available cultural resources to create an impression and control the performance and the information that he/she does not want found out.

The following sections will present the results of the qualitative interviews with respect to how the women of Hooters engage in impression and stigma management in a variety of social contexts. Further, I will examine the specific cultural tools they use to resolve the tensions between their true social identity and the one that they must present in social interactions. This is directly related to how the respondents negotiate or thwart stigma threat and how they go about doing disclosure.

Frames and Stereotypes

Frames are an important vehicle for recognizing and interpreting meaning. They are cognitive structures that allow us to decipher our experiences and that guide our perception and representation of reality. In any given day-to-day activity, actors encounter a variety of cultural objects that they must decipher. The frame that they apply to that particular object(s) influences the kinds of interpretations that people make and the kinds of action that they take with regard to a cultural object. Essentially, frames organize experience. Gitlin (1980) defines frames as "principles of selection, emphasis and presentation composed of little tacit theories about what exists, what happens, and 183 what matters" (p. 6). Stigmas and stereotype, on many levels, are frames. For some, they organize an experience about a particular attribute as negative and devalued. This is then applied to broader people or groups whereby it comes to influence the action towards members ofthat group.

As I have discussed previously in this dissertation (Chapters One and Two), those that are stigmatized are aware of the fact that others find something about them to be of lesser status. The women of Hooters who are faced with disclosing a characteristic are aware of the different frames that exist, although they may not be sure which one will arise in a particular interaction and they must be prepared to adjust accordingly. As such,

I asked them about the frames they have encountered when disclosing the information of working at Hooters. Six frames emerged from the interview data: innocuous, vacuous, degradation, Barbie doll, libidinous/promiscuous, and superficial.

Innocuous Frame: Since the emphasis of this study was on stigma, most of the questions were designed to elicit times when they faced stigma. However, the women acknowledged that they encountered many people who did not find the information that they worked at Hooters to be objectionable. As such, it did not have a bearing on the interaction and in many cases the women received positive feedback. In fact, most of the women reported responses such as, "That's cool". Thus, the interaction was not disrupted or did not take a negative tum based on the revelation that they worked at

Hooters. This frame refers to those who were not offended by the disclosure and who were generally receptive to the fact that the respondent worked at Hooters. 184 Vacuous Frame: Service work, including table service and erotic labor, is often cast as requiring little skill and as such is not considered knowledge work (Cobble 1991;

Ehrenreich 2001; Erickson 2004; Frank 2002; Paules 1991). Along these lines many reported that they encountered people who characterized them as uneducated and not goal oriented, unintelligent, or stupid. This perception did not meet reality as most of the respondents had attended college previously, have a degree, or were in college at the time of the interview. Addie, who wants to work in law enforcement, states that she is aware of the vacuous frame including the impact it will have after she leaves Hooters:

They think we're all stupid. We don't have an intelligent thought in our brain and that we can't hold a conversation .....Further, I just wouldn't want anyone to look at my application and my resume and see that [Hooters] and think in their minds ditzy, big boobs, will not be able to handle a gun, no attention to detail, etc.

Further, many of the women did not see the work as easy and commented that it was not a job that just anyone could do. Table service, as Paules (1991) finds, is both "physically and emotionally exhausting" (p. 7). Given that table service is seen as low prestige, often it is construed as not having a "real job". As such, many ofthe women encountered audiences who saw Hooters Girls and table service as vacuous. This frame, then, is one of the stigma threats that the women state they have encountered and that they find problematic when disclosing information.

Degradation Frame: Occupational identity is an important part of social interactions (Ashforth and Kreiner 1999). However, when someone's line ofwork is seen as physically, socially, or morally tainted, it can discredit the individual in the interaction. Hughes (1958) refers to the interpretation of an occupation as tainted as dirty work. Many of the women stated that they encountered some audiences who interpreted 185 their work at Hooters as tainted in that they saw it as immoral or degrading. For various audiences, degradation happened on many levels. First, some of the respondents encountered those who thought that Hooters was degrading to all women. Second, comments like, "How can you do that kind of work?' or "How can you do that to yourself?" appeared to be commonplace. Both of these questions/statements imply that the audience member sees the work as reducing the social status of the woman who works at Hooters.

The women of Hooters understand that there are those who find their work objectionable in terms of what some construe to be decent or indecent and acceptable or unacceptable work for women. This happened across many social settings. Consider the following interaction as described by Addie:

It was my husband's --it was the command [military] picnic. I said-- it was around all the wives and some of the husbands, the husbands knew, but didn't say because they've come in with my husband before and sat down and had lunch with me, and the, one ofthe gentlemen kind of just sitting there, and he said, 'Oh, yeah, babe, she works at Hooters.' So, the -- the lady he was actually -- his wife, she's like oh, yeah, she was fine. The woman I was actually talking to, her eyes got really big, and she said, 'How long have you worked there?' I told her, and she said, 'Oh, was it just until you find something else or?' 'No, I go to school, but other than that, you know, I enjoy it. It's a fun job.' She said, 'How do you enjoy getting groped on and looked at all day?' Well, it's not like that. She said, 'Well, with that kind of uniform though I would expect that you would or I would think that you would expect it and shouldn't care because ofwhat you're wearing.' I said, 'They don't grope us, but I would care if they did besides what I was wearing.' She said, 'Oh, well, I'm sorry. I guess I would never do that, you know, and my kids and blah, blah, blah and are you ever going to tell your son that you do that?' 'Yeah, I will. He loves Hooters, he loves the girls. We go there and we eat and we have babysitters all day because they take him and do whatever, and he's playing games, and I have a blast with my tables that have kids. We go play, and I let them have dinner by themselves and a lot of couples don't get to do that and they usually try to eat and get the kids off the floor and everything else, and they love it. 186 In fact, one of the respondents had a babysitter that quit upon finding out that she was working for Hooters:

She didn't come to my house. It was the place that I took my daughter to for in­ home daycare, and my daughter was only there for about three days. And one day I think she got a glimpse of part of my uniform and said where do you work? And I said I work at Hooters. And she says, oh, and then the next day she called me and said she couldn't baby-sit for me anymore. (Raegan)

As I mentioned earlier, at the time of these interviews, many of the respondents were attending college. As is common on the first day of class, students are often asked to introduce themselves or others to the rest of the class.

Ah, Nadia and I the first class we ever had together we had to, the teacher made us like fill out on an index card our name and our age and what we did and major, and we had to sit in this big circle in the classroom and like I think we just switched cards with the person next to us. And so, you know, I did Nadia and Nadia did me, and we both said we worked at Hooters and the whole class was just kind oflike oh. Even the teacher was like, okay. That's, that's, that's nice. Okay. Moving on. Just kind of like didn't know what to say almost. (Amy)

For those who engage in what others consider "dirty work", the issue of occupational identity is a potentially stigmatizing attribute that can arise in any interaction.

Barbie Doll Ideal Frame: My respondents realized that there was a canned, impossible, and unobtainable image ofwhat a "typical" Hooters Girl should look like and that most of them simply did not fit that mold. The Barbie doll ideal frame represents the framing of the women who work at Hooters as the cultural ideal: blonde, thin with tiny waists and flat stomachs, long legs, buxom, and Caucasian (Cunningham 1993).

Most of the stereotypes the women reported dealing with in the Barbie doll frame was the typecast that they were all buxomness. Yalom (1997) describes breasts as sexual ornaments with predominately erotic meaning. Clearly, the name Hooters and its 187 advertisements convey this connotation, but the reality for the Hooters waitresses in this study is that while they may be sexual ornaments, many of the women do not fit the stereotype ofbeing "well endowed." Regardless, the women's breast size is called into play when they reveal they work at Hooters. For example, when Kyra revealed that she worked at Hooters to one of her friend's mothers, the mother's reply was that she did not have "big enough boobs" to work there. On the other hand, Raegan notes that when she is out talking with people and trying to recruit, the first reaction she gets is that people look at her chest and make a comment such as "oh, you fit in." Therefore, there is an expectation about breasts that either fits or does not fit the stereotype of the Hooters Girl.

And, many of the women state that when they disclose the fact that they work at Hooters the automatic response is to look at their breasts in order to see if the breasts of the respondent fit with the stereotype.

The Barbie doll frame simply did not represent the reality of what they actually believed they looked like. Raegan stated that the Barbie doll ideal frame with respect to being lean and thin was completely wrong:

And, you know, the stereotype that all of us are beanpoles. That doesn't fit me at all. I'm a medium-sized build person. I'm very muscular and I was always on the bottom of the pyramid for cheerleading.

Many felt that there are a variety of body-types reflected in what they perceive to be the

"real" Hooters Girl. Perhaps Addie's statement adequately captures the fact that the women do not represent the Barbie doll ideal, even if they are stereotyped as such:

Ah, basically we're just what my mom said we are like Skittles. All of us are all different colors, shapes, and sizes, whatever. Never in the box do you ever have the same one. It's just a big melting pot of everybody. 188 Cunningham (1993) argues that Barbie also represents the Virgin/Whore paradox in that she is both sexy and the All-American Girl. Indeed, Hooters captures all of these attributes in their advertising and the women are aware that this is the expectation of those they encounter. The reactions that women have received to the disclosure of the job of Hooters Girl are also nuanced with this paradox which is mostly reflected in the promiscuous-libidinous frame discussed next.

Libidinous/Promiscuous Frame: The most often cited frame that the women report encountering is that they are "loose, floozies, sluts, or whores". This frame is firmly rooted in the sexualized form of table service that they provide. While the women see working at Hooters as a way to make economic gains, this kind of gain does not convert into other arenas of social life such as social or political power, particularly for those engaging in erotic labor (Wesley 2003). This is because those who are thought to objectify their body for economic gain are seen as debased and humiliated and as such

Hooters Girls are constructed along the same lines as strippers and prostitutes.

Along the same lines, when the women in this study revealed that they worked at

Hooters to men, they reported that a social boundary disappears and that men will almost immediately start flirting with them, tell dirty jokes to them, or ask them out. As such, men appear to be equating working at Hooters with sexual availability with the expectation that the women will be open and comfortable with sexual advances. Margo related the following story that evidences this:

He was drinking at a party at a house-and he had been drinking so he was a little intoxicated and pretty much just flirting with me, and I was like dude, I have a boyfriend, he's here right now, leave me alone. He was like I've seen you before and I was like I've never met you in my life, sorry. He was like no, I've seen you, 189 you work at Hooters and I was like okay, yeah, I do, you know, not a big deal so what does that mean? Like you hit on me? And he was like, well, it's pretty much all you do is you all hit on guys all the time, so why can't we hit on you?

It is not uncommon for the women to forge friendships during the course of their tenure at the restaurant. As such, it is not unusual for them to go out socially to "hang out" and to frequent night clubs. Because they are often seen in groups with other

Hooters Girls, the women state that many assume that they are "bar flies" or "party animals" connoting that all they do is go out and drink. This is directly tied to the interpretation of libidinous and promiscuity because if they are interpreted as party girls, they may be seen as putting themselves out there for sexual play. This extends far beyond the party scene described above and transcends various social scenes.

On a plane flying to somewhere where we used to have stores and there was a guy that was sitting next to me on the plane and we were just talking about travel, and he's like what are you doing? I was like, well, I'm traveling for work and then we just started chitchatting talking about a bunch of different things, and we probably talked the whole entire time and when we got ready to get off the plane -- it was probably about a 20-minute flight -- and he was like, oh, by the way I never asked you where you worked, and we had, you know, somewhat of a normal conversation to where this guy knew everything I did and that I thought I could just come right out and say so I said, oh, I work for Hooters. We have several locations here and I'm just traveling up here to make sure everything is the same. As soon as I told him, the conversation completely changed. I had talked to him for almost the whole duration of the flight. So, as soon as I said that the first thing he did was look at my chest. And then he proceeded to tell me a vulgar joke. (Isabella)

Several felt as if they have to constantly negotiate the interpretation of sexual availability and the connotation that they are promiscuous because they work at Hooters.

This is a direct result of objectification, although many of the women did not realize it.

The objectification of women as sexual objects transcends the restaurant to the social milieus outside of the restaurant where women are objectified in routine social situations 190 because of the reproduction of the idea that a woman's body is always available for consumption. In fact, many of the women report that they do not like to tell men that they work at Hooters because they do not want the information to act as an open invitation regarding sexual advances.

Superficial Frame: Research suggests that those who are attractive are better received in various social arenas such as making friends, finding mates, and finding employment than those who are not (Hesse-Biber 2007). However, there are also negative elements of attractiveness such as envy. For the women of Hooters, attractiveness has different consequences. It works to their advantage, Haley states, when they are trying to "get stuff for free". On the other hand, there are certain audiences who interpret attractiveness as threatening and as such, they cast the Hooters Girl in a negative light. This is true for some of the male and female audience members that they encounter.

Some of the women encountered men who characterized them as materialistic, high-maintenance, or superficial because they were attractive. Other women noted that because they were attractive, men presumed that they were stuck up, unapproachable, or that they were heavily invested in their appearance in terms of money and time. In essence, they were construed as trophies and while they encountered men who did want trophies, they also encountered men who did not.

Attractiveness can spark envy and competition among women (Hesse-Biber

2007). In fact, most of the issues arose out of encounters with other women who did not 191 work at Hooters. For example, Haley states that when she tells another female that she works at Hooters:

The first thing girls do is they look you up and down. If they're with friends they may, you know, whisper to another girl or something like that, but instantly you can tell that you're being judged.

She remarked that women are rude because some women perceive Hooters Girls as

thinking that they are "better than everyone else". She also notices that there seems to be

age differences in the reception among women:

I notice it's generally the younger girls are kind of snotty-- Oh, she's not that cute or that kind of thing; maybe say rude things or roll their eyes, give me dirty looks. The older girls probably I'd say 20 to 30 year old girls are usually pretty friendly like, you know, they'll come up, oh, hey, you know, we want some passes or which one do you work at? They may actually chitchat with you.

While they did not cite the superficial frame as often as the other frames

referenced above, the women reported that the female gaze was often quite disconcerting

in interactions with other women because of what they interpret to be insecurity fostering

competition. Katherine remarked that, "When you are insecure you find stuff wrong with

other people to make yourself feel better, particularly when you are around a good

looking group of girls." And while they encountered a few men who found them to be

superficial, they were able to negotiate that more easily than the reactions from other

women.

The Cultural Toolkit of Stigma Strategies

When asked how they came to know that they might experience negative

reactions or that they had to be guarded about the fact that they have worked as a Hooters

Girl, all of the respondents replied that they learned from experiencing it through 192 interactions with other people. The interactions were not homogenous. They received these reactions from a wide demographic ofpeople and across a variety of social settings.

It is worth mentioning that most of these experiences were objectively verifiable in the interactions they had, but some were subjective such as when the women reported that they read the body language to include facial expressions of those they disclosed to as stigma where there were no words communicating stigma. For example, some women reported receiving "the look" or what several refer to as "stink face". Regardless of the intent of the look from the giver, the women perceived stigma threat which is reminiscent of the Thomas Theorem (Thomas 1928). The theorem postulates that situations defined as real are real in their consequences and are especially applicable here. That is, even if the body language was misread by the respondent as stigmatizing, they still considered it to be stigmatizing and interacted on the basis of that understanding.

If the women are aware of the various frames (real or perceived), they may encounter in an interaction how do they manage the information that they work at

Hooters and how do they negotiate the interaction? As I have argued throughout this dissertation, I believe the answer to this question may lie within the domain of the cultural toolkit. To reiterate, the cultural toolkit is a metaphor for how people use culture to solve problems they encounter during daily life. This has direct application to managing stigma because the possibility of stigma is problematic to an interaction. In this next section I present the cultural tools that the women use to make decisions about disclosure and how they manage stigma in such interactions. 193 Social Reconnaissance

I read it all. I try to-! always try to read the situation before I come right out.~ Isabella, Former Hooters Girl

In a study of public spheres and co-mingling, Goffman (1971) found that actors are constantly engaged in social watchfulness; looking for occurrences that seem unnatural, hazardous, or wrong in both the social environment and with other actors that they encounter in that situation As such, Goffman (1971) describes the actor's immediate social world as consisting oftwo spheres. In the first sphere, actors can readily and easily control and effortlessly move through social space and interaction to accomplish the matters at hand. The second sphere, or what Goffman (1971) refers to as "umwelt", is a sphere in which the actor is conscious of potentially threatening situations and where they are in a state of alarm because they must constantly scan their immediate world for potential harm. In other words, the umwelt is a state of consciousness about threat. As the respondents in this study have indicated, they are aware of threat because they have all experienced some kind of peril in previous interactions with respect to the fact that they have worked as a Hooters Girl. In certain situations, they try to manage the information of their current or former occupation. When met with the question, what do you do for a living, how does the individual make decisions about disclosing the occupation?

When a potentially discredited individual enters a realm of social life that is uncertain or involves wariness in terms of stigma threat, the actor will scan their environment for danger. Indeed, many of my respondents reported that they tried to read the social situation. I call the strategies of action involved in scanning or reading the 194 environment the cultural tool of social reconnaissance. This tool is used to take inventory ofthe surroundings and make decisions about the environment in terms of whether it is a comfortable, and therefore controllable, or a hostile situation. For the participants in this study, the strategy of action of social reconnaissance involved paying attention to several dimensions in the setting.

Vibe: In line with Goffman's (1971) analysis, the women in this study also categorized social situations as comfortable or uncomfortable and/or threatening.

Respondents said that they tried to get a feel for the aura of the environment they found themselves in and generally categorized environments as informal and formal.

Comfortable situations were those settings that they perceived as informal when it involved others they perceived as peers: friends, friends of friends, those they met at a bar drinking, sporting events, restaurants, or people in their own age group (keeping in mind that the Hooters Girl is young). These situations were characterized as casual and non­ threatening because they were read as situations that people would understand that they worked at Hooters or would accept their social identity as is. Uncomfortable or threatening situations were described as more formal settings like school/classes, church, funerals, work and professional atmospheres.

All of these situations were more nuanced and seemed to be more detailed in terms of describing situations they would not feel comfortable telling someone about their work at Hooters. These nuances are described below and they impact the way the individual reads the aura or "vibe" of the setting and make decision about the possibility of disclosure and stigma threats. 195 Age: Given the age group of those that currently work at Hooters, it was not surprising that they did not feel that environments that consisted of those predominately of their own age group were threatening. In fact, they offered that younger people were more unprejudiced about social occurrences in general and they felt that they would be receptive to their work at Hooters. Typically, they read other young interactants as laid back or fun.

On the other hand, most of them stated that they would not feel comfortable telling "older people" such as adults, parents of their friends, or co-workers of their spouses (such as military personnel). "Older" meant different things to different people, but there was a distinct pattern in that older was associated with having families or children. Several characterized older as those individuals that are age 27 and above.

Addie, along with others, noted that many people in this age category have families and as such may see Hooters as a negative career choice:

I'm only 24, but them being even 27, 28 they seem like they are all about their family and their kids and what not, and they just don't take very well to it. They think that I'm, oh, you're just a teenybopper. You're not mature or, you know, I don't have a real job or in that kind of situation so.

Age was also associated with being more professional:

I think age has a lot to do with it. Ifl'm talking to older people that I feel are more professional and working in a white-collar job that tend to be more intellectual, I leave that out. (Katherine)

Further, the respondents were not at ease telling their friends' parents or grandparents that they worked at Hooters because they felt as if people in this age category would expect them to be doing something else with their lives. 196 I was at a barbecue with my husband, and it was his best friend's girlfriend's parent's house. And her mom had asked me where I worked, and I told her I worked at Hooters, and she was just like -- everything got quiet for a minute. I didn't understand why. (Elaine)

In general, younger people were called open-minded by the respondents whereas older people were read as close-minded in their views and would not be receptive to the information of working at Hooters. In taking social inventory, age mattered.

Lowbrow/Highbrow: Several of the respondents used the word "conservative" to describe situations and actors that made them feel as if they would have to guard the information that they have performed the job of Hooters Girl. Like older age, conservative was read as close-minded, but it also had class implications because the women used words like "high class" or "importance" to describe those that they perceived to be conservative and thus, close-minded. Distinctions were made between formal (highbrow) and informal (lowbrow). Consider the following interview exchange with Haley, a current Hooters Girl:

Haley: And if they seem like fun people then, you know, you might, oh, yeah, I work at Hooters or, you know, my guy friends that I have right now I think I was open with them. I think I told them from the bat that I was a Hooters Girl. Interviewer: You say you kind of have to get a sense for the situation that you 're in. How do you assess social situations? What are you looking for? Haley: Ah, ifl notice that people are, you know, judgmental of things or ifl notice that they are criticizing anything, I may kind of take a step back or if I feel like I'm in a, what would be the word? Like a classy setting, where, you know, people are classy. I can't really explain it. Yeah, somewhat of a formal setting or ritzy type thing I might feel somewhat kind of below someone. So I probably wouldn't mention it. Interviewer: Okay. So, you are kind of looking for whether the situation is formal, casual or more formal. Haley: Right, right. 197 The most prevalent theme was that those they saw as being conservative were associated, in their minds, as having occupational prestige. A lot of the examples had to do with interactions with doctors:

I had a medical problem, and it had something to do with menstruation. And the doctor told me that I couldn't use Tampons. And I was like, well, I can't go to work wearing a big pad, you know, my uniform, and he was like, well, what do you do? I told him that I work at Hooter's, I'm a Hooters Girl, and he asked if it was -- I forgot the word that he used, but he asked if, if I made a lot of money there. If it was worth, you know, me not being able to wear whatever I had to wear -- something to that effect -- and it made me uncomfortable. So he was like more, oh, is it really worth all that? (Elaine)

I had a doctor one time he-- I was in a doctor's office and he kept walking by me smiling, and he said do I know you? And I said I'm not sure. I said no. I don't think so. He was like well, am I your doctor here? No, no. He says well, do you go to such and such and place. I don't remember the place that he mentioned, but I said no. I said maybe Hooters? And he got this big grin on his face, shy, looking grin, and he's like no, no, no I don't visit that establishment. (Raegan)

Several respondents also read into the prestige of other occupations. Consider the following interview with Isabella, who still works for the company but is not a Hooters

Girl:

Isabella: There would be like if Hilary Clinton or somebody, I mean someone with a very prestigious career I probably wouldn't tell them right away. Yeah, I probably wouldn't tell her that because, again, just from my own experience that I think that people's first reactions it goes back to I say I'm the manager for Hooters, I think their first reaction is they are going to think I'm a Hooters Girl. Then ifl try to clarify that that was not the case and have to, you know, feel in my own ways I have to explain it to her she may think I'm less intelligent than I am. Interviewer: So, what are the things that -- so what you said was that people like Hilary Clinton might be prestigious so obviously you might not be meeting Hilary Clinton everyday, but it might be people who are more -- when you say prestigious, what do you mean? Isabella: More of a conservative individual.

Raegan, who is ex-military and currently a Hooters Girl, describes the differences between enlisted and officers in their reception: 198 Yes, exactly. Yep. The enlisted side, you know, when I tell them that I was in the military and they, there's a huge difference in acceptance, you know, because I think that they understand enlisted people work really hard and that's what I do here is I work really hard.

Elaine also conveyed that other restaurant or bar employees, service workers, do not have this kind of reaction. This highlights the difference in class in terms of occupation.

When doing social reconnaissance and considering social threat, it appears to be important to inventory how actors are dressed in the setting they are in and they also make distinctions. Margo and June say that they read the way the people are dressed:

If they were wearing a suit or if it was like a young person who wouldn't be wearing a suit, I would say if they were wearing like nice kind of shirt thing, you know, with nice pants. Not just like the baggie pants that you usually see and the jerseys ...... I don't know what the word is, not higher, class, would it be called higher class? (Margo)

You know, those high class girls that wear pearls and collared shirts. (June)

While the women did not use the word lowbrow or highbrow, they were clearly pointing to distinctions that they identified dress and occupation as connoting higher social standing and, as such, threatening in most cases.

Gender: Another part of social reconnaissance is taking stock of gender in the setting. Women have received both negative and positive reactions from men and women. In fact, as I have discussed throughout this dissertation, the respondents were more alarmed about the reactions from other women. They generally perceived that other women were judgmental, jealous, or insecure.

A month ago I was at a charity fundraiser and the majority of the women that were there were all overweight and a bunch of them were housewives and they didn't work and they were just more volunteers. They were there for fun. And I actually didn't tell any of those people in the beginning. Because I was there having fun and sometimes, again, the perception of a person who is overweight I 199 found over the years in regards to Hooter's Girl they automatically perceive that girl in a negative manner because of their self-conscious issues that they have with their weight or whatever the reason is that they do it. (Isabella)

Just women in general can be a little snooty and snotty and jealous, mean. (Emma)

Excavating

I profile people because I know that the second they find out I work at Hooters they are going to profile me. ~Margo, Hooters Girl

Social reconnaissance refers to taking inventory the aura of a social setting and the social actors in it at a more general and broad level. Their interpretation of the setting may lead them to feel comfortable or on alarm. Typically, individuals will encounter other actors in the setting and it is in this up close and face-to-face interaction that the respondents report using the cultural tool of excavating. Merriam-Webster's dictionary

(2007) defines excavate as to dig out or remove. Excavating then, as a cultural tool, involves trying to draw out information from other actors. This is done in order to get a feel for where others might stand in terms of their opinions on other subjects so as to be able to infer these opinions to Hooters and make decisions about disclosure. While excavating, the women repeatedly stated that they engaged in "profiling" other interactants. Whereas social reconnaissance refers to sizing up the larger setting, excavating refers to sizing up individuals at the point of face-to-face interaction.

One way of excavating is to read body language. In fact, several of the respondents commented that they have become skilled at reading people's body language. In terms of feeling comfortable, they report that those who exhibit casualness in body language are often though to signal openness and relaxedness. This is delineated 200 to being open-minded. On the other hand, people who are rigid and formal are read as being unapproachable and inferred to be close-minded. These people are seen as possible threats.

The other form of excavating occurs during the course of conversation. In the same way that the women were skilled in reading non-verbal communication, they also reported being skilled in manipulating conversations in order to extract opinions or comments about current social happenings that would provide clues to how they might receive the information of working at Hooters.

How do I size them up? Well, I just talk to them, feel them out, and you can kind of get a vi be whether or not that they would think less of you for that. (Hope)

Part of excavating through conversation is not only what the other actors say but how they say it. For example, do they use casual language such as slang or do they use

"big word" and a more formal way of speaking? The respondents were in tune to how others spoke as much as they were to what they were saying:

What they off the bat talk to you about or their language. If they are just kind of, ah, yeah, we don't care whatever, we're just talking or whether they're elegant or, you know, whatever. (Addie)

After the person engages in social reconnaissance, they will solidify their judgment on whether to disclose or not disclose based on what they can gamer through excavation from the persons in the interaction situation (conversation, opinions on other subjects, demeanor). For the potentially stigmatized, the tool of excavating is about gaining knowledge or some degree of certainty as to whether they should or should not disclose. 201 Veiling

I'm a waitress in a restaurant. ~ Several Hooters Girls

All parties to an interaction, to some degree, are excavating for knowledge in order to be aware of their situations. Glaser and Strauss (1965) refer to this as an

"awareness context", where all parties are trying to facilitate knowledge about the identity of others interactants and his/her identity in the eyes of the other interactants.

There are three different types of awareness as described by Glaser and Strauss (1965) with respect to knowledge about others in an interaction. The first, open awareness refers to the fact that all parties in an interaction have comprehensive information about one another. In closed awareness, all parties lack knowledge about one another. In suspicion awareness, one party has knowledge while the others do not. When others are lacking knowledge about the discredited characteristic, the potentially stigmatized tries to control the knowledge that is being disseminated in the interaction.

In the process of excavation, perhaps a question relating to the discrediting factor will arise. Because this study deals with women who currently work at Hooters and those who used to work as Hooters Girls, the types of questions that this could be are: What do you do for a living?, What did you do for a living before this job?, What is your job experience? If you participate or have participated in dirty work, this could be threatening and it may be knowledge that you do not want others to have. As such, the potentially stigmatized will not fully disclose information, but will do so in increments as to divert, deflect, or skirt the issue. I refer to this as the cultural tool of veiling. Veiling is a strategy of action that does not reveal full knowledge. In response to the question as 202 to if they automatically tell someone about Hooters, all of the respondents reported that they use veiling in just about all social situations outside of the restaurant that they found potentially stigmatizing.

Generally, veiling was a useful tool used to answer the question about occupation because it did not reveal the full extent of the job, thereby serving to help keep stigma threat at bay. For example, most of the respondents reported that they answered the questions regarding occupation with the response, "I am a waitress". This is certainly not a lie and this is probably the common response of most table servers, but it does not reveal the full context of the job. Veiling this information seems to work for the women as they report that many people do not ask any more questions after hearing, "I am a waitress". However, there are some that ask the follow-up question "where". The typical response from the women in this study was "at a local restaurant", "a restaurant at the beach", or "a restaurant downtown". Still others referred to the restaurant by its corporate/franchise name:

Like my son's school, I would have said [corporate name]. If they tried to dig more, like oh, what is that? And then I'd say it's a restaurant, you know, it's a franchise restaurant. (Jillian)

Here the women are still veiling because they do not simply say Hooters and in fact use veiling as a way to avoid having to what several of the respondents refer to as the "H- bomb" (Hooters).

A number of them had occasion to fill out a job application or submit a resume to try to acquire another job or a second job. This was particularly true of the women who no longer worked at Hooters and who were on the job market. Dependent upon the 203 nature of the job, some women did not impart, they put Hooters down (such as another restaurant or bar). On the other hand, many of the women did not put the name Hooters on their application or their resume, particularly for professional or "executive type jobs".

Instead, they referred to the restaurant by its corporate/franchise name. Katherine states this because she is not sure who would be getting and controlling the knowledge:

Katherine: But if it's a male reading the resume, they might be more interested because they are going to assume that I'm pretty. Interviewer: Okay. What about a female? Katherine: That's what I'm afraid of, I'm afraid that they'll throw it away because females can be more catty, you know, they can view you totally differently.

The ways in which they engaged in veiling regarding job applications also applied to college applications. One respondent offered:

Because I don't think that a college would look at that and think we would like to have her in our school. (Margo)

At other times, veiling involved lying. There were times when some of the respondents offered that they just did not have the energy to deal with the issue of

Hooters in an interaction. This prompted them to impart false information:

I'll drop any other bomb or sometimes I say, sometimes I just say I work for my mom or because my mom owns a barbershop. I'll be like I work for her sometimes. (Nadia)

As a strategy of action, veiling was a way of controlling the information and not having to deal with the reaction to the word Hooters for the respondents. The information was imparted when they were uncertain about the other people they were dealing with or when they thought they might lose face. It is also a social strategy whereby the respondents choose to impart information when they recognized that full 204 disclosure was not advantageous in terms of meeting the desired goal (Quattrone and

Jones 1978).

Revealing

I try not to talk about what I do until we both get to know each other. ~ June

The strategy of action of revealing is deployed when the individual has made the decision at some point in the interaction to divulge the potentially discrediting characteristic. Revealing, then, is based on the individual's perception and judgment of the situation that they find themselves in. Revealing can involve social reconnaissance, excavation, and impartation.

If an actor does not define a situation as threatening, then they are more likely to choose to fully disclose. For example, if the women are among friends or friends of friends, they may disclose early on in the conversation without employing any other cultural tool such as excavation or veiling. Or they may engage in excavating and deem the situation to be amenable and thus choose to disclose. And for some, after using the veiling tool, may also decide to disclose. A couple moved from veiling to revealing when they got frustrated with the veiling process. Margo states:

Because it never just ends with what do you do? Oh, I work at Hooters. Then there's like this whole series of questions, you know, oh, well, is it true that they make you do this test? Or is it true that you guys, I don't know, have an upstairs and have hot tub parties? Or, you know whatever. Stuff like that. I just say it.

An interesting part of the tool of revealing is the moment immediately after the revealing act. Many of the respondents refer to that moment as uncomfortable because they are waiting to see what the reaction to the disclosure will be: 205 You are kind oflike what are they going to do? Because I'm very, I'm very nervous, but so far I've had positive responses pretty much, but I'm very nervous for that second that they are like, they are thinking, really? Does she really work at Hooters? (Paige)

Certainly, revealing is a discretionary behavior as the individual could choose to impart tidbits, to lie, or to not use the tool of revealing at all. However, as I have illustrated, there are times when revealing has negative consequences on the interaction and the individual must mobilize other cultural tools to diffuse the consequences of using the tool of revealing.

Nullifying and Justifying

You try to get them to see. ~ Margo

Once the potentially discrediting information is "out there", the reaction may be negative and the discredited may have to nullify the impact that it has on the interaction.

This most often involves justifying the characteristic that others consider stigmatizing.

For the women of Hooters, this included explaining the merit of the job or trying to get others to see that the job was normal.

I just tell them that, you know, I'm there for the fun and, you know, to make money, but it's, I mean it is really about your looks, but it is also, I mean I think I got hired for my personality and being able to talk to people and so it's not all about having bib boobs. (Paige)

This strategy of action also involved trying to get others to change the meaning that they attached to Hooters as a place of business:

My main question was always, have you ever been in there? Because, you know, they'll throw out all these comments, but they have never stepped foot in there. (Jillian) 206 Some women just think, you know, it's a strip club and they would never bring their kids in there because of that, and you know, I tell them no, it's not a strip club. It's a family oriented restaurant and as a matter of fact if you were to bring your kids in there, the Hooters Girl will take care of your children so you could actually sit down and have a good meal. (Talia)

I just tell them, you know, my major thing is I ask them do you go to the beach? Do you go to the swimming pool? They're like, yeah. Well, you see a lot less there than you see at Hooters. We wear, you know, I go through the whole uniform, our pantyhose, clunky shoes and scrunchies socks. It's not-- we're not hanging out, it's not a go-go bar. We're just serving food and, you know, the beach versus Hooters, the beach you're wearing a lot less there and you see a lot less, your kids see a lot less. (Addie)

A couple of the women used stronger language saying that nullifying or justifying was really defending their decision to work there:

I would defend my position on working there. And say it was a great job, you know, what makes you think it's not a good job where somebody is not, I don't know, you feel like they think you're not intelligent. (Hope)

I will always defend if somebody were to react negative about Hooters I will always be on the defensive side. (Addie)

Ultimately, nullifying and justifying are strategies of action that individuals use to do damage control when the social information that they have revealed does not meet with the reality of the other individuals that are party to the interaction and their interpretation of the discredited characteristic. While nullifying and justifying are tools that are often used in conjunction with revealing, I separated them here because sometimes actors are "outed" by others or circumstances beyond their control. Thus, they do not get to use the tool of revealing - someone else has done that for them - and they might have to call upon the tools of nullifying or justifying separately from the revealing tool. Regardless, nullifying and justifying are used to try to manage the interaction. 207 Resigning and Dissolving

I just let it go. ~ Katherine

In some of the interactions, the women noted that even after they spent time nullifying or justifying, they could not diffuse the negative reaction. For many, there came a point in the interaction where they gave up on nullifying and justifying and accepted or submitted to the fact that they could not change the other interactants' minds.

This mostly occurred when the women could not convince others in the interaction that

Hooters was "fine". I term this acceptance or submission as the cultural tool of resigning.

Resigning mostly happens when the discredited does not engage in further conversation regarding the discrediting matter because they recognize that using the tools of justifying and nullifying are moot. The following excerpts from interviews evidence the women engaging in resigning:

I usually just say, okay, well, we are not going to agree about this. Why don't we just not talk about it? You have your way and I have my way. (Margo)

Yeah. Like why waste my time trying to convince you, you know? I just kind of drop it. Change topics. (Amber)

I'm like, yeah, I worked at Hooters, you know, that was this many years ago. If you have a problem with it, you know, too bad for you. (Emma)

Sometimes, the tool of resigning simply will not "fix" the problem of stigma threat in the interaction and the discredited may have to employ the dissolving tool. The dissolving tool is used when the discredited ends the interaction with others altogether.

This tool was used infrequently by the respondents, but some reported that the interactions were too threatening or unmanageable and they had to depart the situation.

For example, Isabella reported that there were a few times where people were so hostile 208 that she "desisted" or reported having to "remove myself from the conversation".

Dissolving seemed to be a tool oflast resort.

Summary of Out ofUniform

In the preceding chapter I showed how they produced meaning and in this chapter

I illustrated how they received the meaning. This chapter has examined the meanings that others have been applied to doing the work of doing Hooters Girl "out of uniform"; that is, outside of the restaurant and the consequences these interpretations have on interactions when the question of the occupation arises. The meanings that are applied to their work are patterned; that is to say that they encounter the same meanings over and over again. In this study I called those patterned meanings frames as it shows that various audiences have interpreted the Hooters Girl along similar trajectories. These interpretations included the innocuous, vacuous, degradation, Barbie doll, libidinous/promiscuous, superficial, frames.

All but the innocuous frame had the potential to be threatening in the social situation because they were frames that could be the catalyst for stigmatization. More importantly, I sought to understand how the women negotiated these frames in everyday social interactions and across a variety of social milieus. The participants in this study were very conscious of how others interpreted their work from interactions with audience members who employed the frames listed above to characterize their work. As such, the actors in my study consciously and deliberately called upon culture vis-a-vis their cultural repertoire/toolkit to mobilize tools that would help them negotiate, manipulate, and sometimes mitigate the looming threat of their occupational identity. The cultural tools 209 that they employed from their toolkits were that of social reconnaissance, excavating, veiling, revealing, nullifying, justifying, resigning, and dissolving.

At times, it seemed as if the women were engaged in a form of interaction judo.

Judo, as a martial art, is based on the principles of wrestling and the element of sport and athleticism, rather than on coming to blows. I find that interaction judo is an appropriate analogy to how the women deploy the cultural tools discussed in this chapter. They are engaged in a non-violent and unspoken wrestling match that is mostly unknown to the other participants in the interaction in terms of trying to keep private or prevent impact of the possibly discrediting information. As such, this chapter has illustrated that for all the times that culture is used haphazardly by individuals, there are many occasions where it is used quite deliberately, systematically, and with athletic skill.

In addition it highlights the difficulties associated with interaction by those who can be considered on the margins of society because they perform dirty work. The women in this study do not construct their work as dirty and seem quite distressed and fatigued from having to constantly deal with what they believe are misunderstandings and misinterpretations of who they are as women, people, and productive workers. At its core, this chapter has dealt with how the women as "others" manage information through the use of culture when they are around those who consider themselves "normals". CHAPTER 7

ON CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Many actors have social skeletons in their closet that they may not want to reveal or have discovered in a variety of social contexts. As such, stigma is an omnipresent social situation that actors must deal with in the public sphere. In this dissertation, I examine the ways in which actors, in this case women who work at Hooters, deliberately manage stigma in a variety of social interactions through the use of their cultural toolkit.

Existing research on stigma has revealed a variety of tools and techniques that actors use during the course of managing stigma albeit presenting them as an oddly assorted and sometimes disorganized set oftechniques (Charmaz 1991; Goffman 1963; Kusow 2007;

Snow and Anderson 1987; Spradlin 1995; Yoshino 2006). Similarly, existing research on the cultural toolkit has illustrated how actors are separate enough from culture to use it, but who do so in an unconscious and unplanned manner (Armstrong and Weinberg 2006;

Barnes 2005; Cast, Schweingruber, and Berns 2006; Fine 2004; Forte 1999; Norgaard

2006; Swidler 2001). This dissertation is innovative in that it links the two literatures in order to advance our understanding of how actors consciously and systematically use culture. At the same time, it is unique in that it shows that there are linkages among and between tools illustrating that stigma management is a systematic process. Additionally, it identifies smaller toolsets within the broader toolkit that are assembled and put to use in specific social situations, such as in the case of stigma.

210 211 This chapter provides an overall summary of the dissertation project. It gives an overview of the conceptual framework, presents a review of the major findings with respect to the research questions, the limitations of the research and suggests lines of inquiry for future research.

Conceptual Overview

The relationship between culture and the individual has received considerable attention in the discipline of sociology. This is particularly true with respect to the link of how culture influences action. There are two broad approaches to this relationship: culture as motivation or culture as justification. Those who view culture as motivation see culture as a shared way of living that emphasizes values and beliefs as guiding individual actions in consistent ways and usually with predetermined ends (Vaisey 2007).

Conversely, those that view culture as justification focus on how culture consists of many complex cultures and subcultures that social actors use as resources to devise and sometimes justify strategies of action in the course of everyday living (DiMaggio 1997;

Swidler 2001; Vaisey 2007). Recent lines of inquiry have explored the culture as justification relationship through the theoretical perspective of culture as a repertoire or toolkit; looking at how actors use culture as resource to help them negotiate their everyday lives particularly in times of contrasting social patterns, anxiety, or tension.

The impetus for this dissertation stemmed from my reading of Swidler' s (200 1) work on how actors use their cultural toolkits to pursue reasoning as a strategy of action to resolve tensions that exist between thinking about love as voluntary choice or love as commitment in their marriages. Swidler (2001) found that actors unconsciously switched 212 toolkits to talk about the manifestation of love as choice and commitment and she argues that people chaotically assemble tools, without any consideration or recognition of this contradiction. In fact, she presents the usage of culture as quite impulsive, unconscious, and unplanned. While this may be true in many aspects of the usage of culture, I believe that there are many instances where actors must be careful about how they negotiate their social surroundings and they quite deliberately pursue strategies of actions in those situations. As such, I find the notion of the cultural toolkit to be quite incomplete: we do not know how and when actors use tools in a calculated and systematic way. In fact, I easily identified a particular situation that I believed actors consciously called upon their cultural toolkits with purpose and aforethought: when individuals have to manage the disclosure of a potentially discredited occupational identity such as that of the Hooters

Girl. Previous research had not been concerned with cultural toolkits as conscious and purposeful nor has it identified smaller toolsets specific to particular situations such as in the case of stigma.

The Hooters Girl served as an interesting and appropriate medium by which to study the conscious use of cultural tools to manage the disclosure of potentially discrediting information for a variety of reasons. It was necessary to understand how the actors experience the production of a particular cultural object and meaning, leave the system/conditions of production where they should be separated from that meaning, and then have to deal with how audiences have received that meaning, particularly the negative ones, when faced with revealing a discrediting characteristic. As such, this differentiates the Hooters Girl from other stigmatized identities since there is a large 213 industry machine behind it that deliberately produces the identity at the structural level while simultaneously the women who "do Hooters Girl" face potential stigmatization at the level of face-to-face interaction. Second, various empirically identifiable meanings exist about the occupation. Meanings can be both positive and negative. Many social audiences celebrate and welcome the Hooters Girl while others marginalize and stigmatize her.

This squared nicely with the notion that individuals create and use culture in unsettled times where there is anxiety, tension, and threat by having to reveal an occupational identity that many people have conflicting opinions on. The actor can never be sure which audience interpretation they are dealing with. The present study examined how women who work/worked as Hooters Girls assembled tools into a smaller toolset that helped them make decisions about revealing their potentially stigmatizing occupational identity outside of the restaurant when they are out of uniform. It also examined how they used the tools to discover, negotiate, minimize, or thwart possible stigma threat in interactions where tensions about their occupational identity existed and the ways in which they used tools systematically. Ultimately, I see this study in the broader sociological conversation of how culture matters to the individual and how it influences action.

This study employed a qualitative design and utilized in-depth interviewing data collected from twenty-five (n=25) women who currently work as a Hooters Girl or who have previously worked in that capacity. Data from participant observation and key informants were also used in the analysis. Specifically, this study was guided by the 214 following questions: 1) What are the everyday consequences for those involved in the production of a cultural object? 2) How do actors experience the negative reception of the cultural object they have produced? 3) In what ways do actors assemble and use cultural tools to manage stigma in everyday interactions?

Review of the Results

(1) What are the everyday consequences for those involved in the production of a cultural object?

Resembling Hirsch's (1972) model of the culture industry system, Hooters of

America employs a variety of subsystems to ensure that the concept of the restaurant and the image of the Hooters Brand, the Hooters Girl, is consistently produced company wide both in the restaurant and its outside ventures (sports sponsorships, casinos, and others).

This industry system includes a managerial subsystem via the franchise arrangement, the technical subsystem of creative artists called the Hooters Girls, and an institutional subsystem of marketers and media savvy personnel to create mindfulness about Hooters in the market. The system receives feedback from customers who either love or hate the concept.

Hooters profits from the offering of the female body for spectacle. The purposes of the structural components of the culture industry system are to exert control over the day-to-day production ofthe Hooters Girl to ensure that the offering of the female body is consistent with consumer expectations. However, culture industry systems are comprised of social actors who experience the system of production at the level of face­ to-face interaction. A real live social actor, in this case a woman, must enact corporate 215 regulations that meet consumer expectations at the level of face-to-face interaction within the restaurant and outside of it. In order to examine the interactions, I looked at the mechanisms that organized the collective activity of production. Becker (1982) refers to these mechanisms as conventions. In this study, conventions are the vehicles through which the cultural object ofthe Hooters Girl is produced for consumption and through which the women experience their work. Six conventions were identified: convention of appearance, sex appeal, panoptic management, emotional labor, regular customer, and promotions. Most of the conventions had to do with appearance and the presentation of self.

As a part of"doing Hooters Girl", a woman continually polices her body and appearance as well as those of others that she works with. Taylor and Abbott (1998) refer to this type of surveillance as panoptic management and in the context of this study it is referred to as the convention of panoptic management. The constant surveillance by management, customers, and the women themselves creates some anxiety about their external appearances. It also reinforces the cultural standard that a woman must be shapely enough to fill out her uniform/clothes but that the shapeliness should not cross the boarder of culturally accepted standards of thinness. If this happened, she should diet or perhaps consider plastic surgery. I should be clear that the company does not promote plastic surgery but that this option arose out of the pressures to meet the conventions of appearance day in and day out. This often created self-doubt for the women about their bodies, bred competition among women, and facilitated resentment of other women whom she believed to be the "ideal". One ofthe consequences of a job that involves so 216 much bodywork seems to be that it plunges women deeper into the "cult of thinness" where a woman has to deal with others that perceive her worth as measured by her weight more than any other attribute that she may possess (Hesse-Biber 2007). While Hooters as a company works hard to make the woman feel celebrated, the day-to-day production sometimes has an opposite effect.

There is a clear cultural paradox about using sex appeal during the course of the job. The sex appeal convention requires that a woman appear to be unrestrained in her sexiness and sexual availability. At the same time, she must perform the convention of emotional labor and be domesticated, deferent, and come off as sexually pure. She can be sexy and that sexiness can be used and consumed by others, particularly men, but she is not allowed to use it as a commodity for gain. If she does, she is seen as tainted. This tension often created confusion for the women in terms of how to present themselves both in the restaurant at tables with their customers and outside of the restaurant when dealing with non-customers. They encountered people in both spheres who wanted them to be sexually available, but if they appeared to be they were marginalized for it. It was this perception of sexual availability that formed the basis for most of the stigmas that the women reported they faced outside of the restaurant

These findings expand Becker's (1982) original conceptualization of conventions.

Becker's (1982) analysis does not discuss the possibility of inconsistency within and between conventions or the resulting tension; rather his analysis describes how actors take advantage of conventions to carry out their collective activity. While my 217 participants were able to carry out their collective activity, it was not always as smooth, fluid, or unconflicted as Becker (1982) conceived.

It is also noteworthy to mention that there was a high level of enthusiasm in the women's description of how Hooters had positive outcomes in her personal, social, and financial lives. Hooters allowed her to forge deep, meaningful, and lasting friendships. It is a job that she really enjoyed doing, regardless of how others constructed it. This is consistent with most of the research on waitressing; while the work is devalued and dehumanized, the women who work in restaurants form close social bonds (Cobble 1991;

Erickson 2002; Hall1993). No woman in this study ever doubted or regretted her choice to work at Hooters and stated that she would do it all over again if she could turn back the hands of time.

Therefore, participating in the culture industry system, particularly one that uses female sexuality and beauty as overtly as Hooters, has both positive and negative consequences on the women that participate in this kind of production of culture. There are consequences in her work environment where she is either celebrated or dehumanized and there are consequences in her immediate social networks where her work is supported or ostracized. Additionally, there are consequences in her interactions with strangers where she is either fully accepted or stigmatized, and there are psychological consequences with respect to how she views her body, personality, and ultimately, self worth. Indeed, the production of meaning matters as it draws the fine line between social acceptance and social marginalization. In many instances, it is hard to know what line one may be treading on and as a result it is emotionally demanding. 218 Given the experiences conveyed by those working in this particular culture industry system, it seems practical to move beyond thinking of the production of culture as purely a systematic process and to take into account the social actor. This study illustrates that production systems are hubs of human activity. In order to understand a system, we must also understand its impact on the individuals who comprise that system.

(2) How do actors experience the negative reception of the cultural object they have produced?

Central to my argument that some producers are also receivers includes the ways in which audiences outside the system of production have received the cultural object.

While cultural objects such as books on a shelf, art on display in a museum, and songs on the radio can be consumed and interpreted at a distance from the artist, there are certain objects that are not distanced from one another, such as the case of the Hooters Girl. The

Hooters Girl produces a cultural object through a job and then when she "clock's out" and leaves that role for the day, she should be able to exist outside of it. However, some producers as receivers have become culturally salient in that they are inextricable from one another by audiences such as in the case of Salman Rushdie and his book The Satanic

Verses and Andres Serrono's photograph of Piss Christ. The Hooters Girl also fits this category because most audiences are not able to separate her from that image. Culture industries, such as Hooters, work hard to get audiences to adopt a certain meaning, such as the "All American Cheerleader" or the "Girl Next Door", yet many audiences have framed and received her in a different and sometimes stigmatized way. 219 Goffman (1974) describes frames as schemata that allow individuals to give meaning and context to a social phenomenon. The frame that they apply to that particular object(s) influences the kinds of interpretations that people make and the kinds of action that they take toward it. Essentially, frames organize experience and in the context of this study, stereotypes and stigmas are narrower kinds of frames. This analysis has shown that the women have encountered several different frames, most of them negative, used by audiences and that these frames are patterned; that is to say that the Hooters Girl encounters the same frames and meanings over and over again. These frames included the innocuous, vacuous, degradation, libidinous/promiscuous, the Barbie doll ideal, and superficial frames.

The innocuous frame refers to those who did not find the information that one worked at Hooters to be objectionable. The revelation or discovery of this information did not have a bearing on the interaction and in many cases the women received positive feedback. However, many of the women reported that they encountered people who characterized them as uneducated and not goal oriented and unintelligent (the vacuous frame) or socially or morally tainted (the degradation frame). Along a similar vein, the most often cited frame that the women reported encountering is that they are "loose, floozies, sluts, or whores" or what I termed the libidinous/promiscuous frame. Women are expected to produce their bodies for spectacle, but when they do they are marginalized for it. Further, their work is devalued if it does not rise to a certain level of occupational prestige and even more so if it involves the erotic. 220 The Barbie doll ideal frame represents the framing of the women who work at

Hooters as the cultural ideal: blonde, thin with tiny waists and flat stomachs, long legs, buxom, and Caucasian (Cunningham 1993). The interpretations oftheir appearance had consequences. Some of the women encountered men who characterized them as materialistic or high-maintenance because they were attractive or what I refer to as the superficial frame. The women were expected to have an ideal body type but experienced backlash if she does or does not achieve it.

All but the innocuous frame had the potential to be threatening in the social situation because they were frames that could be the catalyst for stigmatization. Most certainly, when my respondents encountered these negative frames, each experienced social marginalization in a variety of contexts to include applying for other jobs, family relations, romantic relationships, forging friendships with others, and at social occasions such as formal parties. The women were upset by the negative reception of their work and the resulting marginalization as they were not congruent with how they viewed their own work. They were perplexed as to why others could not see that there was nothing abnormal, immoral, or wrong with working at Hooters. In acts of resistance, some women characterized those who had problems with Hooters as close-minded or ignorant and all categorically denied the characterization of Hooters as sex work.

Stigma and social marginalization, then, are one of the ways that actors experience the negative reception of the cultural object they have produced. As a result of these negative experiences, there seemed to be a general understanding among the women regarding their position in the social, moral, and class hierarchy and that the 221 position was quite low. The threat of this repeated marginalization created anxiety in a variety of interactions for my respondents as they had to exert energy on assessing all foreign social interactions.

(3) In what ways do actors assemble and use cultural tools to manage stigma in everyday interactions?

How do you tell someone information that may marginalize you in an interaction?

While bookstores are full of self-help literature to teach individuals how to disclose information related to everything from terminal illness to sexually transmitted diseases, that kind of literature does not exist in other circumstances such as for the sex offender, ex-convict, stripper, or even a Hooters Girl. The same social systems of support simply do not exist for everyone on the social margins. For the woman who works at Hooters, she is left to figure out how to handle these situations by herself through trial and error.

The women in this study have formed tools to use in situations where tensions may arise about their occupational identity.

The primary ways that the participants in this study acquired tools were through experience and this mostly happens through trial and error. Given the experiences highlighted in this dissertation, each woman was very conscious of how others interpreted the Hooters Girl from interactions with audience members who employed the frames listed above to characterize her work. These interactions of trial and error cemented her understanding that she occupied a marginalized place in society and that the information that she worked at Hooters must be carefully guarded. Thus, when she encounters a negative fame, mental notes are taken in terms of what has happened, what 222 went wrong, and how it was handled (or should have been handled). This experience is then deposited into her repertoire for recall at a later time. This coincides with Swidler

(2001) in that actors can only use those tools ofwhich they are aware.

As Swidler (2001) has argued, culture is created in unsettled times. However, while Swidler (2001) conceives of unsettled times at the structural level, I have shown that unsettled times can be taken to mean situations or interactions that present an individual with crisis, tension, or anxiety. At the micro-level, social actors create tools when they desperately need them. As we have seen, the threat of encountering some of the negative frames caused anxiety for the woman when she entered interactions. As a result ofthese anxieties, the actors in my study consciously and deliberately called upon culture vis-a-vis their cultural repertoire/toolkit to mobilize tools that would help them negotiate, manipulate, and sometimes mitigate the perceived threat of her occupational identity in everyday situations and interactions. This is a significant finding and one worth future development because many theorists of culture view culture as driving action (Durkheim 1964; Weber 1930) rather than a tool to manipulate action.

More importantly, we would do well to think of culture as the broader tool chest from which actors assemble smaller toolsets in order to problem solve in particular situations. My analysis shows that a decision to reveal or not to reveal discrediting information is accomplished through a particular collection of tools that are used systematically. The process works in the following way: 1) actors use social reconnaissance to take inventory of the social setting; 2) the actor uses excavating in order to draw out pertinent information in order to get a sense of the parties to the 223 interaction; 3) the actor then either goes right to revealing the information or they use the tool of veiling to reveal information in increments; 4) if the parties to the interaction react negatively, they use the tools of nullifying and justifying to minimize the impact of the revelation; and 5) if the impact is not nullified or justified, they use the tool of resignation to "let it go" or use the tool of dissolving to end the interaction. These are all deliberate, calculated moves on the part of the actor managing the information. They are not just an assortment of stigma management techniques that one pulls out of a hat; they are linked and there is a logical way in which they are used.

At times, it seemed as if the women were engaged in a form of interaction judo.

Judo, as a martial art, is based on the principles of wrestling and the element of sport and athleticism rather than on coming to blows. I find that interaction judo is an appropriate metaphor to describe how the women deploy the cultural tools. She is engaged in a non­ violent and unspoken wrestling match that is mostly unknown to the other participants in the interaction in terms of trying to keep private or prevent impact of the possibly discrediting information. This is perhaps the most theoretically satisfying component of this study; to show that in order to manage stigma in interactions requires the skillful use of cultural resources. For all the times that culture is used randomly by individuals, there are many occasions where it is used quite purposely, methodically, and with social athletic skill. Culture matters and it matters in the way that it is used.

Limitations: Standards of Quality and Verification

While it is true that all analyses have their strengths and limitations, there are conflicting paradigms about how limitations affect research and what it means to do 224 quality research in the qualitative tradition. Generally, scholars call into question the quality of a qualitative project by assessing the validity and reliability of the research.

These two terms are historically associated with quantitative/positivistic research with validity referring to the accuracy of the measurement and reliability refers to replication.

In qualitative research, the concepts of validity and reliability are often conceptualized as trustworthiness which includes rigor of design, data collection, and data analysis

(Golafshani 2000). There is wide debate about the efficacy of these concepts in qualitative research and if they are adequate in enough to describe quality in the qualitative approach. However, suffice it to say that the main concern with evaluating qualitative research has to do with finding truth (Seale 1999; Silverman 2001).

One way to ensure quality in qualitative research is to engage in triangulation of data. In this context, I sought to get at truth through a variety of perspectives: from the perspectives of the women via in-depth interviews, through observations of the natural setting of Hooters, and through analyzing documents relating to the corporation to include research and evaluation results, marketing campaigns, and employee handbooks.

As such, one of the strengths of this study and the methods used is that it provides as comprehensive of a description of the setting as possible (also referred to as internal validity). I would have liked to interview managers, regular customers, and customers in general to round out the perspectives provided about the restaurant. Their voices are missing in this study. However, since the focus of my study was on those who are stigmatized and not the ones doing the stigmatizing per se, the absence of their voice 225 should not diminish the findings on how an individual uses cultural tools to approach a stigmatizing interaction.

The Hooters Girl is not the only population that experiences anxiety about revealing information that may bring about stigma. I could have used another population such as strippers, felons, or prostitutes, but the notion of how people use culture to manage stigma is something that is new and interesting to the sociology of culture as it marries the long standing theoretical paradigms of interpretive sociology, social psychology, and cultural sociology in order to see if a model of information management/disclosure exists. As such, this study is exploratory in nature and should be evaluated with that in mind, particularly when thinking about external validity. I have a single case that reveals a particular pattern. In understanding that, I tried to include participants that I thought would represent the negative case, and yet, they repeated the same narratives as my other respondents. This study's strength is that it purposefully sought out a different narrative by the respondents, even if it did not achieve that goal.

Perhaps of even more importance is the identification of a particular socio-cultural and socio-psychological pattern that pushes our understanding of culture and stigma.

There is no implication that others might find a different pattern in this particular population, although they certainly may and they may find different patterns in different populations. As such, this study was concerned about identifying a pattern and not necessarily concerned about generalizing that pattern to a broader audience, recognizing that lacking a comparative case or that the use of nonrandom sampling diminishes external validity. Certainly, ifl had unlimited time and resources I would have presented 226 a comparative case. However, the fact that the results cannot be generalized to a larger population or across populations does not negate the importance of the findings. It is important to recognize that this study contributes to the expansion of knowledge and theory with respect to the cultural toolkit. My findings suggest that there is an interesting pattern to the way individuals manage stigma and that there is indeed a conscious and deliberate process that they engage in to make decisions regarding information management. I leave it up to further research to see if the pattern fits, or does not fit, in other populations. The strength ofthis study is that it points to new lines of inquiry about culture and this far outweighs any limitation presented here.

Suggestions for Future Research

In general, we can conclude that there is more to know about the production of culture in terms of its supply side. This is, in fact, the emphasis of the production of culture school (Peterson 2000). Individuals use culture to organize their production experience and they use it to construct meaning in order to make sense of that experience.

The individuals that comprise these categories are heavily invested in, and affected by, their participation in the production of culture. One suggestion for further research is to continue to investigate the experiences of the actor in the production of culture perspective across many industries. Hooters is situated within its own unique context and as such the consequences for participating in this industry may be very different than participation in a dissimilar industry. Research is needed in similar industries and across dissimilar industries. Additional research inquiries could investigate what the consequences of production are on actors with respect to common sociological variables 227 of analysis such as gender, race, class, etc. This is because there are different industry systems, that have different foci, and that are comprised of different kinds of individuals with different background and experiences. But, they are not separate: individuals and the systems of production coexist and other studies need to make that linkage.

It is also important to consider how the producer-as-receiver deals with varying audiences and varying reception. Further studies could ask: What role does important sociological variables such as gender, race, class, and sexuality play in the relationship of the producer-as-receiver and his/her relationship to various audiences? To be sure, not every actor who participates in production of an object also becomes a receiver at the face-to-face interaction level. For those who are both, the reception of an object has consequences in their lives. More research can illustrate what that looks like.

Along a similar vein, very few studies have investigated the cultural toolkit. As such, future research needs to examine how toolkits are used among actors across a variety of social milieus and account for how those toolkits may be gendered, racialized, or affected by socio-economic status. More importantly, research needs to consider how actors use culture with aforethought and calculation. Additional studies can determine what tools and how those tools are used systematically and in and across situations.

Further, future research into stigma management can certainly refine my tools to see if this is indeed a finite model or if more tools need to be added to the model. The central focus of this research should be on stigma management as a process looking at linkages among techniques and tools. APPENDIX A

INTERVIEW GUIDE: CURRENTLY EMPLOYED AS HOOTERS GIRL

Thank you for agreeing to participate in this study. My goal is to learn more about how people manage the various meanings that people attach to a particular activity such as that of working at Hooters. These questions are designed to get a sense of your experiences as a Hooters Girl and how others react to you telling them that you work as a Hooters Girl.

Before we start, could you tell me:

• How long have you worked at Hooters?

4 What is your job title at Hooters? Have you held more than one position at Hooters?

4 Prior to working at Hooters, did you have any other job experience? What kind? (restaurant experience?)

Becoming A Hooters Girl

1. Why did you decide to become a Hooter's Girl? What factors affected your decision to apply for/accept a position at Hooters?

Probes: Did you have a friend that worked there? Did you answer an ad? How did you think about the position after accepting the job?

2. Did you have any doubts or second thoughts about becoming a Hooter's Girl?

Probes: Why did you have these doubts? How did you resolve them?

3. How did your family and friend react your decision to apply/work at Hooters? Describe some of the reactions.

4. What was your perception of Hooters/Hooters Girls before you worked there? How has that perception changed now that you have been one?

228 229 5. What is a Hooters Girl? What does it mean to be a Hooters Girl?

Working as a Hooters Girl

6. In what ways did the company train you to be a Hooters Girl?

Probes: Do you feel that the company's training adequately prepared you to be a Hooters Girl? Why or why not? Describe other ways that you learned to become a Hooters Girl?

7. What do you like best about being a Hooters Girl? What do you like least about being a Hooters Girl?

8. Describe what you think is the perfect Hooters Girl.

9. Tell me if you participate in any of the promotions or contests sponsored by the restaurant (golf tournaments, sporting events, calendar, and swimsuit contests)? Why do you participate or not participate?

Probes: When participating in these Hooters sponsored events, do you think that people treat you differently in uniform outside of the restaurant as opposed to in the restaurant? Give some examples.

10. The company openly states that sex appeal is an integral part ofthe Hooters Girl concept. How do you feel about working in such an environment?

Probes: Have you developed any coping strategies, if you need any?

11. Have you ever been sexually harassed by a customer, manager, or other employee? Describe what happened.

Probes: How was it resolved? How did it make you feel? If you worked at another restaurant, did you experience sexual harassment?

12. Describe any ways in which working at Hooters has changed your feelings about yourself. 230 Probes: do you feel more confident or less confident? More or less attractive? Do you feel different about yourself in any way since you started working at Hooters?

13. Are there things you would like to change about your appearance now that you are a Hooters Girl? Describe any ways in which you have changed your appearance in order to become a Hooters Girl or to be a better Hooters Girl.

14. Tell me how you feel about the Hooters Girl uniform.

Probes: Do you like the uniform? Do you think it is comfortable? Is it too revealing or not revealing enough? How do you feel when you are wearing the uniform on the floor? Do you feel sexy or tainted? Do you feel empowered? Tell me why you think there is so much controversy over the uniform.

15. Has there ever been a time when a customer did not want you to wait on them for some reason ( eg. Pregnancy, race, etc)? If so, describe what happened. Are you aware if other Hooters Girls have had that same experience?

16. Would you recommend Hooters to other women as a possibility for employment? Why or Why not?

17. Would you recommend Hooters as a place to eat to others? Are there certain kinds of people that you would not recommend the restaurant to?

18. Is there anything about working at Hooters that has surprised you?

Out of Uniform: Revealing Working as a Hooters Girl

19. Describe social situations where you would feel comfortable telling someone you work at Hooters. Describe social situations where you would not feel comfortable telling someone that you work at Hooters. 231 Probes: potential love interests, potential employers, new friends, formal parties, informal gatherings among friends

20. When you meet someone for the first time, most will eventually ask you what you do for a living. Do you automatically tell someone you work at Hooters? If not, what do you say? (Why don't you automatically tell them)

Probes: Do you ask them questions to get a better feel for where they stand? In what ways do you read their body language to see if you can reveal that you work at Hooters?

21. How do you assess social situations to decide if you will tell someone you work at Hooters? How do you know if a situation is appropriate to disclose this information?

Probes: Do you distinguish between formal and informal settings? How did you come to understand that you could not tell someone that you worked at Hooters?

22. Describe some of the misconceptions that you have encountered about the women who work as a Hooters Girl? Why do you think these misconceptions exist?

After Revelation

23. How do people react when they learn you work at Hooters? Think back to the people you told that you work at Hooters. Describe a situation when someone reacted negatively. What happened? Describe a situation when someone reacted positively. What happened?

Probes: Who? (employee/employer, boyfriend/girlfriend etc) What was the situation? How was it resolved? How do men and women outside ofHooters treat you differently because you work at Hooters? Explain. How did/do your potential romantic partners react to your employment at Hooters? 232 24. How you deal with people who react negatively to you telling them you work at Hooters? Can you give me some examples?

Probes: Do you justify the job? -when do you stop justifying? Do you try to get them to see that Hooters is ok? Have you ever decided to stop talking about the issue with people? What do you do when you decide that the conversation should end?

25. Have you ever seen anyone protesting Hooters? Do you know anything about people who object to Hooters?

Probes: What kinds of protests have you seen ( op eds, picketers, etc)?

26. Has anyone ever compared you to a stripper or a prostitute because you work at Hooters?

Some say that working at Hooters is exploitation of females? How do you feel about this? Some call it sex work. How do you feel about this? How do you feel about being compared to a stripper or a prostitute?

Outcomes related to working as a Hooters Girl

27. In what ways has working at Hooters positively affected you? How has it negatively affected you?

28. A job at Hooters can sometimes be a springboard for moving on to more provocative jobs such as that of stripping, playboy layouts, etc. As a result of working at Hooters, would you say that you were more or less open to these kinds ofjobs?

Probes: Did you participate in any ofthese fields? Did you participate in any field that you consider to be more sexual than Hooters? Tell me how this came about. 29. Tell me how you think working at Hooters will affect you later in life? 233

Probes: Do you believe it will affect you in terms of employment and relationships? Will you put Hooters on your resume or application? Have you applied for other jobs and told them about Hooters? Does disclosure depend on any factors; like the type of job are you applying for? How did you come to know that working at Hooters might have negative consequences later in life?

30. If you had it to do all over again, would you still have worked at Hooters? Why or Why not?

Demographic Questions:

31. How old were you when you started working at Hooters? How old are you currently?

32. What do you consider your race/ethnicity to be?

33. Do you have any children? If yes, how many?

34. Last competed level of education. If degreed, what is the field? Are you in school now? What are you studying?

Conclusion: Is there any additional information you want to share with me that I have not specifically asked you about? Thank you for your time. Your information has been very helpful. lfl should need clarification on anything, may I contact you? Please do not hesitate to contact me with any additional recommendations or thoughts about this. APPENDIXB

INTERVIEW GUIDE: PREVIOUSLY EMPLOYED AS HOOTERS GIRL

Thank you for agreeing to participate in this study. My goal is to learn more about how people manage the various meanings that others attach to a particular activity such as that ofworking at Hooters. These questions are designed to get a sense of your experiences as a Hooters Girl and how others react to you telling them that you worked as a Hooters Girl.

Before we start, could you tell me:

• How long did you work at Hooters? How long has it been since you worked at Hooters?

• What was your job title at Hooters? Did you hold more than one position at Hooters?

• Prior to working at Hooters, did you have any other job experience? What kind? Did you have any restaurant experience prior to Hooters?

• What kinds of job experiences have you had since you left your position at Hooters?

Becoming A Hooters Girl

1. Why did you decide to become a Hooter's Girl? What factors affected your decision to apply for/accept a position at Hooters?

Probes: Did you have a friend that worked there? Did you answer an ad?

2. Did you have any doubts or second thoughts about becoming a Hooter's Girl?

Probes: Why did you have these doubts? How did you resolve them?

3. How did your family and friends react to your decision to apply/work at Hooters? Describe some of the reactions.

234 235 4. What was your perception of Hooters/Hooters Girls before you worked there? How has that perception changed now that you have been one?

5. What is a Hooters Girl? What does it mean to be a Hooters Girl? Has that meaning changed for you now that you are no longer working at Hooters?

Working as a Hooters Girl

6. In what ways did the company train you to be a Hooters Girl?

Probes: Do you feel that the company's training adequately prepared you to be a Hooters Girl? Why or why not? Describe other ways that you learned to become a Hooters Girl?

7. What did you like best about being a Hooters Girl? What did you like least about being a Hooters Girl?

8. Tell me if you participated in any ofthe promotions or contests sponsored by the restaurant (golf tournaments, sporting events, calendar, and swimsuit contests)? Why did you participate or not participate?

Probes: When participating in these Hooters sponsored events, do you think that people treated you differently in uniform outside of the restaurant as opposed to in the restaurant? Give some examples.

9. The company openly states that sex appeal is an integral part of the Hooters Girl concept. How did you feel about working in such an environment?

Probes: Have you developed any coping strategies, if you need any?

10. Were you ever sexually harassed by a customer, manager, or other employee? Describe what happened.

Probes: How was it resolved? How did it make you feel? If you worked at another restaurant, did you experience sexual harassment?

11. Describe any ways in which working at Hooters changed your feelings about yourself. 236 Probes: do you feel more confident or less confident? More or less attractive? Do you feel different about yourself in any way as a result of working at Hooters?

12. What, if any, things did you change about your appearance in order to become a Hooters Girl or to be a better Hooters Girl?

Probes: Why did you make those changes?

13. Tell me how you felt about the Hooters Girl uniform.

Probes: Did you like the uniform? Did you think it is comfortable? Was it too revealing or not revealing enough? How did you feel when you are wearing the uniform on the floor? Did you feel sexy or tainted? Did you feel empowered? Tell me why you think there is so much controversy over the uniform.

14. Was there ever been a time when a customer did not want you to wait on them for some reason ( eg. Pregnancy, race, etc)? If so, describe what happened. Are you aware if other Hooters Girls have had that same experience?

15. Would you recommend Hooters to other women as a possibility for employment? Why or Why not?

16. Would you recommend Hooters as a place to eat to others? Are there certain kinds of people that you would not recommend the restaurant to?

17. Was there anything about working at Hooters that surprised you?

Out of Uniform: Revealing Working as a Hooters Girl

18. Describe social situations where you would feel comfortable telling someone you worked at Hooters. Describe social situations where you would not feel comfortable telling someone that you work at Hooters.

Probes: potential love interests, potential employers, new friends, formal parties, informal gatherings among friends 237 19. When you meet someone for the first time, most will eventually ask you what you do for a living. Do you automatically tell someone you work at Hooters? If not, what do you say? (Why don't you automatically tell them)

Probes: Do you ask them questions to get a better feel for where they stand? In what ways do you read their body language to see if you can reveal that you work at Hooters?

20. How do you assess social situations to decide if you will tell someone you work at Hooters? How do you know if a situation is appropriate to disclose this information?

Probes: Do you distinguish between formal and informal settings? How did you come to understand that you could not tell someone that you worked at Hooters?

21. Describe some of the misconceptions that you have encountered about the women who work as a Hooters Girl? Why do you think these misconceptions exist?

After Revelation

22. How do people react when they learn that you worked at Hooters? Think back to the people you told that you work at Hooters. Describe a situation when someone reacted negatively. What happened? Describe a situation when someone reacted positively. What happened?

Probes: Who? (employee/employer, boyfriend/girlfriend etc) What was the situation? How was it resolved? How do men and women outside of Hooters treat you differently because you work at Hooters? Explain. How did/do your potential romantic partners react to your employment at Hooters?

23. How you deal with people who react negatively to you telling them you worked at Hooters? Can you give me some examples?

Probes: Do you justify the job? -when do you stop justifying? Do you try to get them to see that Hooters is ok? Have you ever decided to stop talking about the issue with people? What do you do when you decide that the conversation should end? 238 24. Have you ever seen anyone protesting Hooters? Do you know anything about people who object to Hooters?

Probes: What kinds of protests have you seen (op eds, picketers, etc)?

25. Has anyone ever compared you to a stripper or a prostitute because you work at Hooters?

Some say that working at Hooters is exploitation of females? How do you feel about this? Some call it sex work. How do you feel about this? How do you feel about being compared to a stripper or a prostitute?

Outcomes related to working as a Hooters Girl

26. In what ways has working at Hooters positively affected you? How has it negatively affected you?

27. A job at Hooters can sometimes be a springboard for moving on to more provocative jobs such as that of stripping, playboy layouts, etc. As a result of working at Hooters, would you say that you were more or less open to these kinds of jobs?

Probes: Did you participate in any of these fields? Did you participate in any field that you consider to be more sexual than Hooters? Tell me how this came about.

28. How has working at Hooters affected you in your life?

Probes: Has it had affect on you in terms of employment and relationships? Do you put Hooters on your resume or application? Have you applied for other jobs and told them about Hooters? Does disclosure depend on any factors; like the type of job are you applying for? How did you come to know that working at Hooters might have negative consequences later in life?

29. If you had it to do all over again, would you still have worked at Hooters? Why or Why not? 239 Demographic Questions

4 How old were you when you started working at Hooters? How old are you currently?

• What do you consider your race/ethnicity to be?

"' Do you have any children? If yes, how many?

• Last competed level of education. If de greed, what is the field? Are you in school now? What are you studying?

4 What do you currently do for a living?

• Why did you leave Hooters?

Conclusion: Is there any additional information you want to share with me that I have not specifically asked you about? Thank you for your time. Your information has been very helpful. If I should need clarification on anything, may I contact you? Please do not hesitate to contact me with any additional recommendations or thoughts about this. APPENDIXC

INFORMED CONSENT FORM: THE CONUNDRUM OF CONNOTATIONS: EXCAVATING A CULTURAL TOOLKIT OF STIGMA STRATEGIES

(1) The researcher, Michelle Newton-Francis, is a graduate student working on her PhD at American University. This research has been approved through the Institutional Review Board process at American University.

(2) The purpose of this study is to conduct research about the constraints and opportunities related to working as a Hooters Girl. The aim of this study is to ascertain how different people interpret the position of the Hooters Girl and how the women who have worked as a Hooters Girl devise social strategies to negotiate these different interpretations.

(3) This interview will be recorded. The contents of this interview may be used in future academic publications but real names of individuals will not be used, nor will any identifying information (such as physical descriptions) of respondents be included in the publication.

(4) The only risk of participation in this study is the inadvertent release of sensitive information. However, since no overtly sensitive information is being sought, this risk is minimal. Moreover, the confidentiality of your information will be maintained through removing identifying information from your response sheet and keeping files in a locked cabinet to which only the researcher has access.

(5) Benefits: The study may yield valuable information about meaning and women's work. It may also reveal information about how individuals use culture to negotiate meaning. I will also send you a project summary or the full paper if you request it.

( 6) Your participation is completely voluntary and you may choose not to participate or to withdraw from the study at any time without any penalty.

(7) You may contact the researcher at (540) 287-8783 or through email at: [email protected] You may also contact my academic advisor, Dr. Gloria Young at (202) 885-2254 or gyoung@i>american.edu

Interviewee: Researcher:

Print Name

Sign Name Sign Name Date: ------Date: ______

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