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New restaurant in Tulsa capitalizes on sex, not food
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A new restaurant opened in south Tulsa in April called Twin Peaks. It's a regional chain that already has stores in Dallas, Austin, and Albuquerque, and it's billed as the main competition of Hooters. The waitresses wear uniforms of khaki mini-shorts and lumberjack flannel, red and black checked bikini tops. The uniforms reveal even more skin, mostly mid-drift and cleavage, than the famous orange and white Hooters uniforms. This just might be the reasoning behind their ad slogan “Twice as much fun as other restaurants.”
But, before you visit this eatery, consider this: the Urban Tulsa Weekly has a review of a typical dining experience at the Tulsa Twin Peaks on page 27 of this week’s issue, and the food is only given 2 out of 5 stars. Reminiscent of most Hooters reviews, the food is not very good and is over-priced.
Clearly, the food is not the draw. And a restaurant that promotes the sexuality of its female employees over the quality of its food is not a new idea. Of course, that’s the point. It’s a lucrative business formula, one that’s proven successful since 1983 when the Hooters restaurant began with just one location in Clearwater, Florida.
Still, restaurants like this are also not without their business troubles. The Hooters chain has seen its share of sexual harassment complaints and lawsuits over the years. In 2000, 24-year-old former Hooters waitress Sara Steinhoff won $275,000 in a sex-harassment suit against the restaurant. And in 2004, a former waitress at a Hooters in Chicago accused male co-workers of using peepholes to watch her undress in a basement break room that shares a common wall with a dressing area. Reporter Emelie Doolittle wrote, in a 2007 article for New University, about several individual cases of harassment like the one a particular Hooter Girl named Kelly experienced:
When she walked up to a family that was sitting on one of the center tables of the restaurant to take drink orders, a man at the table, with long wavy brown hair and sunburned skin, said, 'Do you want to see my ID?' Then he undid his pants button and pretended to unzip his fly, 'I'll show you my ID.' Although Kelly did not laugh, the man did. Instead, she ignored him and focused on getting the other customers' orders.
Hooters hasn’t just been on the defending side of legal cases. In 2003 Hooters sued Ker’s Winghouse, a Florida restaurant chain, alleging that the “Winghouse Girls” outfits were confusingly similar to those of the “Hooters Girls.” However, a federal trial court judge in Orlando ruled against Hooters, stating that the Winghouse Girls outfits weren’t a “knockoff” because the Winghouse Girls wear black tank tops and black running shorts while the Hooters Girls sport white shirt and orange shorts.
This case was particularly interesting to trademark lawyers and feminists. Perhaps the most clear and thorough analysis of the 2003 case came from Ann Bartow, who blogs at feministlawprofs.com:
Through this litigation, Hooters was trying to obtain a monopoly on the ability to have women in tight, revealing tops and short running shorts serve food in a restaurant, apparently believing that this would give the chain a competitive advantage. Hooters was able to establish the distinctiveness of the particular uniform it has its wait staff wear, but not that the uniform was primarily nonfunctional. The court noted that the uniform has an obvious function: In conjunction with the person wearing it, the uniform provides “vicarious sexual recreation, to titillate, entice, and arouse male customers’ fantasies,” (see dist. ct. decision at page 4). This is not something that the law allows Hooters, or any entity, to monopolize through application of the Lanham Act.
The ruling is also a small victory for women, as a victory for Hooters might have meant that competing restaurant chains would have to put their wait staff in bikinis or cellophane wrap or even more awful costumes to avoid “infringing” upon tank tops and running shorts.
It’s as if Bartow was predicting the future because competing restaurant chains, namely Twin Peaks, are now putting their wait staff in skimpier, racier, sexier (?) uniforms. Hooters and Twin Peaks are both fully aware that they sell sex. The courts, though heterosexist, are fully aware that these restaurants sell sex "to arouse male customers' fantasies." And this chain is already receiving complaints of sexual harassment from former employees; see the website twinpeakssucks.com which is devoted entirely to proclaiming the exploitation of the business and the perversion of one manager identified only by "Scott."
So, why might a young woman want to work at a place like this and subject herself to gawking, inevitably lame sexual innuendos, and possible harassment? Well, possibly because it’s easy. The Twin Peaks restaurant in Tulsa entices potential applicants with the following blurb (all emphasis, capitalization, grammar, and punctuation errors original):
We are an All female wait staff. NO SIDEWORK, cute sexy uniforms, great money, cool management, fun games and prizes, and sooooooo much more! We wear a really cute Lumberjack uniform, but every holiday we switch it up a bit. (Santa's helpers, Valentine QT's, Sexy Halloween costumes, Military week, etc, and many more)There is NO experience required.
Yet it's still difficult for me to imagine why an intelligent, healthy, beautiful young woman would want to work as an underpaid waitress at a place like Twin Peaks. As my brilliant friend Tara points out, if you're gonna be a sex-worker, just know that you could be making a lot more money as a prostitute or a stripper.
To read the rest of Bartow’s analysis of the 2003 case Hooters v. Winghouse of Florida, go here.
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