It is the end of an era.
On March 31, Hooters declared bankruptcy, not long after closing dozens of “low performance stores.”
Although the restaurant chain will not close its doors forever, it has announced plans to “receive again”, eliminating its infamous “Bikini Nights” and trying to return to its “family roots.”
Hooters was founded in 1983 in Clearwater, Florida, and quickly became known for his attractiveness and scarcely dressed as a waitress, the overwhelming majority of whom was a woman.
His success generated a genre of complete restaurant known as “Barraurants”, and his proposed reference leaves the future of the famous Hooters girls is not clear.
But how much do we really know about the internal lives behind those broad breasts?
Many women were attracted to the promise of greater profits and flexible schedules, and some claimed to have won hundreds or even thousands of dollars per shift.
But the impulse to its bank accounts could sometimes have a fairly high psychological price.
“I was originally interested in studying servers in Breasturants because I could feel an interesting dynamic in the game,” Dawn Szymanski, a professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee, wrote in the conversation.
“On the one hand, you can feel good to be congratulated for your appearance. On the other hand, I also asked me if constantly criticized I could eventually use these servers.”
Through a series of studies, Szymanski and his team revealed a somewhat depressing reality behind the slogan “deliciously horta, but without refine” of the brand.
In the first place, they discovered that the managers of these restaurants were often very controlling when it was the appearance of their servers, who were given brochures with beauty instructions to hair and nails and practically prohibited weight gaining or changing their appearance in any way.
In addition to that, they had to be lovely and pleasant at all times.
“They were told to make male clients feel special, to be their ‘personal cheerleaders’, as expressed by an interviewee and never challenges them,” Szymanski wrote.
Naturally, this presented a problem, especially when customers were rude and inappropriate, as according to reports often.
“It is probably not a surprise that Hooters servers often find lascivious comments, sexual advances and other forms of sexual harassment of customers,” Szymanski wrote.
“But because their managers often tolerate this behavior of customers, created the additional burden of what psychologists call” double link “, situations in which contradictory messages make it impossible to answer correctly.”
The servers could not expect to be defended by their colleagues either, since the environment lent a competitive behavior, as well as “cotylogen, insults and scapegoat,” according to Szymanski.
As expected, his research found that this combination of factors can be a bust for mental health.
“The servers working in sexually objective restaurant environments, such as Hooters and Twin Peaks, reported more symptoms of depression, anxiety and disorderly feeding than those who work in other restaurants,” Szymanski wrote. “In addition, they wanted to be thinner, they were more likely to monitor their weight and appearance, and they were more dissatisfied with their bodies.”
But it’s not always bad.
In 2022, the Madison Novo server, who was crowned Miss Hooters that year, said she was first inspired to work in the chain when some Hooters girls visited her at the hospital when she had a rare renal insufficiency when she was a teenager.
He also retreated against common erroneous concepts about the brand and its servers.
“I know many girls who study and think about their future,” Novo told Fox News. “They tend to become lawyers and doctors. Some of them are also wives and mothers. There are much more in the Tooteers than only orange shorts and sleeveless shirt.”
