Marks and Spencer support new 'Hooters' in Bristol

[JessinAvalon]

Dear all
(I've posted this under the feminism list but it's been suggested that I post it here as well.)

I live in Bristol and, last week, 'Hooters' was granted a licence to open in the city centre. The site is virtually opposite 3 apartment blocks, the lower floors of which are social housing and children are living in them.

What's most disappointing is that Marks and Spencer are leasing the site to 'Hooters'. They have been e-mailed by many concerned people to ask if they will reconsider leasing the building but they have just replied saying it is a "commercial decision" (as if that makes it ok!). In Sheffield, a 'Hooters' didn't even make it to application stage because the developer (Ask Pizza) realised that it would be better not to be associated with a company like 'Hooters'.

Marks and Spencer don't seem that concerned, however. Although they have signed up to the "Let Girls Be Girls" Mumsnet campaign they are not concerned about a company which sells merchandise including babygros which say "Future Hooters Girl" and "Does my butt look big in this?"

I have written to Marks and Spencer telling them that I won't be shopping in their stores again. If you feel strongly about this, please e-mail:

[email protected].

'Hooters' tries to sell itself as a family friendly restaurant but it is anything but. The Hooters in Nottingham attracts mainly stag parties and football fans. Hooters Girls take part in bikini contests and iced wet t-shirt competitions (the t-shirts are put in the freezers before the girls wear them). 'Hooters' has links to Playboy magazine....I could go on.....

I think Marks and Spencer should be shamed for facilitating this company's expansion into Bristol. They are selling women and girls down the river by leasing to this company and all just to make a "quick buck". As one former customer said to them, being a hitman is a "commercial decision" but it doesn't make it right!

Thanks everyone.

We have a petition here which we set up and a blog here which is recording articles etc and news on the Bristol Hooters.

This is the only Hooters in England so far. Check out the gallery for the latest bikini contest shots.

Hooters Nottingham

A little cartoon inspired by a discussion of challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces on the NPR show "Here and Now" in which it is noted Hooters is a favorite choice for office parties among male coworkers, despite female coworker objections.

Hooters cartoon

They'd better not try having my work Christmas party there.

I wonder if my male colleagues would go here instead with me!

We must remember though ladies, that only in Bristol could Disney Store be next door to Anne Summers...

Hi there Sethstarkaddersmum

The list came from the No to Hooters in the UK Facebook group

Not me. It's totally mysogynistic and awful, it's encouraging letching and the objectification of women.
The worst thing is that the girls who work there are often desperate for cash and given the current unemployment rates far more women will e going for them and having to endure sexual harrassment and degradation in order to pay their bills.

I think m and s should be removed from the 'let girls be girls campaign.

'Let girls be girls until they're 16 and vulnerable and degrade them in public for a laugh' might be more appropriate for them.

thanks Jess.

Just looked on that Hooter Nottingham link... love this from the employment page:

"If you're looking to have fun and make money while you work, this is the place to be!"

Make money while I work? Wow, what a unique opportunity! I will stop scanning the pavements for loose change on my lunch break, and get myself to Hooters!

oh and "Please apply in person if you are interested in working in the following positions:.." ... so basically they are just going to look you up and down and decide whether your breats are buoyant enough... may as well get used to it I suppose, if you're going to work there.

Have signed petition and emailed, hope this works

@TessoftheBurbs - I hadn't spotted that! That's funny. You could fill in an online application before they open, but you're right - after they open they're only interested in people (i.e. women) applying in persons. You may also have to have a medical examination! Err...what does that involve? A tape measure!

@Mniemmniem - I agree. I think M&S are selling out here.

@SarahDerbyshire - really? I know where the Anne Summers is but hadn't seen the Disney store. Well done Bristol City Council!

I suspect it is a hint that the customers will stick fivers down your cleavage tip generously.
(Which actually they won't, because this is the UK.)

Medical examination to be a waitress,this is a new one on me? What is the doctor called? Dr Perv?

JessinAvalon

I'm not sure if it's not moved since they've done up the city centre shopping area - but there used to be Disney Store on the corner and Anne Summers just before it - absolutely crazy. Not to mention the other Anne Summers shop on the next street....

With M&S though, is it not just the case that they've got a million year lease on the building and Bristol have re-vamped moved all the good shops the city centre and moved into a new super deluxe shopping centre and no-one can afford/wants to rent the old building and s0 they're now breathing a sigh of relief for not having to keep spending money on rent for a property in a run down and rather shit part of town...?

It must be costing a fortune to own the lease on somewhere that's so big and yet have absolutely no income from it.

@SarahDerbyshire - yes, I'm sure that's it, but still, it's not like M&S are a failing company and I'm disappointed that they don't have higher standards. If a middling pizza company restaurant can decide it's not in their interest, I would hope that M&S would too.

I'm sure that something else would have come along eventually. It could be really good around there. There's a Costa, a Pizza Express, an art gallery directly opposite, a classy bar next door. And now there'll be a Hooters slap bang in the middle.

It's really not that bad, at least in the states its not. took DH there last trip home and he was disappointed at how tame it was. girls wear short shorts but with thick tights underneath. yes the t-shirts are tight and low cut but not more so than what I would wear.
I dont see it as exploitation since if you work there you know what your getting into. having said that, I can't see it working in the UK. guys get much drunker here and don't tip so no incentive to work there.

I'm wondering about submitting an application for "Junkers", a themed bar where well-endowed young Adonises wear skin tight boxers with a cartoon, er, rocket on them. It would be a family friendly restuarant although we would laughingly refer to ourselves as the Hard Cock Cafe, and we would do a calendar of men posing in next to nothing, and have regular "most bulging package competitions. We could do a line of baby clothes including a babygro for boys bearing the legend "does size matter?".

Anyone in?

Ok. Have only read the first page of this thread. I am American and have obviously grown up around Hooters. I happen to love Hooters, it is by and large my most favourite place to eat.

I do not think it is remotely disgusting or insulting, and as a matter of fact, I even had my bachelorette party dinner there. A few of my friends in college worked there and were treated very well.

I went there as a child as well with my parents and it did not strike me 'disgusting' in any way, shape or form. I personally would not choose to work there, but I would also not dismiss it based on what 1) other people on an internet forum who have probably never even been there may say, and 2) the fact that the girls uniforms are a bit...revealing. Before you formulate an opinion, go there, eat, and see what you think!

Another American here, and I agree with the handful of others that Hooters is pretty tame. None of the women in any Hooters I've ever been to talked of being treated badly, nor did they have to conform to any kind of physical 'standard' to work there.

I also have a problem with women being objectified, but there are far worse instances of this than Hooters.

It's all pretty tame from what I heard.

Ex went to one in Washington DC few years ago and said yeah the t shirts are tiny and shorts are short but they wear tights underneath (sexy- not) and it isn't as if they start stripping at the table. They just get big fat tips. We don't tip big over here and British blokes are more lairy so dont see the attraction of working in a Hooters over here...

Mind you I don't have an issue with strip clubs or porn either so can't get worked up about Hooters.

I'm sure it is pretty tame compared with a lapdancing club or whatever, but the particularly damaging thing is that it is a complete mainstreaming of the idea that you can pay money to entitle yourself to letch at women. In that way it is like Nuts, etc., on the shelves at Tesco. It says that we should all of us feel it entirely normal for our children to grow up thinking that women can be sold as products to titilate men. This completely astonishes me.

And the marketing of the place as a family restaurant (even if the tits aren't out until post-watershed) seems like a schooling of children in Baby's First Sexwork. Just like MacDonalds used to market very heavily to children to get them early as customers for junk food.

(Iknow that tits aren't out literlly btw. That was just a shorthand.)

Ugh, I just don't visit Hooters. There's something a bit pathetic and desperate about it.

The Hooters episode of "Undercover Boss" (The US version of "Back to the Floor") was fascinating. Seems the CEO inherited Hooters from his father and really didn't particularly want it or enjoy it. I'm really surprised and a little saddened that it's opened in the UK - had hoped it was dying out.

Actually, the best thing to be said for my local MP is that she got the law tightened concerning the granting of permission for 'sex entertainment' venues. I'm going to write to her about Hooters to see if I can find out whether it would fall within the terms of those regulations.

Hooters sounds vile. I too will sign your petition and email the M&S boss. I would hate my sons to grow up thinking that it is ok to treat women like this.

banana87 - your post just proves the point about why these things are so insidious: they target families in order to convince children that this kind of thing is normal before their ideas about healthy relationships between men and women have been fully formed. You say you went there with your parents and didn't think it was disgusting - of course you didn't see anything disgusting, you were a child!

Wow I am surprised by my own reaction to this, being someone who is rather morally lazy and usually responds with a 'meh' to most things MNetters get het up about but.

But I don't approve of this at all!!
I understand what the Americans are saying on here about Hooters being 'tame' and I see their point.

But any 'family' restaurant built on the idea of being served by beautiful girls who are hired on that basis, skimpy outfits or not, feels very uncomfortable to me.