Please join boycott Marks and Spencer facebook group

[JessinAvalon]

Dear all
A boycott Marks and Spencer facebook group has been set up to protest against their decision to sub-lease a building to Hooters in Bristol.

Boycott Marks and Spencer group

Please join it and the spread the word.

The big orange Hooters sign has gone up in Bristol.

We are about to be subjected to things like this...

Hooters girls pimping to the max

Hooters sponsors youth football tournament in Nottingham

Family friendly? I think not!

This HASNT got anything to do with Let Girls Be Girls...

It's sexism dressed up as irony on the high street! It markets itself as family friendly and does everything it can to get children in. No, it's not a brothel or a lap dancing club but its presence on the high street and its positioning in the market is perhaps even worse - at least lap dancing clubs & "massage parlours" are classed as adult venues. Hooters is trying to position itself in the market as family and children friendly (except after 9pm when it's over 18s only).

It's a restaurant which has a USP of its employees' breasts. It has iced wet t-shirt competitions and bikini competitions and links to Playboy magazine. It attracts stag parties and football fans. Hardly family friendly nor a bit of harmless fun.

Accio - you might find the following clip funny - the Aussies have already thought of it.

Ann Summers isn't family friendly either but thats in the high street.

Ann Summers shops are over 18s only and they are classed as sex shops.

Ann Summers don't offer free meals and colouring in sets to children either!

Yes, I know. However, they do have huge window displays of "impractical" lingerie which reinforces just the same things you are complaining about with Hooters.

why is this In AIBU
I think you are but you never asked.

Quite frankly, you'd have to be completely brainless to be fooled into thinking Hooters is a family restaurant.
The people who would take their children there are the same people who put their children in inappropriately sloganed T Shirts.

from the POV of M&S it is a business deal. They aren't letting it to a sex industry business or drugs den.

Jess if those activities take place after 9pm during the 18s only time I really cant bring myself to object. It is up to parents to decide what they wish to expose their children to during the day, and if hooters merely serves burgers in a tight top...well it isnt as bad as some of the crap on telly or in magazines. I don't see why people need to be dictated to with regards to what is acceptable to take their kids to...it is up to the individual. That is the beauty of freedom of choice.

Oh, and i have been in a Hooters. In Fort Lauderdale IIRC. It all seemed rather nothingy TBH. Ordinary girls with long legs and white teeth serving bog standard American fast food whilst wearing hotpants.

Oh who cares? Really?

There are far, far worse things in life to get worked up about.

Save your energy for those.

It was suggested that I post it here by another member to draw attention to it, so no, I didn't ask if it was reasonable.

You obviously do not have to join the Facebook group if you do not want to! Freedom of choice and all that.

It does amaze me that people aren't more angry about things like this. Women have fought so hard to have our status raised in the home and the workplace and a restaurant which reduces women to nothing more than a pair of breasts isn't going to help the cause. Freedom of choice or not, as I said earlier, I believe that the rights of a few do not take precedence over the rights of 50% of the population to be seen as something more than a set of body parts.

I honestly believe that if it was the other way around, i.e. it was men in this position, applications like this wouldn't see the light of day. At a council meeting at which I spoke a few weeks ago, a male objector stood up and talked about a new restaurant he was opening where only men whose balls were big enough could get a job. He was asked to keep it decent by the mayor yet we were referring to 'Hooters' and 'breasts' in the context of women being employed for the size of their breasts all the way through our speeches and no one found that offensive or derogatory.

However, I will retreat from this thread as I can see that this is an unpopular topic here!

i had never heard of "hooters" until it was mentioned on here, so well done you have given them a lot of free advertising

And just to answer the point about there being far worse things to get worked about, yes there are and we are spending our time on campaigning against them as well.

I think everyone has become desensitised to sexual images of women and that's why it's dismissed as being harmless and a bit of fun.

Right - off! You obviously don't need to join the FB group if you disagree!

I've joined your FB group and am also spreading the message around my friends. I don't want my DCs growing up thinking that the only thing a woman should be valued on is her bra size and her sexual appeal to men.

Yes, from M&S's point of view it is a business deal. But that doesn't let them off the hook. M&S could choose to do business with a whole load of unsavoury organisations but they don't because they like to promote an image that they do business in an ethical manner. Running an ethical business is like being pregnant - you are or you aren't, there are no half measures.

I'm not sure there are 'more important things' to get worked up over.

Aside from the drooling over women's breasts aspect of it all there's the fact that their hiring practices are blatently discriminatory (gender, age, sexual identity/transgender) - and allowing that for some jobs we weaken the entire case for equal right legislation right up the board. You can't have one rule for the professional well paid jobs and another for waiting staff. That isn't how laws work and it certainly doesn't help protect the most vuner5able members of society.

Either the 'Hooter's Girls' are waiting on staff in which case the job should be open to anyone regardless of gender, age, appearance, etc or they're entertainers which means that the whole idea of it just being a family friendly restaurant is complete rubbish.

Very well said, Snorbs. "Running an ethical business is like being pregnant - you are or you aren't, there are no half measures."

In case anyone is interested in signing up to the Boycott M&S group on Facebook and needs a reminder of the link, here it is:

www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=156976027654098&ref=ts

If M&S drop the LGBG campaign it would serve MN right TBH.

Last time I looked MN was a parenting site, not a tool for feminist activism.

Yes, MN is a parenting site, and as a parent, I will not be going to M&S anymore. LGBG is a campaign to stop the premature sexualisation of our daughters. Yet M&S has just done business with Hooters, which endorses the sexualisation of young girls. It's not feminism, it's just plain facts that M&S is a hypocritical company.

Part of me gets the feeling that most of the women SO worked up about this thread are just worked up over the fact that any man would pull his eyes out of his head if he saw any of THEM in orange hot pants and a vest top...:o

Should M&S stop selling sexy, skimpy, push up lingerie then? because that's just buying into the fact that women are sexual objects to be leered at. As for padded bras, designed to make a woman's breasts look larger...

ooh Nerdy, that is very original you know.

"You're just upset because you're too ugly/fat/past it" - a true classic. Can you also mention:

• being jealous
• that men are genetically programmed to go to hooters
• hairy legs or armpits
• some kind of nazi comparison
• Harriet Harperson.

Then I can get a full house.

should they put them in the kids section SoupDragon?

What has that got to do with anything?

Of course M&S shouldn't stop selling skimpy lingerie or push-up bras to ADULTS, SoupDragon. You're just being argumentative on purpose.