In terms of licence/planning applications, you need to keep an eye out because, if you miss the deadline for objections (as happened in Bristol) then it's likely that it will go through.
We didn't know about it in Bristol because there was no reference to it in the application. That's what they're doing - sneaking it through to avoid bad publicity.
You need to get your objections in before the deadline as only then will you be allowed to speak at the licence or planning committee hearing. Here in Bristol, around 20 people turned up for the licence committee hearing, even though they couldn't object and funnily enough, the meeting was delayed by one hour, then by two, until most of those there had to leave. Nothing gets in the way of a councillor and his sandwiches, you know!
It is a shame that women want to work there and visit it too. I have had so many women telling me that it's empowering and that it's ironic. I just see them as having bought into the rhetoric and I don't fall for it at all. I wonder how empowered they'll be when they are asked to leave because they are too old or too big to fit into the "petite" sized uniforms.
Apparently they don't have height or weight requirements, but they do have 'uniform requirements'.
Hooters waitress sues for being told to lose weight
As for strip clubs, well, I guess that's a whole other debate. I was ambivalent about them too until my ex-boyfriend went to one on my brother's stag night. 6 men (including my 2 brothers and my boyfriend) sat in a small room around a podium whilst a naked, shaved 19 year old girl danced naked for them for about 20 minutes. And everyone, including my mum, told me it was just a laugh.
When I expressed my upset to my boyfriend, he told me that "I was just jealous because other women have better bodies than me". I was angry but thought that he wouldn't be paying other women to take their clothes off if I was "good enough". I was 32, a size 8, and 5'7" but started looking into cosmetic surgery and lost half a stone, and took up pole dancing lessons. After about 3 or 4 months, when I realised that he was doing absolutely nothing to keep himself looking good for me, I came to my senses. It affected me a lot though and I've been against them ever since.
I've got a good job, I'm independent, and I fell for all that stuff. It affected me a lot and I am just grateful that it's not something that was so mainstream when I was a teenager otherwise I think I would have huge self-esteem issues now. In the end, I kicked the boyfriend out and I wouldn't go out with anyone who frequented strip clubs. The idea of those men all sat round a girl nearly half their age makes me feel physically sick. Their argument is that she chose to be there but I know that, if my brothers had walked in and seen me on a podium, they would have dragged me out of there straightaway.
I find it worrying that so many men that I know, professionals in the public sector, think it's perfectly ok to visits lap dancing clubs without their wives knowing. And that's even become passe. In the last place I worked, trips to the red light district in Amsterdam were the thing to do now because "it didn't mean anything", "she chooses to do it", and "you've got to try it sometime" etc etc.
I find places like Hooters and lap dancing clubs all on a spectrum. Men and women being given the impression that it's ok to objectify women and, if you're a woman, that it's ok to be objectified. I'm just glad that I'm not a teenage girl now and that my formative years where when grunge was in!
Rant over....