Marks and Spencer support new Hooters in Bristol, #2

[sethstarkaddersmum]

I went to post on the first thread but it was full so here is a new one.

I'm reposting Jessinavalon's OP from 10th September since it explains what is going on, for anyone who is new to the issue:

'Dear all
This is my first post on here so I hope I am doing this right!

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".

Thanks everyone.'

THat's it Jess. The Boss is wealthier than the Manager, so that makes what he does ok??? The manager was just doing an intensive, stupid version of what the boss does with his business i.e treat women as objects not worthy of basic respect.
IT was ironic that the boss could behave all haughty when it was his business that put the idea in the managers head in the first place

this line made me laugh, v typical Liz Jones: 'Not a green vegetable in sight, unless you count a deep fried chilli, coated in batter.'

Bits that stood out for me:
'Julian Mills, the manager in Nottingham, tries to reassure me. 'We use the same criteria as if you were going for the job of a Calvin Klein model,' he says, incongruously. 'You have to look the part, but it is about personality and charisma, too.' '

right, so you ADMIT you are appointing staff according to other criteria than waitressing ability.... and yet this is supposedly just a restaurant when it comes to licensing.... these guys are sooooo having it both ways

and finally:
'I stand outside Hooters in a puddle to have my picture taken. A group of young men leave the bar. 'Wooo hoooo,' they yell at me. 'We'd say "show us your tits" but you haven't got any!' '

=why I generally ignore disingenuous soi-disant contrarians asking for research to show it will lead to an increase in sexual harassment. Any woman can go for herself and experience it in 5 mins.

Good for Liz Jones. I do think it's interesting when the older generation of women who were active feminists in their youth find the long-suppressed feminist bit of their psyche bubbling to the surface again.

Julian Mills was on radio 5 a couple of weeks ago and he was completely denying that it was anything to do with the way the girls look.

It's all about the owls apparently!

I'd be interested to know what will happen to the pregnant waitress when her bump does start to show. Despite what the company will claim, I doubt very much that they would want a pregnant waitress on display. It doesn't exactly fit with the image, does it!

She'll probably be offered a job out the back.

And yes, SSAM - I agree with you about the harrassment side of it. Many friends of mine have had guys shout "show us your tits and save us a fiver" or something along those lines when walking near lap dancing clubs (one whilst with her young niece). A London MP I heard speak a couple of years ago said she had it shouted at her whilst she was on the way to her mosque to pray and she was modestly dressed and wearing a headscarf.

These things don't get reported because women just put up with it.

I had a brief reply from the EHRC to say that they were 'dealing with the issue' of the hooters ad (the one in Nottingham specifically advertises for 'Hooters girls' and I queried whether this was discriminatory) and would contact me in due course. Sounds like a holding reply, but at least they didn't dismiss it.

Jess - these things don't get reported because when they are reported they are not taken seriously. Not because women are just blindly willing to accept harrassment.

Fair point, Elephants. I guess I'm talking from my own experience. I just accepted it (and so did my mum when I told her what had happened) as being something that happened to women.

Thanks for the update, Treats. Will be interested to see what they come back with.

Hi all
The decision document for the Hooters licence has finally been published. The last couple of pages are the most interesting.

JIA

Decision document for Hooters licence

Letter about Hooters in the Evening Post today

Good to see it's still on the agenda and getting more positive coverage

Aw its nice to see that Dave is still obsessed with something that he claims he doesn't have a personal interest in looking out for us with his letter to the paper.

Gah, it's so horrible reading "the committee thought this" "the committee thought that" and reached the conclusion that Hooters should be granted a licence.
When NOT ONCE was the issue of the way it objectifies women brought up. It really is a man's world, isn't it

"However, it was considered that the application was sufficiently different to that which was already on offer in the area in that it was a predominantly food-led American themed restaurant showing sporting
events. This was not going to be a late night high volume vertical drinking
establishment, which appeared to be the main contributors to crime and disorder in the area. It was envisaged that the premises would be more likely to attract customers wanting a table meal and to watch sporting
events, rather than those wanting to binge drink. The premises would provide competition to premises that catered more for high volume vertical drinking."

I should perhaps have used a different name for my comment to this is Bristol. Should have known that you guys would find it and would out me as a PR for Hooters. Thing is I'm just not that creative - I can't keep thinking up new screen names, or arguments even.

This is by the by of course, as it would seem that its you guys who need to be more creative.

Don't forget that raising awareness works both ways. Just look at some of the comments on the Liz Jones piece. On second thoughts don't - the comments section of mailonline is a pretty awful place. Don't say I didn't warn you.

The new series of undercover boss US really couldn't have been timed better for the opening if bristol Hooters dontcha think?

Sakura, you are aware that preventing the 'objectification of women' is not a licensing objective? If you want to change that, I suggest you lobby the home secretary. Of course, Theresa May is no Jacqui Smith, but you never know.

Hi Sakura
I agree. And the councillor whose name is at the bottom of the decision sheet, the chair of the licensing committee, sits on the North Bristol Domestic Abuse Forum!

JIA

Hi Jess - been lurking whilst on holiday.

I see we have a "visitor" to our thread!

I never received a response from M&S re my policy question!

Just an idea but reading the committee minutes they heavily reference the family american sports blah blah - sounds like they weren't aware of the brand/values/waitress atire/inappropriate baby clothes etc etc.

There would be nothing to stop us putting together a letter explaining our point of view about Hooters and sending it to the licencing committees/departments of all the towns on the hit lists. This at least means that at any point they get an application they all realise exactly what it could mean.

Despite there being defined criteria for licencing, individual committee members who oppose the idea of Hooters would be more likely to "find" a criteria which meant that their town did not end up with a Hooters!

To me it is this referencing of FAMILY restaurant which I find the most offensive.

If they were honest - they would say - yeah we are pretty much targeting all male groups - then the licence is much more likely to be turned down.

Oh, I'm sorry is this your thread?

If you want a private discussion, then I suggest you use email, or at least your own blog where you can moderate the comments to suit your own agenda(as seems to be the case with 99% of feminist blogs)

AFAIK, this is a public forum with a broadly free comment policy. You shouldn't be surprised when someone expresses a view that isn't in-line with yours. If anything, this thread is remarkably free of dissenting views, given that comments are not strictly moderated.

I haven't had time to check out what's going on with this campaign for a while, but just caught up. Well done all of you with keeping it active and on the collective mnet radar. I grew up in the West Country and often visit Bristol city centre with my DC; a Hooters there will be such a shame. I also keep seeing links about this on FB and twitter from old school friends etc.., so its still going strong.

I live near Oxford and we're having a lot of problems with harassment from men coming out of the lapdancing place that opened recently. I was walking to the taxi rank after taking dd1 (age 8) to the theatre, and obscene remarks were shouted at both of us by men just exiting there. (I went straight to nearby police station to report it, and it was "logged on the system" )

I sold my M&S shares last week (RL caught up with me and it took me a few weeks to get round to it) off the back of this campaign (as well as boycotting them).

Whoop de do, now thats what I call 'taking a stand' - selling ones shares. You don't want to profit from M&S 'objectifying women' but its alright for someone else to. Maybe you took a hit, but, if not, I hope you donated the profit to a good cause.

Yeah, of course Facebook and Twitter are alive with anti hooters sentiment. Well, actually, I did a quick check and it seems that pro hooters groups are bigger than anti's by about 10-1. Hard to find any anti-hooters sentiment on Twitter. Is there a trending #tag I don't know about?

"our" as in the feminists thread in the feminist section of MN

yep - you've every right to be here

no - I don't want a private discussion or advice on how to go about them

I find your posts on these threads to be hilarious - most of the time you are not even attempting to explain why you disagree with the majority view on this thread - you are just darting in and out of here and posts on newspaper articles etc.

I believe that you want the focus of this thread to be you and all about getting everyone here to engage with your posts.

However your very presence on this thread spurs me on to take action on this issue - so cheers for that.

And by that I mean the very fact that you can be bothered are clearly being paid . (as a non regular MNer) to post these types of posts says a lot about why this campaign is necessary.

David has obviously not heard of ethical investing policies - eg Coop etc.

If someone divests of shares in a company to whom they no longer wish to be associated with then (failing a company buyback situation) another person purchases those shares - so what.

'so what' is exactly my point tabouleh.

Did you take a profit btw? I assume a refusal to answerer means that you can afford to shop at Waitrose either way.

I?m not so sure that you understand the difference between a public and private discussion. You seem to want the best of both worlds ? public so that anyone can read it, private in the sense that only those with particular views can take part in it.

Glad you find me to be so amusing; I don?t take myself as seriously as you, no doubt, take yourself. It?s quite gratifying to know that I?ve been of service in some small way.

You must not have got the ?memo about feeding the troll?. I expect you PM box will soon be full of messages asking you not to ?engage? with me at all. Tis to be expected in my line of work, I suppose. Whoops! ignore that last sentence ? I would take everything I say with a handful of salt, if I were you.

Incidentally, where is the ?etc? that you refer to? I?ve only ever posted as DavidStHubbins here and on thisisbristol. I do post elsewhere under different screen names (and on completely unrelated topics), who doesn?t, but I really don?t have any interest in creating numerous AEs and sock-puppets just to confuse.

I know it may be too late to sabotage the opening of Bristol Hooters, but you might still have chance to do something on the other side of the Severn.

Cardiff Hooters is due to open on 15 November and they are holding a recruitment day on Monday in SodaBar, St Mary's Street 17:00-21:00.

Go for it, get yourselves down there and subvert the recruitment - expose Hooters for what it really is. Report back with your findings.

I think it's a really good idea to respond to the committee that based their reasoning on: it's a family restaurant with evidence about how it really is not family friendly with the sexualised baby outfits. Family oriented pfft would you want your 16 year old child working there? Your 11 year old aspiring to work there? gross.

It was interesting to see how Hooters spun themselves - as NOT another high density vertical drinking establishment. Presumably the thinking was that while the men will be sitting staring at women's breasts eating crap food they will be drinking less and hence the establishment will contribute less to the binge drinking problem in the city. Hell, it could even be seen as a solution - give the men something wholesome to do other than drink!

Funny that lots of videos on YouTube show lots of vertical drinking though!

Bristol is getting a Jamie Oliver restaurant next year. There is already advertising for it. He doesn't feel the need to keep it a secret or to presumably withhold that information from the application. Despite all the supposed support for Hooters, I do wonder why they felt the need to keep the franchise name such a secret. Even if people did get the chance to object formally (as they didn't in Bristol), if Gallus thought that it was wanted so much, they wouldn't feel the need to hide it but would be publicising it like Jamie Oliver is doing. Perhaps our PR man could feed that back to Gallus so that they have a more transparent application process next time.

No need to be scared of a bunch of silly old feminists surely?

Hope this didn't disrupt any children's birthday parties*.

Fight at Hooters in Nottingham after someone allegedly tried to grope a waitress

• Yes Hooters PR, I am aware that it happened at 10.30 at night and therefore unlikely to have interrupted any children's parties. It is what is known as a joke.