Tuesday, October 9, 2018

So This Is a Hoot!

Academic feminism, via Watts Up With ThatScience study from Hooters: ‘An Ethnography of Breastaurant Masculinity’
This is an actual paper, published in a peer reviewed journal. I wouldn’t call it science, when it’s actually some sort of strange rant like something from a SJW. And what the hell is a “breastaurant”? Hooters maybe? Yep, I had to look it up.
A breastaurant is a restaurant that has skimpily-dressed female waiting staff. The term “breastaurant” dates from the early 1990s, around the time that the restaurant chain Hooters became popular in the United States.
So now people are conducting “research” in Hooters. h/t to Willie Soon.
 The abstract:


Richard Baldwin

The present study is based on a 2-year participant-observer ethnography of a group of men in a “breastaurant” to characterize the unique masculinity features that environment evokes. Currently, whereas some research examines sexually objectifying restaurant environments regarding their impacts upon women in those spaces, no known scholarly attention has been given to men and masculinities in these environments. Through thematic analysis of table dialogue supplemented by brief unstructured interviews, I identify four major and one minor theme of “breastaurant masculinity” as distinctive to that environment. These include sexual objectification, sexual conquest, male control of women, masculine toughness, and (as a minor theme) rationalizations for why men frequent breastaurants.
So, basically, this sociologist spent a bunch of grant money going to Hooters for 2 years, talking to people there, and writing up what he thought he was supposed to say about it. Sweet work, if you can get it. If he's gay he gets to talk to the guys; if he's not he gets to watch the girls.
Following recent trends in masculinities research, my study interprets the breastaurant as a type of male preserve that erects a local pastiche hegemony in which these themes gain protected status. It also theorizes that the unique interactive environment of the breastaurant between (mostly) male patrons and attractive female servers who provide heterosexual aesthetic labor to the patrons, primarily in the form of ersatz sexual availability, produces these masculinity features. Given their current rapid expansion and popularity within masculine subcultures, the breastaurant therefore becomes an important site for critical masculinities research. Practice implications are discussed for management and counseling professionals who aim to improve outcomes in social and professional situations for both women and men.

Published here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-018-0962-0
(paywalled, $39.95, which would be better spent at Hooters, I think)
Sounds good to me. I've never been to a Hooters, but a friend had his daughters work at one, and he was OK with it, and they liked the money (they get good tips).


From a Hooters calendar

Additional thought crime, plastic straws!

Mmmm, b-b-b-b-b-b-beer!

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