DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I had dinner at Hooters last week.

My companions and I were on a mission: eat greasy food, drink lots of beer, and ogle well-endowed women. For seekers of sustenance and sexual fantasy, Hooters is the Holy Grail. It was, in a sense, wholly satisfying, and in another sense, wholly unsatisfying. (I’ll leave to the reader the exercise of identifying which two senses I’m referring to.)

If you’re not familiar with the “Hooters Concept,” I can paint a picture: chesty women in tight orange shorts and white tank-tops, serving an array of fried food and occasionally rubbing their breasts against receptive customers in a way that seems inadvertent, casually inviting, but is no doubt strategically calculated to maximize gratuities.

Here’s the thing that shocked me about Hooters: women eat there! Guys bring dates! This is why I’ll never be hired by a marketing firm; I always overestimate the ability of a typical American to be offended. Because I would never predict that three generations of Asian women would go out for a meal at Hooters… and yet, there they were. I saw several tables of families with young children, which just seems wrong.

The Hooters Media Statement is a great read. They justify the concept and address their critics directly. But I was surprised to learn that HOO.C.E.F., the Hooters Community Endowment Fund, is not designed to subsidize breast augmentation surgeries in low-income neighborhoods. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if cosmetic surgery is a covered benefit on the company health plan.