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In 1983, six businessmen got together and opened the first Hooters restaurant in Clearwater, Florida. Hooters of America LLC quickly became a restaurant chain success story. With its scantily clad servers and signature breaded wings, the chain sells sex appeal in addition to foodor as one of the companys mottos puts it: You can sell the sizzle, but you have to deliver the steak. It inspired a niche restaurant genre called breastaurants, with eateries such as the Tilted Kilt Pub & Eatery and Twin Peaks replicating Hooters busty business model. A decade ago, business was booming for breastaurant chains, with these companies experiencing record sales growth. Today its a different story. Declining sales, rising costs and a large debt burden of approximately US$300 million have threatened Hooters long-term outlook. In summer 2024, the chain closed over 40 of its restaurants across the U.S. In February 2025, Bloomberg reported that the company was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy. Hooters isnt necessarily going away for good. But its certainly looking like there will be fewer opportunities for women to work as Hooters Girlsand for customers to ogle at them. As a psychologist, I was originally interested in studying servers at breastaurants because I could sense an interesting dynamic at play. On the one hand, it can feel good to be complimented for your looks. On the other hand, I also wondered whether constantly being critiqued might eventually wear these servers down. So my research team and I decided to study what it was like to work in places like Hooters. In a series of studies, heres what we found. Concocting a male fantasyland More so than most restaurants, managers at breastaurants like Hooters seek to strictly regulate how their employees look and act. For one of our studies, we interviewed 11 women who worked in breastaurants. Several of them said that they were told to be camera ready at all times. One described being given a booklet with exacting standards outlining her expected appearance, down to nails, hair, makeup, brushing your teeth, wearing deodorant. She had to promise to stay the same weight and height, wear makeup every shift, and not change her hairstyle. Beyond a carefully constructed physical appearance, the servers relayed that they were also expected to be confident, cheerful, charming, outgoing, and emotionally steeled. They were instructed to make male customers feel special, to be their personal cheerleaders, as one interviewee put it, and to never challenge them. Suffice it say, these demands can be unrealisticand many of the servers we interviewed described becoming emotionally drained and eventually souring on the role. The girls are a dime a dozen It probably wont come as a surprise that Hooters servers often encounter lewd remarks, sexual advances, and other forms of sexual harassment from customers. But because their managers often tolerate this behavior from customers, it created the added burden of what psychologists call double-bindssituations where contradictory messages make it impossible to respond properly. For example, say a regular customer whos a generous tipper decides to proposition a server. Now shes in a predicament. Shes been instructed to make customers feel special. And hes already left a big tip, in addition to being a regular. But she also feels creeped out, and his advances make her feel worthless. Should she push back? You might assume that managers, aware that their scantily clad employees would be more likely to face harassment, would try to set boundaries and throw out customers who treated servers poorly. But we found that waitresses at breastaurants have less support from both management and their coworkers than servers at other restaurants. Unfortunately, the girls are a dime a dozen, and thats how theyre treated, a former server and corporate trainer at a breastaurant explained. The lack of coworker support might also come as a surprise. Rather than standing in solidarity, the servers tended to compete for favoritism, better shifts and raises from their bosses. Gossiping, name-calling, and scapegoating were commonplace. The psychological toll My research team also wanted to learn more about the specific emotional and psychological costs of working in these types of environments. Psychologists Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Robert have found that mental health problems that disproportionately affect women often coincide with sexual objectification. So we werent surprised to find that servers working in sexually objectifying restaurant environments, such as Hooters and Twin Peaks, reported more symptoms of depression, anxiety, and disordered eating than those working in other restaurants. In addition, they wanted to be thinner, were more likely to monitor their weight and appearance, and were more dissatisfied with their bodies. Hooters didnt reply to a request for comment on this story. Why are women drawn to the job? Given our findings, you might wonder why any women would choose to work in places like Hooters in the first place. The women we interviewed said that they sought work in breastaurants to make more money and have more flexibility. A number of servers in one of our studies noted that they could make more money this way than waitressing at a regular restaurant or in other real jobs. For example, one of the servers we interviewed used to work at a more run-of-the-mill restaurant. It was OK, I made OK money, she told us. But working at Hooters . . . Ive walked out with hundreds of dollars in one shift. All the women we interviewed were in college or were mothers. So they enjoyed the high degree of flexibility in their work schedule that breastaurants provided. Finally, several of them had previously experienced objectification while growing up, or theyd participated in activities centered on physical appearance, such as beauty pageants and cheerleading. This likely contributed to their decision to work at a Hooters or one of its competitors: Theyd been objectified as adolescents, and so they found themselves drawn to these kinds of setting as adults. Even so, our research suggests that the financial rewards and flexibility of working in breastaurants probably arent worth the potential psychological costs. Dawn Szymanski is a professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
The United States has given an initial approval for the energy-rich Mideast nation of Qatar to buy eight armed MQ-9B Predator drones for its military, an estimated purchase worth nearly $2 billion.The State Department approval announced early Thursday for Qatar comes after Doha had been trying to purchase the drones during the Biden administration, but hadn’t gotten the OK despite serving as an interlocutor for Washington to the Taliban in Afghanistan, Iran’s theocracy and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The immediate approval under President Donald Trump serves as a far-different starting point for his government’s relations with Qatarparticularly after he initially backed a four-nation boycott of Doha during his first term.“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country that continues to be an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East,” the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement.Qatar’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. Qatar is the second-largest purchaser of U.S. military equipment after Saudi Arabia, spending over $26 billion for F-15 fighter jets, Apache attack helicopters, missile defense systems, and other gear.The proposed sale now goes to the U.S. Congress. Lawmakers typically weigh in on such sales and, in some cases, can block them.Under terms of the sale, Qatar would purchase eight of the drones, as well as hundreds of bombs and missiles to arm the pilotless aircraft with and the equipment necessary to fly them by satellite.General Atomics Reapers, which cost around $30 million apiece, can fly at altitudes over 40,000 feet (12,100 meters) and have an endurance of more than 30 hours before needing to land. The aircraft have been flown by both the U.S. military and the CIA over the Middle East for years, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now over Yemen during the American bombing campaign there. The drone has a land and sea version.The initial approval for Qatar, however, comes after the nearby United Arab Emirates has been waiting since 2020 to purchase up to 18 MQ-9 drones as part of a $23 billion deal also including advanced F-35 fighter jets. Trump has a particularly close relationship with the UAE, which reached a diplomatic recognition deal with Israel under his administration in 2020. Jon Gambrell, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
In a significant design appointment, Mauro Porcini has been announced as the Chief Design Officer at Samsung. The position, newly created for Porcini, is his third time establishing a Chief Design Officer role at a major companyfollowing 3M and PepsiCo. Its also the first time that Samsung has hired a foreign design lead. Its an aggressive move at a time when Samsungs business is facing crisis-level headwinds. The company just lost its co-CEO Jong-Hee to cardiac arrest. Meanwhile, its shed marketshare in semiconductors to competitors, all while China is becoming better and better at building almost everything. And Samsungs Mexico-based production (which represents a significant part of the business) faces 25% tariffs under the Trump administration. On the other hand, when I visited Samsungs headquarters outside Seoul in late 2023 and met with the design team, I encountered a grounding confidence Ive never sensed during any U.S. corporate tour, when the team stated simply, Samsung is a thousand-year company. During a time when some companiesincluding Appleare investing less in design leadership, Samsung is doubling down on the approach. Porcini has been tasked with an incredible opportunity, and he will have his work cut out for him.
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E-Commerce
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