I don’t have kids and don’t want any, but if I did, I wouldn’t take them to Hooters. There are enough family-friendly restaurants around for parents and their kids to eat at. If the girls are telling Mom they feel icky when going there, she should respect their desicion and take them to a place they would be more comfortable at. Sometimes I wonder if we should start issuing parenting permits.

Sorry for getting so worked up about this but is this woman TRYING to make her daughters into everything that feminists work so hard to prevent?

I appreciate the idea of people having all the information before making a decision, but as a parent, you are supposed to make decisions like this for your children. You’re the grownup. You know what’s right and what’s wrong. What if your kid said, “I like it here and want to return?” Then you’re stuck. Better to say, “Nope. That’s a grown-up place that I don’t like. We’re not going.”

I posted about the Hooters issue a couple of years ago. Basically, my friends have higher aspirations for their daughters than Hooters and think their girls can achieve more than that. The guy at the Atlanta airport whose daughter was a topless dancer apparently did not.

http://class-factotum.journalspace.com/?entryid=828&h=hooters

Even taking *that* into account, though, I would never take a child of any age or either sex there. It’s a place for drunken frat boys and roofers, not kids.

I have a handy two-by-four here. Would you like to use it to slap the momma in the story?

And, of course, I would never take them to an establishment even marginally like Hooters. I’ve never been to one myself… though a friend of mine has. She went with a group of guys (she went to college at an engineering school, so the male-to-female ratio was extremely high), and was quite uncomfortable. She also was quite sure that their waitress had recently had breast implants and wasn’t used to their size yet as she kept rubbing her brests against my friend’s back every time she came by. Either that or she fancied her and was doing it on purpose. Either way, it was not the most fun experience.

Though I have to second something Sashibala mentioned in her story; my grandfather was the proverbial horny old guy, and I remember him flirting with waitresses even in the most elegent of establishments. Hooters might attract more of that kind of guy because of its marketing, but men who will flirt with or harrass a waitress at Hooters will most likely do so in other restaurants as well.

Beyond this though, I remember as a child my father bringing my entire family (sister and mother) to a Hooters a couple times, and I think I turned out relatively OK. There is a children’s menu! I’m not going to say what I think the existence of these restaurants says about our society, but I think that as long as the parent isn’t icky-gross about it, they shouldn’t be demonized for taking their children there. Of course, as soon as the kids express discomfort, it’s a completely different story. To each his own.

I personally was pleasantly surprised. Yes, the girls working there were dressed in their little tight orange shorts and tight white t-shirts but they were as sweet as could be and actually seemed to dote on the women in the group more than the men. I had gotten the chance to talk to one of our waitresses (we had two) and asked her why she chose Hooters over another establishment.

She said simply, “Money.”

We actually had a nice discussion regarding the objectification of women and the inappropriateness of some men but she said that was the case at other restaurants where she worked as well. She personally felt Hooters was just more honest about it and paid better for it.

Will I go back to Hooters? Unlikely but mostly because I did not think the food was all that great. Would I ever take my children (if I had any)? Not willingly because I don’t think any bar-type setting is a good place for young children but I would be honest with them about it and take them if they wanted to go.