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<p>Why garland… owls of course. If you’ve never been to one you’d know that all those young ladies are also wearing glasses to represent wisdom.</p>
<p>The uniforms there aren’t any more inappropriate than you see in the average gym class. Hooters shouldn’t be percieved as a strip-joint or whatever, it isn’t, and such it isn’t licensed as one. Do you see families going to strip-clubs? No. Do you see families going to Hooters? Yes. See the difference here people? I hope so.</p>
<p>Teriwtt- You say shorts and a tank top are fine for TEENAGE GIRLS REPRESENTING THEIR SCHOOL, but you condemn the Hooters uniform? I’ve got news for you, a Hooters uniform CONSISTS OF shorts and a tank top! Good god, people really need to read their own posts.</p>
<p>I’m talking about if they’re at a car wash! If it’s a hot day and they’re going to get wet and feel the need to wear a bathing suit, put a tank top and shorts on over it as opposed to just wearing a bathing suit. Then if they get wet, it’s not like having a wet t-shirt contest.</p>
<p>“For a car wash, a bathing suit with a tank top and shorts worn over it are fine. You’re representing your school.” What’s that you say…? I was right? Why thank you(: I can read, trust me. And shorts and a tank top are what the Hooters uniform consists of people. (Along with the brown panty-hose.)</p>
<p>EliKresses - For what it’s worth, for about four years, I was the parent volunteer who ran the two car washes held by our show choir every summer. By the time I quit, I’d had enough. We’d set standards for the kids (girls particularly, but boys were required to keep a shirt on), but the choir director never did anything to enforce the rules. It aggravated me to no end. I hated that some of these girls were standing out at an intersection with posters trying to get customers. Whenever other groups from the school would use the same location, I NEVER saw girls in bikini tops. Evidently whoever the sponsor was actually enforced the rules. If I told someone they were not dressed appropriately and told them to put on a t-shirt, they would, but 30 minutes later the t-shirt would be off again. We’re talking about anywhere between 50-80 kids there at a time, and you can’t keep your eye on them all the time. Other adult volunteers were busy supervising the car washing (I’ll never go to another car wash like this again; I’m surprised we never got sued for ruining someone’s paint job with all the filthy water in buckets that these teenagers never thought to refresh) or running being cashiers, etc. </p>
<p>The sad thing was, there were kids who definitely needed these car washes to raise money for their fees for the program, and who were hard workers, but the majority of them were there for the fun of getting wet, showing off in their bathing suits, and could care less about the money or how they were representing their school. But, that message comes from the top down, and over the years, I learned that the show choir director did not have the same priorities and values as me (and I’d say most parents who got to know him over time).</p>
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<p>Where did you ever say that a bathing suit with a tank top and shorts worn over it are fine for a car wash? You keep defending the Hooters uniform. The only thing I ever said about the Hooters uniform is that is it NOT like the gym uniform our high school requires. And I stand by that statement.</p>
<p>For heaven’s sake, I also don’t complain about the fact that boys wear Speedos on swim team. There are certain activities where the usual school dress code cannot apply and exceptions need to be made. Girls do not need to wear bikinis out on major intersections to raise money for a car wash.</p>
<p>I work at a middle school. About 4 years ago my principal showed me a flyer he got in the mail. (We get ads all the time in the mail telling us how much money we can raise by having our kids sell X.) This particular flyer was encouraging us to have kids sell knives door to door. All kinds of knives - kitchen, hunting, etc. I couldn’t believe how stupid this company was to even think that schools would be interested in this kind of thing. </p>
<p>Our primary school fundraiser is magazines. We have been doing it for over 30 years. People order magazines that they would normally order, but do it through the school and we get 40%. No one gets stuck with something they don’t want, there are no extra calories involved, and we make pretty decent money.</p>
<p>I have never been to a Hooters. From what people have told me, the atmosphere varies by location and according to the standards of the individual manager. Some people claim that there are some establishments which aren’t much different than any other chain. </p>
<p>HOWEVER, the business name is the slang term for a woman’s breasts, the business has deliberately made sex appeal its trademark, and the company even requires its waitresses to sign a consent form which says that they understand that fact. The company also sponsors bikini contests in each restaurant as well as a national event, and they also publish a calendar of girls in skimpy bathing suits. A few of the photos are fine, but in many there is a serious lack of coverage for body parts augmented by those water balloon-like implants. That particular elective surgery, by the way, is advertised on staff bulletin boards as per the D of someone I know who quit when her Hooters manager told her she had to put on a Brazilian-style bikini and participate in the local contest. (I believe the manager was reported and reprimanded.)</p>
<p>I like the fresh fruit (box of citrus) that my friend’s s sells for his band. They also raise funds somehow by the parents staffing the bingo at one of the local VFW halls (don’t exactly know how that works financially, but I went with them one night and played bingo. What a hoot! - no pun intended)</p>
<p>I still have rolls of giftwrap, with assorted and sundry coordinated bows, ribbons and gift bags from when the kids sold it in elementary school. Really felt obligated to buy and buy, from our own kids and others. I also have popcorn sold by the local scout troop. Come to think of it, maybe I should pop a bag and pull up a seat :)</p>
<p>For youth organizations, we always stay way within the lines of propriety. Until kids are out of high school, there is responsibility to do this. We ran into this when a high school swim team wanted to wash cars in their racing suits. Actually the boys with their skimpy suits were particularly “exposed”. The rationale was that they “showed off” in those outfits at the meets. Sorry, no go. </p>
<p>When you go to college, you’ll see groups doing this, and as the students are all adults, that’s there business.</p>
<p>Hooters does donated generously to a number of causes including to children’s cancer groups. But it does not ask the kids to dress as the waitresses do. There families who have declined free meals at the Hooters that offer such coupons for families displaced due to a severe illness of a child.</p>
<p>In my area, there are some charity car washes where the girls are wearing bikinis, but at most every car wash, it is the parents that are washing the cars. That said, this is an area where baristas wear bikinis (or less) to work, even when it is freezing outside. </p>
<p>This whole discussion reminds me of the remake of the Bad News Bears starring Billy Bob Thorton. In the movie, the team’s sponsor is a strip club (the liquor stores didn’t want to sponsor a team) and the team celebrates after each game at Hooters.</p>
<p>I’ll occasionally go to Hooters and see families there all the time, including at very popular, visible locations such as the Mall of America. Yes, Hooters does capitalize on sex appeal, but so do a lot of other businesses. As for the uniform being risqu</p>
<p>I am still debating both sides of this issue in my head. On the one hand, the womens activist in me dislikes the “objectification”, but on the other hand, I don’t equate Hooters with the underground sex trade or something. I don’t like the dance team/ 10 yrs olds giggling their stuff, and I certainly didn’t like the Abercrombie and Fitch padded bikini top for pre-pubescent girls. But of a boys softball team was going to otherwise go belly up due to lack of funding and a sponsor like hooters was willing to provide the baseball uniforms or whatever, and can do so without putting their logo in large letters anywhere on the uniform, if the team would otherwise not be able to play, why disappoint the kids? I am still struggling with this one.</p>
<p>BTW, did anyone here happen to ever fly on Hooters airlines when it was in business?</p>
<p>At the beach, everyone is wearing a swimsuit, so that means it’s not a audience/show situation. No “one group” is the object of being stared at, ogled at. </p>
<p>In a car wash situation, everyone else is fully dressed. To have the girls in skimpy bikinis…bending, stretching over cars…is really just to provide a “floor show” for the guys. </p>
<p>Another problem I see with this…it promotes “body issues” for the girls who don’t have the bodies that would be ogled in such situations. What about those girls? Are they supposed to not participate? Or are they expected to “cover up” because their bodies in bikinis won’t be the financial draw that their sexier counterparts will be.</p>
<p>If you like to think of Hooters as a place for hamburgers and Reubens, where the waitresses just happen to be wearing the same thing you see in gym class… go for it. Be my guest in helping them with their bottom line.</p>
<p>But… hamburgers and Reubens are not (as we used to say in Business School) their “key selling proposition.” </p>
<p>And that proposition is not what middle school and high school fundraisers should be promoting. In the opinion of most of us on this thread. YMMV (and apparently does for some people). </p>
<p>Eli… do you have a tween/teen daughter? If not, come back and see us when you do. ;)</p>
<p>No, I wouldn’t let my high school daughter wear a bikini only to solicit customers for a car wash. Should I feel guilty about enjoying the humor of our local volunteer firefighters, who regularly hold summer car-wash fundraisers that feature the hunkiest of the male firefighters holding the signs while bare-chested under those cute yellow overalls?</p>
<p>You get a pass from me, Illyria, on the firefighters :). I imagine Eli can’t see the difference between that and the bikini-clad hs girls. Or what Hooters is selling. But I can.</p>
<p>“Some people claim that there are some establishments which aren’t much different than any other chain.”</p>
<p>I’ve been to Hooters – the difference is that the food is worse! I wasn’t expecting a gourmet delight, but I did think it would be comparable to Chili’s or Bennigan’s. Nope. Much, much worse.</p>
<p>I have to turn here to the immortal wisdom of Chris Rock. There is no sex in the Champagne Room, and no one goes to Hooters for wings.</p>
<p>The firefighters are not soliciting statutory rape.</p>
<p>I freely admit that I have never been to a Hooters. I would never consider lending financial support to that company.</p>
<p>I went to their magazine website and looked at some photos of “Hooters girls” wearing what I presume is their uniform. All I can say is that anyone who thinks that looks like a gym uniform is delusional. I’ve been to a lot of track meets. All of the girls are wearing sports bras under their tanks, not padded pushups! Utter nonsense.</p>