Body Politics

The restaurant item didn’t come up until well after midnight, when members of the Santa Monica City Council were talked-out, bleary-eyed and perhaps a bit cranky.

Three businessmen behind an effort to bring a new restaurant and bar to the downtown area, just a few steps from the popular Third Street Promenade, were extolling the merits of their new venture--a national chain’s first foray into Los Angeles County.

All around the council chairs, eyebrows rose. Because this wasn’t just any restaurant. This was an establishment whose very name rankles most feminists, a chain that has been the target of lawsuits nationwide alleging discrimination and abuse, a chain condemned for its insistence on scantily clad, shapely young waitresses, a chain about to enter the up-to-now happy family of Santa Monica business owners.

The chain is Hooters, that international company with 234 restaurants in 41 states and a dozen countries--but so far none closer to Los Angeles than Newport Beach.

The reason for the local absence--and for potential fireworks as Hooters makes plans to open restaurants over the next two years not just in Santa Monica, but also in Long Beach, Burbank, Pasadena, Westwood, the South Bay and the San Fernando Valley--can be seen in the discussion that followed.

“Let me ask a simple question,” Mayor Robert Holbrook finally said. “What exactly does ‘Hooters’ mean?”

One Hooters franchisee, Larry Klinghoffer, took a deep breath and explained that it could refer to any number of things: to Hootie the Owl, the company mascot, or, as he delicately put it, to part of a woman’s body.

“It means,” he said, “whatever it means to you.”

Moments later, council members winced in embarrassment when a local activist came to the microphone and blurted out: “I’ll tell you what Hooters means” and went on to use a vulgarity.

Whatever the name’s meaning, the chain has Santa Monica city fathers and mothers up in arms, bringing out vitriol rarely seen even in this politically charged coastal city.

Investors say that, welcome or not, Hooters is coming and that the Santa Monica restaurant will open in December.

Ask Hooters officials why they’ve stayed out of Los Angeles County and they cite not controversy but rather high real estate prices and wages. Besides the Newport Beach restaurant, Hooters has opened only three others in California, all in San Diego. Their success there convinced them to take a crack at the L.A. market, according to Fred Glick, director of operations for Heartland Wings Inc., which is overseeing the Los Angeles County efforts.

Five years ago, Westwood community activists battled the chain’s proposal to open an outlet there. Hooters officials say the restaurant proposal failed for financial reasons, not because of any community action. But Sandy Brown, a former member of the Westwood Merchants Assn., said the stigma clearly played a role.

“Westwood at the time was really empty--merchants were so desperate they would have opted for anything that would have brought even 50 cents of business into their stores. But even they wouldn’t tolerate a Hooters,” Brown said.

‘If They Move In . . . They’ll Regret It’

Santa Monica city officials--enjoying more commercial prosperity--feel the same way. They complain that Hooters is a place that objectifies women. Employing a staff of often-buxom waitresses dressed in tiny shorts and skimpy tank tops, the restaurant attracts a clientele these critics have struggled to avoid at the family-oriented Third Street Promenade, they say.

The planned location, in the 300 block of Santa Monica Boulevard, is also directly across from the site of a proposed new transit mall--not the first image of Santa Monica that city officials want visitors to see.

Asked Mayor Holbrook: “Would you take your wife there? Would you take a date there? Probably not one you’re serious about.”

Citing Hooters’ own research, which shows that the restaurant appeals to men between the ages of 25 and 54, Councilman Paul Rosenstein put it even more bluntly.

“We do not need gangs of frustrated fraternity boys and dirty old men coming downtown to drink and ogle at women,” he said, admitting, like others on the council, that he had never been to a Hooters.

Some officials say the city is helpless to stop the project, which already has proper zoning. Others believe the venture can still be opposed at public hearings for a city business permit and state liquor license.

“If they move in,” warned Holbrook, “my sense is that they’ll regret it. In Santa Monica, we have more resources than any other place they’ve encountered. And we’ll go to any means, we’ll make sure that every T is crossed and every I is dotted. What I’m saying is that I would invite them to go someplace where they’re welcome, not here.”

The council has asked the city attorney to investigate whether any laws would be violated if an employer used physical attributes as a criterion for hiring.

Last year Hooters settled a federal class-action lawsuit filed by several Chicago men denied jobs as waiters at the chain. As part of the settlement--in which Hooters agreed to pay $3.8 million--the restaurants were allowed to continue hiring only women to wait tables. Hooters also endured a four-year investigation by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which led to no charges.

Klinghoffer, an investor in the Los Angeles County ventures, said his patience with local politicians who have never even set foot in one of the restaurants is wearing thin.

“We’ve already got the blessing of a federal judge for our hiring policies, and now these local politicians are trying to invent legislation to stop the company from hiring based on gender and body size,” he said.

Hooters officials profess surprise at the vehemence against their restaurant concept--especially in Los Angeles, home to such sexual icons as the Laker Girls and a place where the movie industry peddles sexual themes on Sunset Boulevard billboards and people see more exposed female skin on the beach than they ever would at a Hooters.

The officials also say that many Los Angeles-area restaurants feature scantily clad waitresses and that Hooters is just more upfront about it. In the past, Hooters waitresses wore T-shirts that said, “More than a mouthful.” Now that logo has been changed to “Delightfully tacky and unrefined.”

‘It’s Just Good Marketing’

Mike McNeil, vice president of marketing for the Atlanta-based Hooters of America Inc., insisted that the chain’s marketing concept is not controversial. “Abortion is controversial,” he said.

Yet he acknowledged that any debate about the company’s name helps business.

“If people decide we stand for part of a woman’s body, we don’t run from that,” McNeil said. “Female anatomy or a bird--for us, it’s just good marketing.”

Klinghoffer said the restaurant will hire waitresses with all shapes and backgrounds. “We’re looking for high energy levels. Like the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders or a surfer girl,” he said. “Do they have to be attractive? Yes, that’s part of the concept. Not the size of their body parts.”

The Santa Monica Commission on the Status of Women has also criticized the Hooters venture. But one city official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the real sticking point is less a feminist issue than the sheer tackiness of the restaurant’s name.

“We fancy ourselves as the capital of liberality, but the name ‘Hooters’ is too politically incorrect--even for us,” the official said. “Of all the things to get mad about. We can’t even keep the legitimate adult businesses out of the city. But mess with [the Third Street Promenade], the crowning jewel in this bustling little burg, then you’ve got a problem.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Giving a Hoot

Some samples of the protest that Hooters restaurants and their scantily clad waitresses have garnered in recent years:

1994

Maple Shade, N.J.: Members of the National Organization for Women carry signs, competing with Hula Hoop-spinning waitresses. Hooters is “more insidious” than a strip club, one protester complains. “At least a strip joint is honest about what it is.”

1995

Newport Beach: First Hooters in Orange County opens. Chain says it will open five more in the county in two years--none of which has materialized yet. Two months later one waitress tells a restaurant critic with a wink, “No one really comes here for food.”

St. Louis: Judge orders city to issue a permit to Hooters. City had banned the restaurant after residents bombarded City Hall with calls and letters of protest.

Schaumburg, Ill.: After a bitter debate with a feminist group, Hooters wins approval to open near a mall. One critic grouses, “Everything about the place is a deception.”

Guilderland, N.Y.: Shouting match breaks out between waitresses singing “You Are My Sunshine” and NOW protesters in front of recently opened Hooters. Says one waitress, “They don’t have to look in here or eat here if they don’t like it.”

1996

Roanoke, Va.: Plan to open a Hooters on a street with a bawdy history draws protests from a citizens group that has battled to rid the road of massage parlors.

1998

Boston: A line of 50 shivering men waits hours outside a new Hooters that was scheduled to open its doors for lunch but kept customers waiting until evening because of a longer-than-expected fire inspection process.

Nottingham, England: New Hooters comes under fire from women’s groups and equal opportunity campaigners for employing only women to wait tables.