Revealing

I read today that there is a growing niche for restaurants that have followed the lead of Hooters. These restaurants hire waitresses who are revealingly clad. Like Hooters, the chains have suggestively punny names.  One is called Mugs and Jugs. Another, the Tilted Kilt. Twin Peaks is a third.  These restaurants have been nicknamed "breastaurants."

Is there anything wrong with the concept?

If you are a sports fan you have noticed that in the last several years, broadcasts of baseball, football, and basketball games have included sideline reporters who interview coaches at intervals during the contest.  These journalists are far more often than not, women.  Almost without exception, these reporters are not difficult on the eyes.  The demographics of the sports television viewers are changing, but still the audience is overwhelmingly male.

Is there anything wrong with hiring attractive women to be the sideline reporters if a criterion for their hiring is  pulchritude and the journalists, however excellent they may be, have been employed primarily to engage the overwhelming portion of the audience?  Is there anything wrong with this, if the overwhelming majority of the broadcasters in the booth are men?

The Dallas cheerleaders have not been selected because of their SAT scores.  Anything wrong with this?

I've never been in a Hooters.  I am not a prude, but in the context of a family restaurant the Hooters' concept bothers me because of the hypocrisy.  It seems to me that many people get very upset when sex is discussed in the schools or in most public places.  If sex was not intended to be the lure in Mugs and Jugs et al, then the eateries would not be suggestively named and the servers would wear more in the way of clothes. If you check out the logo for Twin Peaks, it's clear that the owners have not identified mountain climbers as the key demographic.

At the Twin Peaks web site a click on locations informs the surfer that the restaurant has a presence in twelve states.  Only one of these is a blue state.  Eight out of twelve are red; three are undecided according to the current political map.   Is it odd that tolerance for such a theme is found in places where the majority of voters support conservative measures?

Those who read The Madness of March know that for five days in 2009 I spent time in sports books along the strip in Las Vegas.   The book describes the sports betting scene more than anything else.  However, there are allusions to cocktail waitresses and the temporary diversions for the sports bettors.  Yet, that is Las Vegas. When you go to Las Vegas there are no stunning surprises along these lines.

Twin Peaks in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Kansas.  Probably nothing wrong with it, but are the same people who are eating there voting for conservative candidates who campaign on a platform opposed to sex education in the classroom.

I have no problem with alluring attire or consensual intimacy. At all.  I do have a problem with declarations that sex is an abomination and a proliferation of successful breastaurants in red states.  Where are all those people shouting for abstinence in the schools when a new Twin Peaks opens.  Where are those people who squawk at the (very few) sexual references in a great book like The Catcher in the Rye, when the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders are getting chest colds in a wintry December football game.  The existence of steamy looking women in places where generating steam is declared sinful is, to my way of thinking, revealing.