When I heard that Hooters—the chain restaurant infamous for serving cleavage and Oksana Bauil-style pantyhose alongside its burgers—was on the verge of bankruptcy and closing dozens of locations, it reminded me of the time I heard James Earl Jones had passed. No offense to JEJ, love his work, etc., but the reaction was: What? That guy was still alive?
There’s an extra layer of tragedy in learning something was still alive from its obituary. The collapse of the Hooters empire has been in the cards for years (Google “Hooters + private equity” for more on this.) And it’s not as if I’m going to rend my garments on a Sicilian beach for the boobs-and-beer establishment responsible for the worst portmanteau in the English language, namely “brestaurant” (BREASTAURANT!), though I’ve always heard the wings were good. (See also: Playboy; “the articles.”) But let’s be real, have you, alive person in 2025, heard anyone mention Hooters once in conversation? Let alone know someone who’s eaten at one? The restaurant isn’t even a cultural punchline anymore, because it simply doesn’t feel like a part of modern culture. It’s a souvenir from a time when men got all hot in their pants for bikini car washes and Jennifer Love Hewitt. A joke in movies from the era when Katy Perry still sang about various things being “so gay.” It’s where George W. Bush went to get a sad cheeseburger after vainly declaring “Mission Accomplished.” (I don’t think this is true, but it feels true in my heart.) It’s a symbol of feminist horror from the 90s, when the most offensive thing a man could do is burp like Homer Simpson and insist on ogling cleavage and NASCAR rallies in equal parts. Hooters still existing all this time is like realizing that Newt Gingrich is currently above ground and breathing. (He is—just Googled!) It’s all slightly unnerving.
If you told me this news a decade ago, I’m sure I’d have been ecstatic. I’m a card-carrying feminist. Okay, fine, they don’t give out cards, but trust I have Shulamith Firestone and Simone De Beauvoir taking up space on my bookshelf while I scroll TikTok. But strangely, I feel wistful about the restaurant’s demise. Don’t get me wrong—there are plenty of valid and somewhat obvious feminist critiques to be made about a place that makes the sexual objectification of women its selling point. And believe me, they have been made. (By me, in college, for longer than anyone at that party wanted to hear.) But despite those real liabilities, Hooters just seems…silly? A restaurant dedicated to boobs, the googly eyes of the torso! What an artifact of a more innocent time! Like a young man taking his first Victoria’s Secret catalog to the bathroom. Hooters cites flagging foot traffic as the source of its financial woes. Which tracks. No one needs to go to a restaurant to see people dressed like Kardashians. You can just come to Los Angeles. Or Cleveland…in the summer. Or my Pilates class, where there’s this lady who wears a way-too-loose sports bra and I’ve seen her left nipple against my will twice now.
Plus there’s a healthy dose of camp involved here. I’m sure you’ve seen the crop tops where the owl’s eyes double as, ahem, another body part? I don’t want to give myself away too much, but I’ve come to miss camp in today’s sexual material. (Save for Sabrina Carpenter—thank you for your service, ma’am.) I know none of you fine people have visited Pornhub lately, so let me tell you: gone are the days of the cheesy “I have your sausage pizza right here, ma’am” type of content. Today’s porn purveyors are focused on the real, even if the “real” is fake. It’s all grainy college parties and Blair Witch-style phone-camera work that makes you feel like you ate a funnel cake too quickly after getting off a corkscrew rollercoaster. Artifice in pornography did us a favor. It said to impressionable viewers (i.e. teens with dialup AOL connections), Hello there! We are actors performing sex! Now the prevailing message of pornography seems to be that any of the women rushing past you on the sidewalk could be on their way to a very important gangbang.
Therein lies the semi-redeeming quality of Hooters—there’s no mistaking it for anything other than it is. It’s sexism, plain and simple. It’s the difference between the guy in your office who says crap like, “Dayum, okay, miniskirt!” and the guy who comes to your office to cry about his loveless marriage for months and then ends up trying to grope your ass at the Christmas party. Yes, sure, they both need to go straight to HR without passing “go”—but at least the first guy is so overt about it that it’s downright absurd. That’s the thing I miss. The overtness. Not the overtness of the bouncing breasts as Hooters waitresses sing “Happy Birthday”—yes, they’re told to jump—but of the sexism itself. Whether you want to set foot in a Hooters is a personal choice, but at least there’s no rationalizing it. No one’s ever said, “Actually, this restaurant is good for women because it highlights the evolutionary significance of the mammary gland.”