Christie, R., and F. L. Geis, eds. 1970. Studies in Machiavellianism. New York: Academic Press.
Comrey, A. L. 1970. Comrey Personality Scales. San Diego, CA: Educational and Industrial Testing Service.
Reading 9 Working At Bazooms: The Intersection of Power, Gender, and Sexuality
Meika Loe
Social research is concerned with the definition and assessment of social phenomena. Many social phenomena in day-to-day interaction are taken for granted, such as riding on a city bus, the daily routine inside a beauty salon, and children playing on a playground. Social researchers enable us to get inside these diverse social settings and discover what social forces are at work in creating social life. This selection, written by Meika Loe, an associate professor of sociology, anthropology, and women’s studies at Colgate University, takes us inside the social world of waitressing. The award-winning study excerpted here was written by Loe when she was an undergraduate. It utilizes in-depth interviews and participant observation to reveal how gender and sexuality affect one workplace culture.
This [reading] is an investigation into power, gender, and sexuality in the workplace. This research is based on six months of participant observation and interviews at a restaurant I will call “Bazooms.”1 Bazooms is an establishment that has been described both as “a family restaurant” and as “a titillating sports bar.”2 The name of this restaurant, according to the menu, is a euphemism for “what brings a gleam into men’s eyes everywhere besides beer and chicken wings and an occasional winning football team.” Breasts, then, form the concept behind the name.
The purpose of this [reading] is to examine the dynamics of power, gender, and sexuality as they operate in Bazooms’ workplace. This is a setting in which gender roles, sexuality, and job-based power dynamics are all being constructed and reconstructed through customer, management, and waitress interactions. The first half of the [reading] describes how power, gender, and sexuality shape, and are concurrently shaped by, Bazooms’ management and customers. The second half deals specifically with how Bazooms waitresses attempt to reshape these dynamics and to find strategies for managing the meaning and operation of gender, power, and sexuality. By using Bazooms waitresses as examples, I hope to show that women are not merely “objectified victims” of sexualized workplaces, but are also active architects of gender, power, and sexuality in such settings.
Source: Meika Loe, “Working at Bazooms: The Intersection of Power, Gender, and Sexuality” from Sociological Inquiry 66, No. 4 (November 1996): 399–421. Copyright © John Wiley and Sons. Reprinted with permission.
The Bazooms Workplace Environment
Bazooms is the fastest-growing restaurant chain in the nation….
When I applied for a job at Bazooms in the winter of 1994, the first thing I was told was: The ‘Bazooms girl’ is what this restaurant revolves around; she is a food server, bartender, hostess, table busser, promo girl, and more. At the job interview I was shown a picture of a busty blonde in a tight top and short shorts leaning seductively over a plateful of buffalo wings and was asked if I would be comfortable wearing the Bazooms uniform. Then I was told that the managers try to make the job “fun,” by supplying the “girls” with “toys” like hula hoops to play with in between orders. Finally, I was asked to sign Bazooms’ official sexual harassment policy form, which explicitly states: “In a work atmosphere based upon sex appeal, joking and innuendo are commonplace.”
Sixty “lucky” women were chosen to be “Bazooms girls” out of about eight hundred applications. Most of the “new hires” were local college students, ranging in age from eighteen to twenty-eight years, and as I found out later, more than several were mothers. The hiring process was extremely competitive owing to the fact that Bazooms hired minors and inexperienced waitresses. Also, everyone had been told that working at Bazooms could be quite lucrative. The general “Bazooms girl type” seemed to be white, thin, with blonde or brown hair, although there were several black, Chicana, and Asian American women in the bunch.3 We all went through full-time training together (which included appearance training, menu workshops, song learning, alcohol and food service licensing, and reviewing the employee manual), and eventually were placed in a new location opened in Southern California.
Women work at Bazooms for a variety of reasons. No one in management ever asked me why I was applying, and I never told them, but the fact is that I applied for a position as a Bazooms girl because I wanted to know more about how the women who worked there experienced and responded to a highly sexualized workplace. I worked there for six months, during which I “became the phenomenon” (Mehan and Wood 1975).4
During my six months of participant observation and interviews with coworkers, I explained that I was interviewing people in my place of work as part of a class research project.5 I made no attempt to construct a random sample of Bazooms girls to interview; rather, I interviewed those whom I felt closest to, and worked regularly with, and who I thought would feel comfortable responding honestly to my questions. The waitresses I interviewed for the most part were very committed to their jobs. Some were upset with their conditions of employment, and their voices may stand out for the reader. But I should emphasize that others, whose voices may not attract notice, expressed general contentment with the job. In the pages that follow I will present their views and my observations about the ways in which power, gender, and sexuality are constructed and negotiated in the sexualized workplace of a Bazooms restaurant.
Job-Based Power
Formal Power
Gender and power at Bazooms are reflected in its management structure. In this restaurant, four men manage more than 100 employees working various shifts: 60 Bazooms girls and 40 kitchen guys. In addition, both the franchise owners and the founders are all male. This is not rare. According to Catherine MacKinnon (1980:60), countless studies have shown that “women are overwhelmingly in positions that other people manage, supervise, or administer. Even in ‘women’s jobs’ the managers are men.” As in most workplace environments, formal authority and power are concentrated in management positions at Bazooms. In everything from scheduling to paychecks, floor assignments, and breaks, managers have the last word. In this way, Bazooms girls are placed in a subordinate position. This is not an unusual finding. MacKinnon contends that as “low-prestige” workers, women are often placed in positions of dependence upon men for economic security, hiring, retention, and advancement.
In these dependent situations, a woman’s job is literally on the line all the time. One waitress whom I interviewed described management procedures for getting a worker fired at a Colorado Bazooms as follows:
All of a sudden, we would have menu tests and we were told that if we missed too many we would be fired. Now, I know I missed about twenty. These girls they wanted to fire missed less than that, I’m sure. They were fired right away because they missed some … but they didn’t say a thing to me. Or, if they really wanted to get rid of certain people, they would put up one schedule, then put a different copy up with different hours (the “real” one) after the girls left. The girls wouldn’t know, so they were fired for not showing up to their shifts.
Disciplinary action based upon “company rules” is one of management’s most common exertions of power. Before every shift, managers hold “jump start” which, in theory, is supposed to motivate the workers to “get out there and have fun.” Instead, it becomes an ideal time for management to assert authority. Each waitress is quickly checked for uniform cleanliness, “natural” yet “styled” hair, make-up, and so forth. Then the group is counseled on “proper” Bazooms girl behavior and attitude. Sometimes “pop quizzes” are given to each woman, with questions about proper Bazooms girl service and responsibilities. At other times, lectures are given reiterating rules that have been ignored or broken earlier in the week. The practice of “jump start,” at the beginning