The Sexualized Workplace
It is beyond my—my mental capacity to understand how anyone could walk into a [Bazooms] restaurant and apply for a job and look at the sign and look at the—the concept and look at the uniform and not understand that female sex appeal is an essential ingredient in the concept.
—Mr. Mcneil, Manager Of Bazooms, Minnesota
At the turn of the century Emma Goldman suggested, “Nowhere is woman treated according to the merit of her work but rather as a sex…. She must assert herself as a personality, not as a sex commodity” (1910:7,12). Close to a century later, Catherine MacKinnon (1980) related a similar point in her book Sexual Harassment of Working Women: “Most women perform the jobs they do because of their gender, with the element of sexuality pervasively explicit” (p. 60). According to Goldman, MacKinnon, and other feminist theorists, women not only work “as women” but as sexualized women.
Bazooms makes no secret about sexuality as a part of its key to success. The employee manual states in its sexual harassment policy that employees should be aware that they are employed in an establishment “based upon female sex appeal.” As Mr. McNeil pointed out, everything right down to the waitresses’ uniforms and the name of the restaurant connotes sex appeal. The slang term bazooms is usually used in the context of male desire and breast fetishism; it is a term that treats one part of the female body as an object of sexual desire. Tanya, director of training for Bazooms, answered a new hire’s question about the term bazooms in this way:
So what if [Bazooms] means “tits.” That doesn’t offend me. It’s all in fun … just six guys in Florida trying to be goofy. They used to want us to hide the fact that it means breasts. But now we figure, Why be ashamed of it? You girls should never be ashamed of where you work. And if anyone asks you what it means, you just say, “Whatever you want it to mean.”
Why is female sex appeal such a great marketing success? Probably because it appeals to male fantasy. Customers (roughly eighty-five percent male at my workplace) buy into the commodified Bazooms girl, which they hear about everywhere. Since “no publicity is bad publicity” to Bazooms, Bazooms girls have been highlighted in popular magazines such as Playboy. In a leading national business magazine, Bazooms is described as a place with “food, folks, and fun, and a little bit of sex appeal.” In fact, according to this magazine, the idea for Bazooms came from a Florida football player/contractor in 1983 who wanted “a mildly profitable excuse for swilling beer and ogling blondes.” Thus, Bazooms is premised on women’s bodies and their presence in male fantasies ….
Comments that customers made to me reflect the “titillating” nature of Bazooms, and the expectations they have about what the waitresses symbolize. One man said he didn’t want to embarrass himself, but he thought that I was “too wholesome” to work at Bazooms. Answering my question about why he didn’t think I fit in, he whispered to me, “You are not slutty enough.” Another male customer called me over to remark, “I’ve been watching you all night and I think you have to be the most innocent-looking girl here. This means that you must have a wild side and I like that.” Both of these comments encapsulate this male fantasy of the virgin/whore. I was obviously too much “virgin” for both of them, but the second man made up for this by fantasizing that I had a “wild side” (the “whore” was simply latent or hidden away).
Further comments and behaviors reflected the sexualized expectations of customers. I asked one man who looked interested in buying a shirt, “Can I show you something?” pointing to the merchandise counter. The customer responded, “I’ll tell you what I want to see …” and tossed a dollar my way….
It is in this sexually charged workplace catering to male fantasy that “masculine culture” emerges. A major newspaper describes Bazooms as “a lot of men’s idea of big fun.” With women (Bazooms girls) “acting out” feminine roles (pet, mother, sex object), men (customers) perform as well. At Bazooms, customers perform masculinity rituals, often in groups. One might encounter groups of male customers engaging in a number of masculine “acts.” These generally include flirting with waitresses and vying for their attention, joking about body parts and other publicly taboo subjects, challenging each other in the area of alcohol consumption, setting each other up with waitresses, making requests for hula-hooping, and so on. For example, comments such as, “You give good head,” can be heard among groups of males when a waitress is pouring beer. One man asked, “Why don’t you wear the low-cut tank top?” while another said, “My friend wants to meet that girl over there. Can you get her to come over?”…
Socialized through interaction with customers, Bazooms girls learn to “manage feeling” in order to keep the customers as happy as possible. “The masculinity rituals [in the bar] would not be effective without the cooperation of the waitress. She has learned to respond demurely to taunts, invitations, and physical invasions of her personal space…. The cultural expectations are clear: she should remain dependent and passive” (Spradley and Mann 1975:133). In this way, gendered sexual identities, expectations, and roles are shaped through customer interaction. As the “audience, marginal participant, and sex object,” the Bazooms girl is there to “enhance” masculine culture (add to the eroticism by playing out visual and interactive elements of male fantasy) and at the same time, enjoy the attention she gets as “the object” (p. 133).
The fact that Bazooms is male-identified is well illustrated by the feelings of intimidation experienced by female customers. The most common question asked by a female customer upon entering the restaurant is “Am I the only woman in here?” Although there are between six and fourteen Bazooms girls within the restaurant at any given time, the “men’s club” atmosphere is quite obvious….
Sexual Harassment and “Sex Joking”
… In her study of sex in the workplace, Gutek (1985:144) found that of a random national sample of 827 “traditionally employed women … 75% said that sexual jokes and comments were common in their places of work.”
Similarly, Spradley and Mann (1975:95) found joking to be a powerful force in the work environment they studied. The “joking relationship” was essential to establishing the “masculine atmosphere” of Bradys’ Bar, “centering on insults made in jest, direct references to sexual behavior, comments about anatomical features with sexual meanings, and to related topics normally taboo for conversations between men and women.”
I observed numerous examples of this sort of sexual harassment or “sex joking” at Bazooms. Comments made by customers such as “You give good head,” or “Your lips would be so nice to kiss,” or “I wish I were in the shower with all of you,” are not common at Bazooms, but they also are not taboo. I was warned by one Bazooms girl when I went to apply for the job: “You do have to put up with a lot of shit.”
A national business magazine reports that “appropriate activities among [Bazooms] customers include winking, leering, nudging and smirking.” According to Bazooms girl Sheri, there’s something about the Bazooms environment that permits behaviors one wouldn’t find at another restaurant: What makes it different is that Bazooms customers are a little more open because of the atmosphere. They [customers] are a lot more forward—instead of waiting a couple of times to establish themselves as regulars until they attempt to ask you something….
What a sexually permissive environment allows for is room for degrading comments, sexist behaviors, and “insults made in jest.” As a consequence, women working at Bazooms reported feelings of hurt, embarrassment, and humiliation….
Kanja felt embarrassed and upset about behavior that occurred at Bazooms:
The worst experience