By being aware of pressures to be thin and pretty, and counseling [her] coworkers on resisting these pressures, Trina [was] actively redefining gender ideals in the workplace.
Counteracting and Co-opting Sexual Identities
Women who dress to get attention, to show off their bodies, to look or feel “sexy” in our society, often end up getting labeled “whore,’’ or “slut,” and may be seen as “asking for it.” Many of the Bazooms waitresses were concerned that their provocative outfits would force them into one of these sexualized roles. In response to a sexual slogan printed on the back of every T-shirt and tank, one Bazooms girl stated: My hair covers the slogan, and we’re not those kind of girls anyway. Nonetheless, Bazooms girls are associated with “those kind of girls,” that is, sex workers or prostitutes working in a sexually charged environment where sex appeal is part of the product commodified and sold in the marketplace to men. The girls I worked with became aware of these associations early on, and they spent much time sharing and reacting to these negative associations….
Some of the women who work at Bazooms attempt to counteract these negative associations. One Bazooms girl remarked: We need to educate men. Just because you are wearing this uniform doesn’t mean that you are asking for anything, doesn’t mean that you want anything more than a job. Several Bazooms girls made a point of telling customers that they were college students, or mothers, waitressing in order to save up money for education or family expenses. In this way the “girls” challenge the Bazooms girl (ditzy, sexual pawn) image most customers have and try to make the role more personal and respectable by sharing their own stories.
Some of the women, on the other hand, do not resist the negative associations but use them to achieve their own ends. In co-opting the “bad girl” role, some hope to appeal to customers by using sex appeal to their advantage, hoping to get bigger tips (or more attention) this way. To Katy, “learning to deal with people more sexually” is to be able to control the situation in order to avoid embarrassment. Although it is harder to get people to admit to using the sexualized image for their own ends, once in a while stories fly among customers and waitresses about “what some [Bazooms] girls will do for money.” Playing up the sexualized Bazooms girl role can be a serious money-making strategy:
I’ve seen girls hula-hoop and get money thrown at them. Then they lean over and give the cleavage shot to the men. And at the downtown store the girls do things with pitchers of beer to make it look like a wet T-shirt contest. These things just do not work for me at all….
There appears to be a split among these women: those who try to resist the Bazooms girl role, downplaying the sexualized, flirty image, and those who co-opt it, embellishing it as their own. One employee rejects the company’s expectation; another turns it to her own ends….
Negotiation of Sexuality and Sexual Harassment
There are times when the Bazooms game goes too far. What may be fun and games to one woman may be sexual harassment to another. Responses to crudeness or to offensive comments or actions by customers take many different forms at Bazooms. Katy says that when customers deal “sexually” with her: I just get so embarrassed and walk away. But if they said something that offended me, I’d just go to the managers. I wouldn’t even hesitate. Trina concurs, saying: We don’t have to put up with jack. I won’t take [offensive remarks]. It’s not worth my pride. I give customers the gnarliest looks. Kristy’s response to offensive remarks is different: I usually just laugh and walk away. As illustrated in these differing instances, women are responding in varied ways to the sexualized nature of the job, and to offensiveness from customers….
Harassment is taken for granted as part of the job at Bazooms. By defining abuse as part of the job, waitresses can continue to work without necessarily internalizing or accepting the daily hassles and degradations as aspects of their self-definitions or sense of self-worth (LaPointe 1992:391). In other words, if women enter into a waitressing job expecting crude remarks, degrading uniforms, and unnecessary management-based power plays, they may prepare themselves for the worst by setting personal boundaries, with conditions attached.
The waitress (Christine) who had her “butt grabbed” made a decision to deal with the harassment in a way that she thought would bring a higher tip. And it did. Another waitress, Twayla, made a decision to react quite differently in a similar circumstance: I turned right around and told him, “You will not do these things to me.” These two women weighed personal priorities and dealt with similar sexual behavior in different ways. Christine decided to allow a man to cross a particular boundary—but for a price, turning the incident to her advantage. Twayla made clear her boundary would not be crossed….
For others, self-esteem is more undermined than affirmed by the sexualization of the workplace, and the tips are not worth the price. Bazooms is kind of degrading sometimes, says Trina. [Customers] refer to us as if we are stupid. It’s hard to explain, the way they talk … they are talking down to us. Of course, contempt sometimes goes the other way. Trina goes on to add that the waitresses don’t respect the customers either: I think the waitresses kind of look down on the men. Because all of them—it’s like they are dirty old men.
Conclusion
Bazooms is a good deal more than a “family” restaurant or a place where men can “swill beer and ogle blondes.” It is a theater in which dramas of power, gender, and sexuality are played out. Within this drama, women play an explicitly subordinate role. As MacKinnon, LaPointe, Reskin and Roos, and Hochschild point out, their behaviors are severely constrained by the realities of employment in the service sector. Women are hired to put on a specific performance, and at Bazooms they are constrained by the formal script that Bazooms encourages its employees to follow. Furthermore, women are limited greatly by the assumptions men make about the appropriate and desirable place for women, especially in a sexually charged atmosphere. In the Bazooms environment, it is easy to classify these women as objects.
Yet, women are also actively shaping their own experiences at Bazooms. The constraints on their actions are severe, but within them women struggle to retain their self-esteem, exercise power, and affirm the identities they value….
Bazooms girls are not helpless performers. They are women struggling to find ways to alter their roles, rewrite the script, and refashion the nature of the drama…. Women sometimes also turn the play to their own advantage, finding opportunities to increase tips, support their kids, and even find some affirmation of self-worth.
In sum, the waitress is not a passive casualty of the hardships of her work. Within the structure of the job, she has developed an arsenal of often subtle but undeniably effective tactics to moderate the exploitive elements of her occupation and secure attention to her own needs (Paules 1991:171). Few people passively watch their lives go by. The notion of agency suggests that workers in all fields, regardless of their formal options, actively take at least some control of their own destinies. In the voices of Trina, Katy, Christine, and others we can hear women responding to their circumstances and asserting themselves as agents within the Bazooms drama.
Notes
1. For reasons of confidentiality, all names used in this paper have been changed. Identifying traits (of this establishment) have been removed and identifying references are not included. This [research] was cleared through the University of California Human Subjects Committee as a student project.
2. Bazooms’ management likes to characterize their establishment as catering to families, probably in order to counter the sexy, bachelor-pad reputation that the local media assign to the establishment.
3. Interestingly, only about half of the chosen group would be considered “busty”