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 was when this rock station was in the restaurant and they were asking me and another Bazooms girl about which actresses had real or fake boobs. The last question was whether I had real or fake boobs. I just sat there silent, I was so upset. And then they started asking bra sizes at one of the tables. That just makes me so mad.
In restaurants subtle yet pervasive forms of sex joking and sexual harassment are used as social distancing techniques that reinforce a waitress’s vulnerable position and maintain her inferiority (LaPointe 1992:388; MacKinnon 1980:60). The joking relationship is asymmetrical; so, while women may “marginally participate,” they must be careful not to say things that would appear coarse or crude. Thus, insults operate mostly one-way, initiated and followed up on by men (Spradley and Mann 1975:97).
Some Bazooms girls mentioned that they wished they knew how to “manage” better when it came to uncomfortable comments, sex joking, and innuendo….
While Bazooms’ management espouses an open-door policy for all workers, Bazooms girl Jeni describes management’s ideal Bazooms girl:
What they want is the ones who can deal with people and shit and don’t complain. They don’t want you there if you are going to stick up for yourself.
Gutek found that women working in female-dominated occupations (i.e., “traditionally female jobs”) are less likely to report and view sexual harassment as a problem, because it is “part of the job” (1985:136). The idea that sexual harassment is part of the job at Bazooms came up constantly in subtle ways during my interviews. The fact that these women expected to have to learn to deal with sex joking and sexist behaviors from customers or managers is a commentary on what women are willing to put up with in the nineties workplace…. Bazooms’ sexual harassment policy states specifically: “Sexual harassment does not refer to occasional compliments of a socially acceptable nature. It does not refer to mutually acceptable joking or teasing. It refers to behavior which is unwelcome, that is personally offensive, that debilitates morale, and that, therefore, interferes with work effectiveness” (Bazooms Employee Handbook).
The part that managers play in the “elimination” of sexual harassment at Bazooms has been criticized severely in sexual discrimination and harassment lawsuits in at least three states. A leading law journal charged recently that Bazooms’ managers are breaking their own sexual harassment policies, and “promoting misogyny and inflicting it on their own employees and inviting the public to come in and inflict it on the employees….”
Agency
What is missing so far in this analysis is women’s responses to these dynamics. There is no question that by following workplace rules of dress and demeanor, Bazooms girls were participants in the interplay of power, gender, and sexuality in the Bazooms workplace. Some waitresses dressed and behaved in ways that emphasized their sexuality and encouraged male patrons’ attention—strategies that were seen to result in bigger tips. The financial bottom line no doubt underlay most Bazooms girls’ calculations about the trade-off between sometimes demeaning dress and behavior expectations and the wages and tips they could expect to receive. There were limits, however, to how much unwelcome attention or harassment the waitresses would tolerate. When these limits were reached, Bazooms girls resisted and manipulated their gendered and sexualized workplace role in a variety of ways….
At Bazooms, waitresses work within and against the constraints imposed
