Was Hooters forced into bankruptcy because it’s no longer sexy enough?
Annie Joy Williams in The Atlantic suggests just that. “Hooters knew how to sell just enough sex to be palatable to people like my Southern Baptist neighbors” in Tennessee, she writes. Conservative churchgoing men could ogle buxom young women under the pretense of ordering chicken wings. The “titillating naughtiness of Hooters,” of “smacking the ass of the woman wearing the tight shorts,” as one academic puts it, was its raison d’etre. Now, according to a former Hooters waitress who decamped to dance at a strip club, the restaurant chain is “just too tame for today’s customers.” In an age of OnlyFans, girls in tight t-shirts and shorts aren’t sexy enough.
One prominent evangelical theologian sees Hooters’ potential demise as an opportunity for evangelization: “The Hooters parking lot down the road might be emptier than it used to be. But will your church’s lot be fuller?”
Without an abundance of female flesh, probably not.
Lutheran Guilt 