Reply
Thu 12 Nov, 2009 08:00 pm
When a Virginia father took his son, to Hooters for lunch, it touched off a lively national debate on sexuality and tweens.
Bob Elston, a stay-at-home dad, took his 11-year-old to Hooters, the restaurant chain best known for its busty, scantily clad waitresses, and then he wrote about the experience and his son's reaction on his parenting blog, The Rain Racer. The Herndon, Va. father of four says he saw the experience as a teaching moment.
"The trip to Hooters, I saw as an opportunity to see how he conducts himself around women. If he drooled and couldn't take his eyes of the waitress, then that would be an unmistakable cue to me to start preparing another birds and the bees talk. If he acted embarrassed and shy, then that would be a sign that such a pointed talk could wait a bit. So what happened?" Elston wrote.
The post has already garnered thousands of views and also landed Elston on National Public Radio and in USA Today, where he called the lunch "an opportunity to check on my own son's development, or lack thereof, in a real world setting."
Elston shared his thoughts on blogging, the development of sexuality and parenting tweens in an email interview with ParentDish.
ParentDish: What drove you to blog about taking your son to Hooters?
Bob Elston: I started blogging about parenting four months ago because being a parent is probably both one of the most frustrating and fun things you can do with your life. Those of us who raise kids learn quickly that our window to guide and influence them is surprisingly short. We need to use our time wisely before our kids grow up, go to school and become independent adults with their own ideas.
PD: Were you surprised at the reaction that your story inspired?
BE: Yes and no. Yes, because my parenting blog used to be an obscure speck on the Internet, read only by a few dozen friends of mine and a couple of extremely bored Internet surfers who happened to stumble upon it. I never imagined that 4,000 people in a day would read it. On the other hand, I am not surprised because "'sexuality" and "our children" is a universal issue that all parents think about and strategize what is best for their own children. The topic is also a red-meat issue that divides society in general.
As a blogger, I find it most interesting to write about issues in which both sides have valid arguments and that we, as parents, must make a choice with trade-offs. Sex is one of those issues. Parents, at some point, have to get off the fence and decide whether they are comfortable with being open and honest and giving their children the right information about sex, or whether they want to try to protect their children from sexual images and information and accept the risk that their kids will find out about it from their friends, movies, television and the Internet. We all know that most 11-year-olds out there are curious and will find out about sex with or without their parents' help.
PD: Had you frequented Hooters without your son before?
BE: I had been to one probably a decade ago with friends for a drink after an NBA basketball game. I also went once with my dad while we were in Atlantic City for a boxing match. I myself don't find Hooters very titillating, and there are tons better places to have a beer and watch a game on TV.
ParentDish: Were you surprised at your son's reaction? It sounds like he was oblivious.
Bob Elston: I wasn't too surprised because I know my son very well. But I also know that as a boy in sixth grade, changes are coming and puberty is just around the corner. I talked to my son's sixth grade teacher, who said that this is the grade when everything changes for a lot of kids. They start the school year thinking that their opposite has cooties and by the end of the school year, they have a different attitude. That is the way it was for me. For now, though, his reaction was probably typical of an 11-year-old before the changes, and that is awkwardness.
PD: The photo shows a fairly average-looking young woman, as far as body type goes, but still people were inflamed. Why do you think that is?
BE: I think the sexual ingredient gets people inflamed. If I had blogged about taking a 10-year-old to a PG-13 movie, or allowing an 11-year-old to play mature video games, the reaction would have been far less.
As for the photo, I posted it so that readers wouldn't conjure up in their minds an image that was at odds with reality. Apparently a lot of people who made comments on my blog seemed to lump Hooters in with strip clubs and assume that Hooters waitresses are bad people. I think you can see from the picture that the Hooters uniform isn't all that revealing and their waitresses are just like anyone else. To me, a picture of an 11-year-old boy and a 20-something waitress is non-threatening because, after all, what can possibly happen between them? I was a bit uncomfortable putting my son's face out there, but my wife and I agreed that it was worthwhile to make a point.
I think probably that individual reader reactions are determined not so much by the attractiveness of the waitress, but rather their own attitudes. For those who see this lunch primarily as an issue of sexuality and morality, they might be uncomfortable with introducing an 11-year-old into the discussion.
ParentDish: You wrote that your son later approached you and said that he was being teased for going to Hooters. Did you feel like you had created an awareness of sexuality that maybe wasn't there before?
Bob Elston: I think the teasing part is the thing that most concerns an 11-year-old prepubescent boy. But my son is a mature boy and is growing up in a family that likes to joke around a lot. He doesn't mind being teased about most things, but when it comes to girls he gets sensitive to the teasing.
ParentDish: Do you regret taking him to Hooters?
Bob Elston: I don't regret it. It was a pretty harmless situation in my view. He was there not only with his own dad, but his grandparents, a friend from the neighborhood and that friend's father. I called my wife and got her approval. We were there at lunchtime with a lot of other families. If the situation was different -- say, if we went late at night when there is no kids and the beer is flowing freely -- then I wouldn't so much as regret it but not do it in the first place. As soon as he walked into the place and took one look around, his curiosity was satisfied and he now sees no reason to go back. As a parenting outcome, I'll take it.
ParentDish: Do you regret writing the blog post?
Bob Elston: No, I don't regret it. I write a parenting blog and this is an important parenting issue. After all, in the Internet age, anyone can be a blogger and anyone can be a critic. I actually don't mind the criticism.
I think that despite the divisiveness around this particular issue, we parents all have the same goal in mind. That is we are all trying to raise our children to grow into thoughtful, responsible and happy adults capable of making good decisions without Mom and Dad there to guide them. The trick for parents is to figure out a unique route to that common end point.
The only part I do regret is that all this attention means I risk being known as the 'Hooters Dad' when, in fact, there are so many other parenting topics that I write about that seem to me more important to me.
ParentDish: After everything that happened after your post and knowing what you know now, would you do it again, and would you write about it? Why or why not?
Bob Elston: I don't regret it. That said, I don't think any parent should do something with their kids because some obscure blogger that nobody has ever heard of said it was OK. Each of us have to think about what is best for our kids and make the call for ourselves.
@dyslexia,
Yeh, they always leave ya hangin', don't they.
@Merry Andrew,
The Hooters in town here tries to position itself as a family restaurant. I don't think taking children of any age there is a big deal.
@engineer,
The same up here in Canada. I have never been, but I am told that there are mostly families with many children.
Maybe that is how dad gets to go.
Never been in one. I always figured it was all hype anyway.
@engineer,
I agree engineer.
I mean, c'mon, it's a waitress wearing a tight t-shirt and short shorts.
you can see the same thing walking down the street.
I've taken my son to Hooters before. They have good wings and we both enjoy them.
I have a problem with parents using their kids to make a point or to validate or guide their parenting skills.
@sullyfish6,
I know what you mean... this seems a little forced.
That said, I don't have a problem with someone taking their kid to Hooters.
I don't have a problem with it either (and I feel I am a bit conservative on these sorts of things). It is a restaurant where the girls are in shorts and low tops - you see this every where - there are worse things.
However, it is more the idea that he is introducing sex to his child in this way that bothers me. If you are going there because you like the food (and even if it is because the dad likes scenery) so what. It feels icky is the only way for me to describe - bringing a young boy to see his reaction...
As a teenager, in the 90s, I'd ride with my friends 20 miles to the Hooters on Milwaukee's south side. Oh the magic, eating medicore pulled pork sandwiches with giant erections. And then riding home. Where are girlfriends were not waiting for us, because they did not exist.
Just a few years ago on my brithday a friend took me to the Hooters here in the Loop (there should be a bouncer who immediately punches in the face all who enter, all who have rejected Chicago's thousands of brilliant dining options in favor of cold curly fries). And it occurred to me how very strange Hooters truly is, particularly considering that it hasn't changed a whit since its inception.
Most bizarre is the uniform. The tight white tank top, gleaming white tennis shoes, and bunched bleached socks hearken back to a time when the phone you used in your car had a cord attached to it and people would shout "Hey, Macarena!" at nightclubs. "But, Gargamel," you say, "Long, sexy legs never go out of style, do they?" And I say, no, no they don't, but look closely, and you'll notice that Hooters waitresses are not, in fact, bare-legged. They wear copper-colored, often wrinkled and sagging pantyhose, over which they wear short shorts hiked to just below their breasts, the way your great grandmother would have worn shorts had she lived in an era when doing so wouldn't result in her being shunned by the community and forced to flee to a nunnery. And then there are the waitresses themselves. Fine ladies in general I'm sure. But while their uniforms are designed to suggest sex, their countenance suggests an accounting exam at 8 AM sharp the next morning. Hot!
What harm could it be to take your son there? Use the opportunity to teach him to tip properly, while explaining that all over the world people suffer daily humiliation as a means to achieve a greater, hopefully redeeming end. So leave a few fuckin' dollars on the table, my boy.
Agree with everything everyone has said. I just wonder why this dad felt it was even worth blogging about. Would he write a long post on the subject if they'd gone to, say, Burger King instead?
I'm with Linkat.
If the dad thinks it's time to talk to his kid about sex, it's time to talk to his kid about sex. Taking him to a restaurant to get his reaction to the wait staff is just bizarre. I would be hilarious, however, to see this incident produced as a National Geographic documentary.
On a side note - I caught Mo and his little droogs Goggling "sex videos" on my computer the other day.
They didn't notice I had the search function set to "Google Scholar".
(teehee)
Serves the little monsters right.
So I took Mo out to the strip club/juice bar (yes, that's right -- Oregon has strip club/juice bars for the under 21 set) and told him how those videos objectify women.
(Truth: they did not watch any sex videos through Google Scholar, the parental controls are now on my computer, Mo is now off my computer without supervision and not at all when his friends are here.)
I tried it once.
Its nothing out of the ordinary.
I don' t think much of the food.
@Gargamel,
Yep.
Used to occasionally go to Hooter's while I was out on audits, as they had (at the time) plentiful, cheap food. We only got, I kid you not, $25/day for meals. Also ate at a lot of Bob's Big Boy's, too.
In all honesty, the St. Pauli Girl was dressed and appeared more provocative than the Hooter's gals, who were generally relieved to see a woman -- perhaps thinking I at least wouldn't leer at them (I didn't).
if i had a son i would teach him you must respect the things in life that are important, and for that reason i'd never expose him to hooters food
Note that at Hooters, there is much less anatomy revealed
than at the beach or a swimming pool, which r not usually deemed controversial.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace