¡Más que un bocado! (more than a mouthful): Comparing hooters in the United States and Colombia

Abstract

The year 2008 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the opening of the first Hooters restaurant in the United States, and the opening of one of four Hooters in Colombia. In the United States, the Hooters Girl is constructed as embodying the “all American cheerleader” and “surfer girl next door." These constructions connote a particular kind of femininity and sexuality, one that is decidedly white, US middle class, and heterosexual. Yet, this particular brand of female sex appeal cannot be exported or normalized around the world. Constructions of beauty are geopolitical; even with the impact of globalization, there are specific elements of racial phenotype, body shape, color, and curves that cannot be globalized. Indeed, popular cultural constructions such as the Hooters Girl and cultural spaces such as Hooters restaurants do not work the same everywhere, causing a tension between the activation of local adjustments in the face of external commercial business models. This tension prompts us to ask, how does Hooters-grounded in Americanized standards of feminine beauty-adapt the Hooters Girl in order totrade on female sex appeal in Latin America, and more specifically, in Colombia?.