Serving is hard. Being a waitress has by far been the toughest job I have done in my short 23 year-old life. I have worked in five restaurants since the age of 17. Six years later and I can proudly say that I am a good server who is able to cater to a full section of guests and still make the experience fun for them without making any mistakes. This took a lot of time, and a lot of experience, and by experience I mean that I really put in the hours to be as good as I am today. Currently, I am ranked number nine amongst 24 other waitresses in the restaurant I work in. Sadly, this is not because of the skills that I have acquired through my years of waiting tables. I hold this rank because every day when I go into work, my hair is styled and teased, my lips are fully coated and my eyes and cheeks are painted on perfectly, and my tummy looks perfectly flat, making the tiny little crop top that I am required to wear all the more flattering. Among the girls who are also ranked in the top ten are girls who are good at serving and girls who are not, girls who know how to multi-task and get the job done, and girls who nearly faint at the idea of being double sat. One thing they all have in common is that they are stunning, well as far as my managers are concerned.
I work in a restaurant that is unique to the industry. I work in what is known today as a “breastaurant”. These types of eateries offer more than just food and drinks, they offer pretty women along with their company throughout the duration of your dining experience. These types of establishments have grown increasingly popular throughout the past decade, in fact there are over 400 Hooter’s restaurants in the United States alone. I work at Twin Peaks. My uniform is a plaid crop top that I must tie tightly together in order to create an excessive amount of cleavage, tiny khaki shorts that rise just above the crease of my butt cheeks, and furry winter boots. In my place of work, girls are not hired for their experience or their skills, they are hired simply because of how they look. Many people know what these types of restaurants are like to eat at, however they don’t understand what goes on behind the scenes of places like Tilted Kilt or Hooter’s. They never will until they’ve worked there. Before I give insight to the hell that us Twin Peaks Girls are put through, I would like to first state that my job can be very fun, I am provided many wonderful opportunities and have met wonderful girls who have become life-long friends. I will also add that I make a serious amount of money at Twin Peaks which allows me to work less and focus on school. Despite all of this, there are serious issues in these “breataurants” that need to be addressed. As a Twin Peaks girl you must not only look the part, but you are expected to act as though you want to date every man that walks through the door, you are not allowed to eat the fried food at any point during your eight hour shift, and if you do at some point get hungry, you must order off of what is known as a “spa” menu which has five items that are low in calories, carbs, and fat. At Twin Peaks, girls are given a ranking. This rank is assigned based on a girl’s overall appearance, and then her serving skills. There is literally category just for “tone” which is the amount of overall tone your body has to it. Again we get graded based on hair, make-up, nails, anything you can think of that makes a girl attractive we get a grade on. For me, this has never been an issue. I have always loved doing my hair and my make-up, I do not think of myself as ugly and clearly my managers don’t as well, and I have been blessed with a body that lets me eat as I please without it really showing. I am not being conceited I am only being truthful for the sake of this article.
As a higher ranked girl I experienced what it was like to have a “low rank” when I went into work last week. The trouble had all started when I called in a couple of weeks ago, I was just too tired to go to work that day and I wasn’t able to provide a doctor’s note, I said “screw it” and took the day off. I didn’t think anything of it until I had went into work a week later and saw my name at the bottom of the rank. I was upset, but I understood. Being at the bottom not only means I had to pick my section last, but it also meant I was last to leave. This would be hard because Twin Peaks closes at midnight during the week and I had 8 a.m. classes but I remained quiet about my punishment and suffered in silence. At the end of the night after all the top ranked girls were sent home I got a chance to talk to some of the girls I didn’t normally get a chance to talk with. Many of them questioned why I was staying so late, I then explained the situation and they began telling me how awful it was going to be closing every night. I began to get curious and asked why other girls were always so low on the rank and why they always had to close. The responses I got were not only saddening but extremely eye opening as well. Please keep in mind I will be using fake names when referring to girls throughout the entirety of this article. Many of them told me that they weren’t pretty or skinny enough to be at the top of the rank, when I looked at them with confusion they further explained, “ I come with my hair and make-up done all out every day and I still get the same score on them every time, but Susan doesn’t even wear eyeshadow and gets a perfect score”, “ I always have to pick up tables for Danielle because she can’t handle her section but my rank never goes up because they say I’m too fat”, “They gave me a 0 on my hair when it looked exactly the same as Mariah’s but she got a 10”. I began to feel really guilty about my rank, and I also began to question it all together. I took into consideration what the girls were telling me, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized they were right. I even remembered certain instances where girls had points taken off for their nails when they were fully done but I didn’t have any taken off for my half-assed nail polish that I did in the car.
As the night went on we all continued talking. One girl even told me that she was trying not to eat anymore because she wanted her tone grade to go up that badly. She said that she couldn’t keep closing every night because she was failing all her classes but this was the only job that she could make enough money to help get her through school. After looking at this girl and seeing absolutely nothing wrong with her body I began to feel sick. I began to question the judgment of every single manager and suddenly I felt uncomfortable in my job. The idea of Twin Peaks or Hooter’s or any other “Breastaurant” suddenly became so absurd to me that I actually debated quitting the entire next week. I became resentful toward the managers, how could I not? They were all overweight, elderly men, who had unrealistic ideas about what women should look like. They had never curled their hair, or done their make-up, so who were they to tell me I was doing it wrong? The whole idea of these “Breastuarants” was to cater to men’s fantasies, beautiful women catering to their every need and wish. In reality, what is happening is the men who are coming in to eat are degrading women and viewing them as servants and the men who are running the restaurant itself are not only allowing it but doing the same thing as well. The ranking is not true, it is not honest. Half of a Twin Peaks Girl’s grades are based off of shift performance but anyone who works there knows that it isn’t done that way. It all started to add up, how some girls were able to move up more quickly than others despite their lack of skills, how some were allowed to miss work or not do their job without being reprimanded, it all made sense. These were the top ranked girl, the prettier skinnier girls. The important issue is that girls who were perfectly beautiful began to see themselves as imperfect due to someone else’s standards for them. It affects their psyche on a serious level.
The rank at Twin Peaks also creates a hateful work environment by putting women in direct competition with one another by literally putting on paper that one is better than the other. When I began to break it all down it became truly horrifying to me that this type of sexism still exists and so many people take part in it. Before beginning this article I sent out 12 job applications. After a month of being back at the top, I decided no amount of money is worth a man grading me on how I look, even if it was a good grade. I do my make-up for me, I do my hair for me, I work out and try to be healthy for me. I can’t speak for Hooter’s Girls, or the girls who work at Tilted Kilt, but I do know they all have similar work requirements and atmospheres. It’s not just Twin Peaks, it’s any restaurant that uses the lure of beautiful women to attract men for sales. Sex sells but for what price? I hope that one day we win the war against sexism and we abolish these types of establishment’s altogether. Your Twin Peaks Girl is so much more than just a pretty face, she is a student, someone’s daughter, a girl struggling to pay her bills. She is more than just a rank. To any girl that is considering a job at a Twin Peaks or any place in similarity, be mindful of how much money you will spend on make-up and fake nails, be mindful of how men will treat you as you walk by in lingerie for a Valentine’s Day dress up, be mindful of how dangerous it can be to work in place where strange men learn about you. If you are looking for way to make good money fast, trust me I understand, but just know that you are putting your self-esteem at risk. No man should grade you on how you look. Grades are for school, and even those suck.