Not winging it at Hooters: Conventions for producing a cultural object of sexual fantasy

• Cultural objects can be both object and activity.
• There are (gendered) cultural, organizational, and interactional expectations about production.
• Certain cultural objects are reciprocally constitutive of these (gendered) expectations.
• The producer also internalizes and reproduces these expectations.
• We call this form of cultural object “producer-as-object-as-producer”.
• Gendered conventions can shape the production of cultural objects.
• Gendered conventions reinforce the gender social order.
• Gendered cultural industry systems require a substantial amount of body and emotional labor.

This analysis elaborates the significance of gender within the production of culture by examining the experiences of women who produce the cultural object of Hooters Girl. The Hooters Girl is manufactured like other cultural wares – but the Hooters Girl herself is simultaneously human and material. Based on semi-structured interviews with current and former Hooters Girls, we illustrate the ways such cultural objects are reciprocally constitutive of (gendered) cultural and interactional expectations, organizational expectations about production, and the ways the producer internalizes and reproduces these expectations. We have labeled this form of cultural object “producer-as-object-as-producer” (PaOaP). Our analysis identifies several gendered conventions that shape the production process; the women who produce the Hooters Girl come to embody the conventions for producing “her” including the very specific, sexualized aspects of the gender structure upon which Hooters trades. As a culture industry, Hooters is successful precisely because it capitalizes on – and exports – a version of heteronormative femininity and sexuality that resonates with masculinist conceptions of women's sexual attractiveness.