This Hooters Employee Was One Of Many Who Went Viral For Refusing To Wear The New Uniform, And Together They Got Hooters To Change Their Policy Back
"I was like, ‘What do y'all think this is gonna cover? Because I have a butt.'”
Sometimes all it takes is a viral video and a whole lot of community support to change a corporate policy.
Which is exactly what happened earlier this week after numerous Hooters employees began complaining via TikTok about the new uniform shorts policy.
In case you are not a frequenter of the Hooters establishment, here's a quick refresher on what the old uniforms looked like:
The shorts are, dare I say, already short.
And here's what the new ones look like:
Her video got more than 15 million views and thousands of comments from both Hooters employees across the country and people just generally outraged over the new design.
"When they [Hooters corporate managers] explained it to us, they said, 'They look like high-waisted bikini bottoms,’" 23-year-old Lexius told BuzzFeed. "But as you can tell, that’s not what we got."
"My initial reaction was 'Oh, these are gonna be cute if they’re high waisted,'" she explained. "But then the next day I went to work and held it up, and I was like, ‘What do y'all think this is gonna cover? Because I have a butt.'”
Lexius said she and her other co-workers in their Atlanta Hooters location were concerned about what underwear they could wear with the new shorts, because even with the old shorts and tights, "There's a certain underwear you have to wear."
"With the tights, that right there was an issue [already] because in the back you could see the box on the tights because of how the shorts are cut," she explained.
Lexius said she has a lot of mixed feelings on the shorts because she doesn't "hate them" but doesn't "love" them either. What she's been most frustrated about has been the sexist comments she's seen online surrounding this debate.
"All the comments were saying like, 'Oh this is what they signed up for' — no, this is not what we signed up for."
But on Monday, Lexius said her managers told her Atlanta restaurant location that Hooters was implementing a new social media policy: "No recording videos in the bathroom or break room at work, no recording videos or taking pictures at the bar," she said. "And if we aren’t at Hooters, we aren’t supposed to be taking pictures or videos in our uniforms outside."
Lexius said her manager also instructed her to take her initial TikTok of the new shorts down because of the "cussing" in it and because her "butt kind of jiggled."
She said she personally feels like Hooters might have had good intentions in upgrading their new uniforms but went about it the wrong way.
"I feel like it’s a whole new generation of girls that work at Hooters," she explained. "BBLs are a thing, having a bigger behind is a thing, and I feel like Hooters was trying to stay up to date with how society is, but the way they went about it was the wrong way."