How Hooters Became a Refuge for Young Gay Men

Opinion|Failed Conversion Therapy (With a Side of Ranch) at Hooters

It was an annual tradition. Every Thanksgiving, I would fly down to Florida before the rest of the family. My grandfather would pick me up at the airport. We’d talk about politics, my soccer season and changes to Fox News’s prime-time lineup. But this particular trip, I was 14, maybe 15, and in ways I could not yet name, it was becoming apparent that I was not like most of the boys I grew up with. My grandfather pulled off a sun-bleached stretch of highway to take me somewhere new: Hooters.

Our waitress was a tall, brassy blonde — a caricature of the caricature that is a Hooters waitress. She was in her late 20s with a deep yet indistinct Southern accent, and I could tell she clocked me almost immediately. Who knows if it was how I held myself or how my voice quivered or how my eyes slid away from hers. But later in the meal, when my grandfather went to the restroom, she slipped into the booth across from me and leaned in close. “You’re perfect just the way you are, kid,” she said, or something near enough to it, her voice low, kind and certain.

Consider the delicious irony that a chain restaurant famed for its cleavage and chicken wings somehow became a secret sanctuary for young gay men. I was not aware of this side of Hooters until a few weeks ago, when — following Bloomberg’s report that the company is considering bankruptcy — I posted the story of lunch with my grandfather on social media. It led to hundreds of direct messages from other gay men who felt the trajectory of their lives had changed after a single meal at Hooters.

“Conversion therapy with a side of ranch,” speaking loosely, was the wry refrain I saw time and again in my inbox. So many stories began the same way, with fathers or grandfathers, unsure how to connect with the boys they loved, coaxing them into the family sedan in their early to midteens.

It was an act of kindness, at least in theory. Their relatives could see the young men struggling to hide an unspoken it. Or perhaps the boys merely did not care for UFC Fight Night. Either way, only once they were seated at a table, surrounded by the din of ESPN and the stench of spilled lager, did they understand the purpose of the meal. It was a baptism into manhood — one that would backfire beautifully.

Pop culture, from “Saturday Night Live” to “American Dad” to Joe Rogan, presents the Hooters waitress as a vacant-eyed succubus. She’s seen as a not-quite stripper in possession of little more than a push-up bra and a pitcher of Coors. To many, she’s a punchline or a harlot. To the average patron, she’s a pinup consumerist fantasy. In my experience — and in the experiences of many I spoke with — all these perceptions are slanders as lazy as they are persistent.