I studied Hooters girls for a living heres what I learned about their well-being

It’s the end of an era.On March 31, Hooters filed for bankruptcy — not long after shuttering dozens of “underperforming stores.”While the restaurant chain will not be closing its doors for good, it has announced plans to “re-Hooterize” — axing its infamous “bikini nights” and attempting to return to its “family-friendly roots.” Hooters was founded in 1983 in Clearwater, Florida — and quickly became known for its attractive and scantily-clad waitstaff, the overwhelming majority of which was female.

Its success spawned an entire restaurant genre known as “breastaurants” — and its proposed re-branding leaves the future of the famed Hooters girls unclear.But how much do we really know about the inner lives behind those ample bosoms? Many women were drawn to Hooters by the promise of higher earnings and flexible schedules — with some claiming to have earned hundreds or even thousands of dollars per shift.

But the boost to their bank accounts could sometimes come at a pretty high psychological price.“I was originally interested in studying servers at breastaurants because I could sense an interesting dynamic at play,” Dawn Szymanski, a psychology professor at the University of Tennessee, wrote in The Conversation.

“On the one hand, it can feel good to be complimented for your looks.On the other hand, I also wondered whether constantly being critiqued might eventually wear these servers down.”Through a series of studies, Szymanski and her team revealed a somewhat depressing reality behind the brand’s “Delightfully Tacky, Yet Unrefined” slogan.

Firstly, they found that the managers of these restaurants were often very controlling when it came to the appearance of their servers — who were given booklets with beauty instructions down to hair and nails and virtually prohibited from gaining weight or changing their looks in any way.On top of that, they had to be charming and pleasant at all times.

“They were instructed to m...