Back sometime towards the end of the 19th century, my great-grandmother was the first woman in Cardiff to be granted her own license to sell alcohol. Her sister, my great-great aunt, likewise ran her own Cardiff pub. I have heard different stories in the family about which one of them started doing food, but one or other is generally, according to family law, credited with having invented the pub lunch. Pubs had previously only been places for serving drink, and we’re told that during the depression, in order to provide work for her children, whichever one it was or maybe both started serving lunches in the pub. Of course I like to believe this story and boast how I’m descended from the inventor of the pub lunch. But whatever the accurate historical truth is, it’s certainly the case that both were hard working, independent and resourceful women, who looked after their families, earned their livings, served honest fare and contributed to the social life of Cardiff, a model to follow.
At the end of last year, after more than a century of ‘progress’, a new establishment has opened in Cardiff about 150 yards from my great-great aunt’s old pub, which also claims to boast an opportunity for women to work in an atmosphere of emancipation and a progressive morality, where fun can be had by all free from the shackles of the past. It’s Hooters, the restaurant chain named after the US slang word for breasts. (I wonder why they don’t have the honesty to translate it and call the restaurant by a British English – or a Welsh – slang term for this part of the body? “Let’s all go along to Tits for a bite to eat, chaps!” – is it because it makes it sound so puerile? Apologies to any babies for the offence – of course, few actual children act in such a puerile manner.) The women who work there dress in skimpy orange hot pants and tiny tops. I won’t give any more publicity to this horrible phenomenon. But the contrast between late 19th/ early 20th century visions of female emancipation and independence with those seen so often today speaks for itself.
A campaign is currently underway to close Hooters in Bristol. There’s also another campaign to stop the Girls Gone Wild tour from coming to the UK.