Читать книгу Mapping the Social Landscape - Группа авторов - Страница 79

1. For reasons of confidentiality, all names used in this paper have been changed. Identifying traits (of this establishment) have been removed and identifying references are not included. This [research] was cleared through the University of California Human Subjects Committee as a student project.

2. Bazooms’ management likes to characterize their establishment as catering to families, probably in order to counter the sexy, bachelor-pad reputation that the local media assign to the establishment.

3. Interestingly, only about half of the chosen group would be considered “busty” by society’s standards.

4. This falls under the category of opportunistic research or “auto-ethnography,” in which the researcher becomes a participant in the setting so as not to alter the flow of interaction unnaturally, as well as to immerse oneself and grasp the depth of the subjectively lived experience (Denzin and Lincoln 1994).

5. I am aware that covert research has come under significant attack from social scientists. The issue seems to be that of disguise: misrepresentation of self in order to enter a new or forbidden domain, and deliberate misrepresentation of the character of research one is engaged in (Denzin and Lincoln 1994). These issues do not apply to my project, since I did not disguise myself in any way in order to get “in” at Bazooms. The management did not ask why I was applying and I therefore did not volunteer the information. Furthermore, I was up front with my subjects about “doing a school project,” upon interviewing them. Finally, with names and identities changed throughout, I cannot see this report inflicting harm in any way. All quotes (from waitresses) are based upon recorded interviews.

6. LaPointe argues that requiring employees to wear degrading uniforms emphasizes their “low status” and distinguishes them from their superiors.

7. Recent news coverage did report that, based upon a four-year investigation, Bazooms is being charged $22 million by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for sex discrimination in hiring. Yet, amid recent controversy over the EEOC’s decision, Bazooms Company took out full-page ads in major national newspapers to insist that men do not belong as servers at Bazooms. Each ad featured a picture of a brawny man ludicrously dressed in a Bazooms girl uniform.

8. It must be mentioned that, like women, males are also often required to do “emotional labor” in the workplace. Nonetheless, as Hochschild points out, females hold the majority of responsibility for emotion work. According to Hochschild: With the growth of large organizations calling for skills in personal relations, the womanly art of status enhancement and the emotion work that it requires has been made more public, more systematized, more standardized. It is performed by mostly middle-class women in largely public-contact jobs. Jobs involving emotional labor comprise over a third of all jobs. But they form only a quarter of all jobs that men do, and over half of all the jobs that women do (1983:171).

9. It is important to add that some of the waitresses believe “management is just doing their job,” and don’t complain.