Letter to the Editor, Tuesday June 16, 2015

What a hoot

I was at home in rural Kerikeri one day last week, polishing the beast.

On rusty old National Radio came the news that US fast food chain Hooters had arrived in New Zealand to study our market, and thus decide if they'd like to move in.

(I love rusty old National radio. It's like an old girlfriend, one that smelled of lavender and wore suspenders).

Now I would not have had a clue who or what Hooters was, except that on one dreary night on TV One last year a show happened along called Undercover Boss. The CEO of large retail chains puts on a wig and makeup, whatever sex he or she is, and then goes to a far-flung branch and applies for a job, thus to spy on how are things are being run at branch level.

The Hooters boss in the TV show did just that, as I tried to decide between another Sauvignon Blanc, hard-to-achieve sleep, or suicide.

Well, it turned out that the term 'hooters' as the company sees it, relates to the ample mammary substance of the female workers.

I have never associated the word 'hooter' with large breasts, and I struggle to make the connection. To this antipodean, a Hooter was a siren or horn that was used as some kind of warning device.

To the Hooters chain, with its American take on the word, it's about big breasts. And the way the company sees them as a sales tool.

I noted as I watched the TV show, having decided in favour of a last glass of SV instead of suicide, that the said hooters disported by these women were on high beam, definitely not on dip.

Then yet another funeral plan ad came on in the commercial break, the Sauvignon Blanc invited me into the arms of Bacchus, and I slid into fitful sleep, which was punctuated by dream scenes of the sun being blotted out for many weeks by massive mammaries all around me.

Next day I went back to polishing the beast while I mused upon all this.

Nothing about this is a joke. I take it very seriously.

First, if Hooters think they are going to invade us in that presumptuous American way, sometimes using stealth bombers and Marines, then they need to know that Kiwis, girls and guys, are not having a bar of it. We do not sell the breasts of our women. (Nor their ponytails).

Further, if you knew the number of women that I know that have had breast surgery, ranging from minor to massively serious, you might agree that for many women breasts are no fun at all.

Enjoy them while it's all going well, don't get me wrong. But given the suffering that happens to so many women, a little way down the line, give a thought. If you've gotten my message, I am well pleased. Because now, as this mammarially-concerned but disaffected man does, here in rural Kerikeri, I'll just go back to polishing the beast.

PETER GILL

Kerikeri