Bodies.

“I’d take all sorts of measures to try to minimize the number of times I’d have to go to the bathroom during a shift. The inevitable result: leaking tampons, stained underwear, and general discomfort just so my coworkers wouldn’t think I was weak.”

  • Samin Nosrat

Built Spaces.

“This as your work outfit is so demeaning.” —J.

The restaurant industry has been built for cisgender male bodies. 

In Cheffes de Cuisine, Rachel E. Black argues that culinary training is one part hard skill and one part “learning to labor in a specific cultural environment” (Black 84). As part of her field research she enrolled in a culinary school in Paris, where she found herself learning to embody techniques, skill and masculine hierarchy in equal measure. The 10-inch chef’s knife—much larger than the one she uses at home—made her hand blister. When she began her stage at a restaurant she felt unsafe changing in a dark, isolated room. The hot, cramped kitchen was a constant reminder that her pregnant body didn’t belong. Each of these tools and conditions is a reminder that restaurants are for men. If women are looking for physical comfort, they should stay home. 

Uniforms, though, are the most interesting—and fixable—product of these gendered spaces. Eighteenth-century chef Marie Antoine Carême created the uniform that is still widely used today to perform prestige: a crisp white chef’s coat and a towering toque. You could definitely argue that this uniform is gender neutral, because a boxy coat and a hat does fit all bodies. But the problem is that it was created without any consideration for someone without broad shoulders and straight hips. People of all shapes and sizes deserve to feel polished and included at work—especially when it’s something as physically demanded as cooking. Plus, it may be time for an update anyway: is a uniform that was invented almost three hundred years ago still the best option?  

In customer-facing restaurant work, uniforms can be explicitly gendered. There are often strict rules for men and women, as there are for airline workers. Sometimes women are required to wear make up and heels, or men are required to shave. Still, men are often the default. To draw on a current example, in 2017 the storied Eleven Madison Park reopened after an extended hiatus. They had refreshed the menu, renovated the space and, excitingly, created bespoke uniforms for the servers. The beautiful charcoal grey suits—complete with a handful of different colored ties—were created by menswear designer Todd Snyder, as featured in GQ Magazine. One hitch: they were designed by men for men, with no option for women. This says that either there were no women servers on staff at that time, or that the women were given a different, perhaps less glamorous option that wasn’t worthy of a splashy feature in a stylish magazine.

Sometimes uniforms are overtly sexist. When we spoke, J had just gone to dinner at a man-owned restaurant in Los Angeles and was shocked by the hostesses’ uniforms:

“I walk in…and they’re wearing straight up—I don’t know how to characterize it besides they’re wearing a white nightgown with this cute little thing around them, like, Greek goddess vibes, and white heels. I’m like, y’all look hot. I’m happy for you. This as your work outfit is so demeaning.”

Hosting is physically demanding work. Hosts are required to stand for hours on end and keep up a positive attitude while managing the flow of service for an entire restaurant. Practical, comfortable clothing should be the default, and J believes that if it were up to the hosts, that’s what they would have picked. “But these hostesses don’t have a say,” she told me. “Somebody else deduced, let’s make our hot hostesses wear nightgowns for the entirety of their shift.” I pointed out that hosts are now expected to operate as public safety officers, checking vaccine cards, enforcing mask mandates and sometimes getting physically and verbally assaulted in the process. J exclaimed, “Talk about an outfit you don’t want to be wearing when you’re getting physically and verbally assaulted! A really sheer white slip with three-inch pointy heels. You don’t feel safe, secure, able to do your public safety mandate with that outfit on.”

Nonbinary, gender nonconforming and trans women have an even harder time navigating gendered spaces. Cramped locker rooms, gendered bathrooms and binary dress codes can all make it difficult for these folks to feel safe at work (Orlove, Saxena). Gendered styles of service—such as serving women first, or automatically giving the check to a man—are also manifestations of masculine restaurant culture and reinforce gender stereotypes. These groups can face hostility from customers, and correcting a guest on your pronouns may result in a lower tip or harassment (Saxena). The old stereotype that women are not physically strong enough to work in restaurants is clearly untrue; rather, the space around them has been built to exclude them or, at the very least, to make them uncomfortable. 

Denigration of Women’s Health.

“If you’re going to be here, you almost have to be male.” —R.

To succeed, women are required to perform masculinity by denying their health. 

As a masculinized occupation that prizes physical endurance, restaurant culture leaves little room for period and pelvic health. The women I spoke with repeatedly reported that they were unable to prioritize physical and mental wellbeing, skipping doctors’ appointments, avoiding going to the bathroom and and working through serious injuries. While it is absolutely true that the long hours and intense physicality of restaurant work can be grueling for all bodies, I found that people with uteruses had an especially hard time. 

While S was navigating period health issues, S was working at a growing restaurant group in a role that required extensive travel. She had gone off hormonal birth control—which typically causes unpredictable periods and a host of nasty side effects—and was on “the worst period of [her] life” when she was asked to go to Boston for work: 

“I got on the train and then the CEO gets on the train [and sits across from me]. I can't go to the bathroom, because this man is talking to me. I'm doing work for him. He's like, oh, can you annotate this? Can you do this or that? This is a three-hour train ride. Finally I get to the bathroom. I think I got blood all over the inside of my jeans. It was the worst.”

S describes feeling such pressure to perform well for the CEO that she is unable to excuse herself to go to the bathroom. 

While this may seem shocking, nearly all of the women I spoke with had at one point or another sacrificed the basic functions of their female bodies to succeed at work. R articulated needing to deny her body to work in restaurants. “If you’re a female…you almost have to brand yourself as male,” she told me. “Like, I don’t have a period…there is nothing other about me. I’m just one of the guys.” When the company hired a new CFO, R noticed that he was evaluating her worth based on the number of hours she spent at her desk. Eventually she knew she had to leave: “I recognized that I couldn’t live in that type of circumstance where I felt concerned to go to the bathroom.” Not being able to go to the bathroom can lead to serious health issues, which Samin Nosrat articulated in a Charlotte Druckman’s Women on Food. Asked if she’s ever been made aware of having boobs at work, Nosrat responded by saying that it’s really her vagina that’s been the issue: 

“Not so much boobs as a vagina. I’d take all sorts of measures to try to minimize the number of times I’d have to go to the bathroom during a shift. The inevitable result: leaking tampons, stained underwear, and general discomfort just so my coworkers wouldn’t think I was weak. Not to mention the UTIs I gave myself on several occasions because I refused to listen to my body and go to the bathroom. Every female restaurant cook I know has had to deal with this—thinking about it fills me with rage.”

As well as UTIs, periods are (or can be) invisible in a way that pregnancy and breastfeeding are not. In restaurants, these functions are overt reminders of the power of women’s bodies and as such present a visible threat to the masculinized status quo. In my research I found the unwillingness to accommodate women restaurant workers who needed to pump breastmilk to be the most glaring evidence of a cisgender male default. Beverly Kim, the chef and co-owner of Parachute and Wherewithall in Chicago, worked twelve-hour shifts after her first pregnancy, often without pumping, leading to serious and painful incidents of mastitis (Kiesling). To avoid these kind of complications, M would pump in the middle of her shift after her child was born. She had to use the restaurant’s only bathroom with an outlet, and colleagues were hardly accommodating:

“I would have to go in there before they open[ed] for lunch. Oh my god, that was the worst place. I felt frustrated and bitter and angry because no one seemed to understand. They were all guys, or…young women who just didn’t get it. I had to lock the door and be in there for a while, and people would be banging on it.”

Despite the fact that she went to great lengths to pump in a way that wouldn’t disturb the restaurant’s operations, her coworkers were unable to accommodate this basic function of a postpartum body. If women’s bodies aren’t respected or even acknowledged at work, how are they supposed to become leaders?

Sexual Harassment.

“Do I think things get reported? Probably. Do I think things get reported? Probably not.” —AL.

Restaurants are often sexualized environments, where innuendo is a tool of workplace bonding.

This “banter” has normalized the objectification of women and turned the restaurant industry is a hotbed of sexual harassment and assault. While it is important to note that people of all identities are the victims of sexual misconduct, women experience it at the highest rates: a whopping 90% of women restaurant workers report being sexually harassed at work. Women on short-term or unpredictable work contracts—such as hosts and servers—are at an even higher risk of sexual harassment than those in stable, salaried roles (Criado Perez). This pervasive sexual harassment and assault is the most violent way that men hold onto positions of power.

#MeToo.

The general public became aware of just how pervasive this misconduct was over the span of a few bewildering months in 2017. On October 21, 2017, reporter Brett Anderson broke the first story to bring the #MeToo movement to restaurants. In an eight-month investigation he spoke with 25 current and former employees of BRG Hospitality (formerly called The Besh Group), owned and operated by Chef John Besh. Besh and his business partners had allowed sexual misconduct to run rampant: women reported being touched without consent by men colleagues, company leaders leveraging power for sex, and a culture of silencing women who spoke out. 

Just two months later, Kitty Greenwald and Irene Plagianos broke news of Mario Batali’s similarly abhorrent behavior for Eater. From early in his career Batali, a previously publicly beloved, croc-wearing ambassador of Italian cuisine, had persistently and frequently groped women employees, used sexual innuendo in workplace conversations and created a culture of terror.

The day after the Eater report was published, Julia Moskin and Kim Severson’s reporting for The New York Times on restaurateur Ken Friedman went live. Friedman had a similarly lengthy history of groping his women employees, texting them for nude pictures, kissing and touching them, and requiring all-night shifts at private parties where they had to put up with touching from his famous friends. The private room above his restaurant The Spotted Pig was dubbed “the rape room” by staff and Mario Batali, a frequent visitor, was known as “The Red Menace” (Moskin & Severson 2017). 

Four years later, men chefs are still regularly engaging in similarly abusive behavior. In April of 2021, Blaine Wetzel—chef at The Willows Inn in Washington—was reported as creating a workplace where teenage girls were inappropriately touched and intimidated into having sex with staff (Moskin 2021). In June, Edouardo Jordon’s staff quit en masse because of his sexual misconduct; 15 women reported being nonconsensual touching and receiving unwanted sexual comments (Varriano & Fields).

Maskual Harassment.

Sexual harassment by customers has only worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic in a phenomenon dubbed “maskual harassment.”  In a survey of 1,675 foodservice workers conducted in fall of 2020, 41% reported a noticeable uptick in the frequency of sexualized comments from customers (Mackinnon & Fitzgerald). The report included dozens of examples: 

“I am called a whore constantly for asking people to wear a mask.”

“Take off your mask so I can stick my tongue down your throat.”

“A young hostess was explaining to a customer that they had to wear a mask, and they threw their hands down to their genitals and said: ‘Eat this!’”

Women have endured because of job insecurity. 1 in 4 restaurant workers lost their job in the first wave of COVID-19 in spring and summer 2020 (Mackinnon & Fitzgerald). At the time of this report the labor shortage hadn’t begun; in fact, many workers were eager to return to their jobs because they needed the income. This creates a power dynamic where servers, who are reliant on tips, felt unable to challenge customer harassment for fear it would impact their income. The study indicates that their feelings are justified: 83% of workers said their tips had declined during the COVID-19 pandemic (Mackinnon & Fitzgerald). 

Many of the women I spoke with had their own stories of workplace harassment, but they mentioned them in passing, almost as afterthoughts. This unconcernedness may simply be a product of avoiding painful memories, but I took it differently. Sexual misconduct is so widespread in this industry that they simply don’t consider it a significant part of their history. When B was 18 she was working as a prep cook in Berkeley, “which is probably the first time I experienced sexual harassment of any kind, just because there weren’t boundaries of culture.” O chuckled as she described dealing with inappropriate behavior as a kind of professional prerequisite:

“I was personally put in a position where I was making decent money at a job,” she told me, “and I was putting up with the chef—he would ask me to have a threesome with his wife and try to touch [my] hand.”

R came up in similar circumstances: “I have personally [been harassed] tons of times. As a young woman in the industry, starting off at 18, 19, it’s just like you’re fair game.”

My conversations with these women indicate that while the #MeToo movement has laid bare the sheer scale of industry sexual harassment, it is still considered pretty standard behavior. Put simply, women in restaurants are still relentlessly sexualized, creating an exhausting, unsafe and unsustainable dynamic. The normalized objectification of women’s bodies is an enduringly harmful way that men push women out of the workforce, perpetuating a cycle of harmful—even violent—masculinization. 

Physical Assault.

“As a young woman in the industry, starting off at 18, 19, it’s just like you’re fair game.” —R.

Harassment overall has increased during the pandemic, and hosts have bore its brunt.

82% of restaurant hosts are women, making it the most gendered job in the industry. Unlike other roles, this gendering is often intentional. As O put it: “Every time you see a young woman walk into a restaurant trying to get a job, they’ll always push you to host.” Leaders, she explained, want “hosts to be disarming, and charming, and cute”—all qualities our society assigns to women. These gender dynamics have turned hosting into ground zero of violent behavior towards women’s bodies.

Hosts are often amongst the youngest and least experienced people working in restaurants, but they have one of the most important jobs: to maintain a pleasant and profitable flow of service, while keeping guests and staff happy. Still, their bosses underestimate them. O told me that throughout her career she’s seen her bosses “always direct girls toward hosting and boys toward food running and bussing, because I think they think [men] are more physically capable.” 

This logic begs a question: if men are stronger, why are they putting their women colleagues in the line of fire? Hosts have endured a slew of physical attacks over the past two years, which are powerful and abhorrent reminders of the way the restaurant industry continues to devalue women’s bodies. Caroline Young, a 24 year-old host who was recently interviewed by The New York Times, regularly deals with guests repeatedly violating her safety: “I have been screamed at. I have had fingers in my face. I have been called names” (Krishna). When she asked a customer to put on his mask, he threw a water glass at her. Another woman interviewed for the same article explained that her boss purchased an air horn for hosts to use in case guests become violent. In many places violence is no longer an if—it’s a when. In August 2020 a group of 11 people attacked 17 year-old Kelly Wallace, a host at a Chili’s in Baton Rouge, for telling them no more than 6 people could eat together at a table (Gyan Jr.). She was punched in the face repeatedly before a member of the group picked up a “wet floor” sign to hit her.

A relentless cocktail of physical, verbal and sexual assault means that restaurants are unsafe workplaces for women. While the pandemic has exacerbated this kind of violent behavior, it has also shone a light on it and made the media and general public more invested in preventing it. This shift is small, but it’s an important start. An ever-present threat of bodily harm makes it impossible for women to rise to leadership positions. 

Lack of HR.

“We don’t need to spend money on this one if we can just fake it, you know?” —AH.

Every woman I interviewed cited a lack of institutional support as a a causal factor in sexual misconduct.

Specifically, they were frustrated with the deprioritization of Human Resources. “[HR] is often a shared hat,” explained B. “The general manager is also the HR person who’s also doing the exit interview. So if you have a problem with the general manager, and your exit interview is with the general manager, then where is the safe space?” AL also had no one to turn to in a time of need:

“I was being emotionally harassed—I just worked for this very toxic guy. I remember I was telling [my coworkers] and they’re like, you should go to HR. I just laughed in their face. We don’t have HR! What am I going to go do, tell my mom?”

AH offered a similar perspective, explaining that “in all the roles I had while I was in the food industry…there [was] no HR department anywhere to control any of these toxic relationships, or even just vent about an experience…There was just no one to go to.” When I asked her why HR wasn’t a priority, she was unsure but guessed that cost was the culprit: 

“Honestly, I think it’s expensive…When the margins are as small as they are in restaurants, [there’s an attitude of] if we can do it ourselves and if it hasn’t been ‘needed’ up until this point, especially up until #MeToo, we can do it ourselves. We don’t need to spend money on this one if we can just fake it, you know?” 

R, who is an independent HR consultant, explained that because HR is dominated by women it remains undervalued. “In the field of HR, predominantly you see women. I will say that’s because originally HR started off as you know, you plan the company picnic. Just feel good things.” She explained that HR is still fighting for respect, which is reflected in the #MeToo stories outlined above. Only Batali and Jordan had existing HR services before news broke of their misbehavior. Besh hired a consultant on October 1, 2017—just three weeks before the story about him broke. Friedman had similarly “recently hired” an HR director ahead of being reported by The Times (Moskin & Severson 2017). Wetzel only hired an outside consultant once staff started leaving (Moskin 2021).

Hiring HR departments—even if it’s only when your misconduct is about to become breaking news—is a step in the right direction. It helps counter the culture of fear that so many women in these media reports cited. Almost all of them spoke on the promise of anonymity, as did the women I interviewed. The restaurant industry employs more than ten million people but it is exceedingly small, and men still rule the roost.

Hope for Change.

“I think there’s now a fear of getting outed, and I love that. I love that so much.” —O.

Even in the face of so much strife, there is reason to hope.

The plight of restaurant workers—and of women particularly—is at the center of the news cycle in a way I haven’t seen in my lifetime. That so many women’s experiences are being documented and studied is a huge step in the right direction. 

As O put it: “I think there’s now a fear of getting outed, and I love that. I love that so much.” So many men have been removed from their positions of power for objectifying their employees, and some have faced legal and financial consequences. Batali, for example, is no longer financially involved with B&B Hospitality. As part of a recent settlement he was ordered to pay $600,000 to 20 people victims of sexual harassment, and B&B is required to overhaul its sexual harassment procedures, delivering updates to New York Attorney General Laetitia James every six months (Severson). He is also facing two further civil law suits and a potential criminal trial, while Friedman has paid $240,000 and a share of The Spotted Pig’s profits to 11 former employees (Severson). As R explained:

“Harassment in general has become a topic of conversation. It’s no longer tolerable, right? Not that it doesn’t happen. It still happens all the time. But it’s no longer something that we just say, you know, you slap some’s ass, haha, it’s all jokes. That is no longer tolerable, which is a good thing.”

AL feels similarly empowered not to endure or condone sexualized restaurant culture: “I’m not afraid to be a whistleblower at this point…These days, the risk of not taking the appropriate steps is greater than figuring it out.” 

References.

Images.