I am wondering the FDS stance on work that isn’t explicitly sex, but is sexually-based and normalized in our mainstream culture?

For instance, there are jobs specifically for young women in restaurants whose main selling point is hot girls serving you food/drinks. The restaurants have an appearance standard and dress code, and the venues themselves are blatantly sexualizing them. Think American restaurants like Hooters, Bombshells, Twin Peaks, etc.. The girls are typically aged 16-25 and dressed in booty shorts and skimpy tops or bras. The allure is that you get these girls flirting with you, acting like you’re the greatest thing on earth, sitting down with you while you eat, playing stupid games with the other girls in front of you just so you can watch their breasts and butts bounce around. The restaurant souvenir shop (yes, that’s a thing), sells shirts with lewd jokes on them that the girls can sign for you. I was one of these young ladies and while I hated it, I saved a ton of money and put myself through school.

Personally I feel that these venues are gross and that they exist as a consequence of our patriarchal society. They also to an extent feel like sex-based work (where the more sexual attention you sell, the more money you make). They come just because you’re pretty and to look at your body. They tip you extra for your attention. They pay more the more you talk to them and entertain their mindless rambling and look good while doing it. They do “favors” for you (bought my textbooks, etc.) just for the chance to get more attention.

There are other jobs which are less explicitly sexual or even implicitly, such as bartending at lounges, in which a woman is still automatically sexualized and can “use” her appeal to earn her more money. This contrasts from other jobs (attorney, nurse, etc.) where a woman using her sexuality would be looked down upon.

These “soft” sexualized occupations for the most part do not follow a woman for the rest of her life and alienate her from society. You don’t want to put it on a resumé, but no one would blacklist you from the work force for life. The attorney representing me for my restraining order let me know she was a cocktail waitress like I had been. Many of women use their money from “soft” sexualized work to further themselves (like I did, to get to medical school).

While working, I kind of zoned out and told myself that it wasn’t a job that would kill my future, and if men wanted to be gross and ignorant they could pay me all the money they wanted to look at me in more clothes than I would wear to the beach. Of course the INTENT was different — I wasn’t swimming, I was on display. But my internal argument said that every woman is sexualized for anything they do…. Might as well make them pay. Of course if I’d had the option I’d have picked a different job that paid just so I could get by in school.

I find myself wondering why is this type of work “okay” to society? How does FDS feel about this type of work?