In a TikTok posted on Oct. 31, Samantha Hernandez (@hzsamantha) shows the tights she wears when working at Hooters, which are multiple shades darker than her skin tone.
“Why does Hooters make us wear tights that are not our skin color,” she wrote in the overlay text of the video.
When the TikTok blew up (it has over 176,000 likes and has been viewed over 2 million times as of Wednesday), Hernandez told the Daily Dot that she was surprised at how many people hadn’t noticed that most of the servers at Hooters wear the same color tights. In an email, Hernandez also confirmed that Hooters has not contacted her about the tights.
“When I first started working there,” she told the Daily Dot, “I did reach out to my boss and all he told me was that he didn’t know why they only had two colors of tights.”
Commenters on the video had a lot to say about the tights. Some had theories about why Hooters provided specific colors.
“They give the darker girls the whitest tights,” wrote @gloomywasp.
“Because they expect girls to have an 80s tan,” commented @toowildformild.
“When I worked there in 2005,” shared @melaniedenniston, “they had 4 different color options.”
“They do that so that it is obvious you have under tights/pants under the short spandex,” guessed @xo.musa.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Hooters.
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