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Waiting work, however, was not always a prominent occupation for women. In 1900, barely a hundred thousand people worked as waiters, and only a third of these were female; as late as the 1920s, men still retained close to a half of all wait jobs. But by 1970, more than a million people served food,…

Waitressing reveals the deeply gendered expectations surrounding the world of work. In the theater of eating out, the waitress plays multiple parts, each reflecting a female role. To fulfill the emotional and fantasy needs of the male customer, she quickly learns the all-too-common scripts: scoldin…

My interest in unionism—and more specifically unionism in a traditionally female occupation—undoubtedly had its roots in my own particular family history and my desires to recast that history. From my father I learned male union traditions, both noble and shortsighted. The railroad brotherhood gave…

On a more mundane level, consumer capitalism badly needs the artistic imagination: someone has to create Mickey Mouse or Treasure Island, Fagin or Hannibal Lecter and all the other fictions represented in simulation. So it seems that art will continue, whether the artist is subsumed by the spectacl…

[...] To old, dirty Europe, America has always seemed aglow with toothpaste, Gleem and deodorizers for every intimate inch. Showers seem to gush constantly. And Hollywood -- every image has been dry-cleaned. We know that America is pathologically, obsessively, fanatically obsessed with hygiene. Thi…