LITTLE ROCK — Kaylee Farris of Fort Smith tells the camera why she likes our fair state.
“I love living in Arkansas,” she says. “It’s beautiful. The people are polite.”
The bronzed, buxom brunette says this with her big, um, manners on full display while the footage shows her posing in puny bikinis.
Farris, 25, recently was named Hooters Girl of the Year 2012. The video, available on YouTube, was released by Hooters as part of a recent promotion.
Yes, that Hooters. The chain known less for its hot chicken wings than its hot chicks in taut tank tops. The one with the motto: “Deliciously tacky, yet unrefined.”
The Missouri native was selected - out of all the employees in 44 states (the restaurant also has locations in 27 other countries) - as this year’s orange short-shorts and pantyhose-clad ambassador.
“Every store in the company picks one girl on the staff that embodies the ultimate Hooters Girl - outgoing, having a good attitude, getting along with peers, taking good care of guests,” Farris explains.
Beauty doesn’t hurt either. Photos were considered, along with essays (in which Farris detailed her whimsical Hooters hospitality strategies - serving ketchup in a tic-tac-toe formation, for example). She and three other finalists were flown to the company headquarters in Atlanta for interviews.
She won $10,000 in cash and prizes, a feature in Hooters magazine (which will make her seventh). She’ll get to shoot a Hooters commercial, make appearances and have a spot in the company’s international swimsuit competition (her third).
On the day we called the location at 6401 Rogers Ave. in Fort Smith, she was working, just like she does every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, as a bartender. We expected a manager to refer us to the corporate office, which would refer us to a spokesman who would monitor the call as we interviewed Farris for five minutes.
But instead she - Hooters Girl of the Year 2012 - is the one who answered the phone before the lunch rush, advertising the day’s special - the “More than a Mouthful” half-pound cheeseburger and curly fries for $5.99.
She’s a regular Arkansas career woman ... when she’s not doing photo shoots for the magazine and billboards, strutting on a runway and training staff around the world. (She recently got back from a Hooters opening in Africa: “It’s really popular there.”)
“People don’t really think we’re really Hooters Girls,” she says about the fine employees featured in the company’s promotional ventures that include not just print but television and social media. The Hooters Dream Girl Bikini Bracket Challenge, determined by online votes, recently aired on Speed (Farris finished in the final four of the Aruba challenge).
“I get fan mail at the restaurant all the time. It’s really flattering. To think, I only applied here to pay college bills and make friends.”
She has worked at the Fort Smith outlet since it opened in 2007. She needed money for school, where she went for two years to pursue nursing.
“I’m taking a break from it,” she says. “I can always go back to school. You can’t be a Hooters Girl forever - I’m 25.” But perhaps she’ll continue to work for the company doing sales or marketing, her current passions.
To those who criticize Hooters, Farris says there’s more to the chain than meets the eye candy. Farris points out that through Hooters she has participated in charity projects, from a Polar Bear Plunge to packing goody boxes for overseas troops.
“Hooters actually empowers their girls,” Farris says without a trace of irony about a business that calls its female workers “girls.”
“I don’t just work at Hooters. I help grow sales for a multimillion-dollar company. Every time I ever get to do anything for the company ... I am always just happy to be thought of and selected. I am grateful for every opportunity. I work really hard. I try really hard. I take my work personally. I’m the oldest of five. It comes naturally to me to mentor and coach.”
To see photos of Farris’, uh, mentoring and coaching, Google her Facebook fan page.
Give a hoot, e-mail: jchristman@arkansasonline.com Spin Cycle is a weekly smirk at pop culture and a weekly segment on Little Rock’s KURB-FM, B98.5 at 7 a.m. Thursdays. Listen live and hear podcasts at b98.com.
Style, Pages 47 on 03/25/2012