America 18: Sex

America isn't uniquely obsessed with sex, but it is obsessed with sex in a unique way. Something that wends its way through reproduction, recreation, relationships, personal need, gender politics, power dynamics and identity surely deserves at least the amount of attention it gets, maybe more. But the kind of sex you see most often here isn't real sex, it's more like a fetish for the idea of sex. It's an abstraction, removed from all context of the act itself to the point where you can put it on your insurance billboards. This is nowhere more apparent than at Hooters, a kind of national icon of sexless sex. There's nothing that can really prepare you for being seated next to a table of fifteen people, half of them under 12, at a family restaurant whose main distinguishing feature is that the waitresses' shorts don't fully cover their butts.