Photo Name: Waitress, The Diner
Photo taken: 1997-2000 on Lake Street [Minneapolis, Minnesota]
Photographer: Wing Young Huie
Project Name: Lake Street USA
Zoomed In
This photograph is of a older women and specifically her hair. Her hair is expertly pinned up with care. She is wearing a ironed collared shirt and a apron that says "The Diner". She is wearing earrings and glasses. She is photographed in the diner in which she works or so it appears. She is seated in a chair at a table with another cleaned and set table in the background.
Zoomed Out
Waitresses are commonly young women working a job just for money, we assume looking at this employee that she has has somewhat of a difficult life requiring her to work as a waitress at a diner. Her hair is pinned up in a practical but pretty way which signifies that she is aware of the work she must do but she also cares about how she looks. The earrings, her unwrinkled collared shirt as well as her hair show that she takes pride in her appearance even with customers who do not respect her. She wears glasses which shows she is practical and would rather not squint. She wears an apron which is probably required but also practical as she is dealing with food. She appears as someone who enjoys her job or at least sees herself as important despite her minimum wage position which implies that socio-economic status is not her primary concern.
Connection [Wing Young Huie to The Handmaid's Tale]
Huie presents "othering" through focusing on the waitress's hair. It is inferred that her hair is what is interesting about her as the stereotypical waitress can not have nice hair or would not waste time to look nice. Atwood presents "othering" in a similar way as she discusses the societally made stereotypes. These stereotypes and rules mainly center around women being less than men. One example of this is how Luke treats Offred when she loses her job in the pre-Gilead days: "Hush, he said. He was kneeling on the floor. You know I'll always take care of you. I thought, Already he's starting to patronize me" (Atwood 232). Her husband was not overly concerned or outraged when the government stopped allowing women to work. He, even before the oppressive society was fully in control, did not believe that she as women was equally important to him which is adhering to a stereotype. In both these stereotypes are defied because the waitress does take time to make her hair look nice as a wealthy women would and Offred survives for a time while breaking the rules just like some of the fellow men did but, she survives for arguably longer than them which shows she is smarter and thus possibly more important.
