If you're angling to be a Hooters girl, here's a little tip: Don't tax your tank top's tensile strength.

Hooters actually has a rule about this. I know this because I am reading it from a poster the Atlanta-based company has provided for the edification of reporters such as myself. The poster is titled "Image and Uniform Standards," and it specifically enjoins Hooters' female employees from wearing their iconic tank tops "too tightly," although it does not specify how a manager decides when the tightness standard has been exceeded. (This is a matter of some curiosity to me, because the poster in question is being held aloft by three exemplary Hooters girls, each of who is wearing a tank top that looks as if it might explode if its owner were to swallow a Tic Tac.)

But I am not here to ogle. I am a professional journalist, and I am making my first Hooters visit to hear top executives who have been dispatched from the company headquarters to 1) ridicule the lawsuit in which a 20-year-old Roseville woman alleges that Hooters disciplined her for exceeding her ideal weight and 2) defend Hooters' right to enforce its rigorous appearance standards, which prescribe with considerable precision how the company's 17,000 Hooters girls should fit into their uniforms.

Does the law even apply?

Cassie Smith is no longer a Hooters girl, and whatever chance she had of winning a coveted place on the cover of the company's monthly magazine probably went out the window the day she sued her former employer, accusing it of violating the Michigan Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination on the basis of a worker's height or weight.

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