hypocrite!

Remember in that one sermon, when Jesus goes around calling the Pharisees and Saducees "hypocrites"? There's actually probably a few diatribes about them in the Gospels, but I always found them to be kind of funny, although I can't explain why.

Any way, I try to keep on health care news, especially as it relates to nursing, and came upon this article about The Heart Attack Grill in Tempe, Arizona, a burger joint that serves up it's 8000 calorie burgers with the aid of scantily and sluttily dressed women in "naughty nurse" costumes. There is even such a thing as a Sponge Bath Saturdays, which, having given probably thousands of bed baths to really devastatingly ill patients by now, I really don't want to think about as applicable to a dining experience, ever, but I'm intrigued by the marketing possibilities.

So, the Arizona Board of Nursing is peeved. Nurses are peeved. Apparently there's a lot of professional outrage over the skimpy, cleavage-happy costumes, etc.

And, as a nurse, I can understand where all the anger and the outrage is coming from and why everyone is so getting so stoked up about this whole thing.

But, can I say, at the risk of being lynched by the next Womyn's Group that reads my blog, that I also find it kind of lame to get this flamed up over what amounts to a major lack of refinement in restaurant decor and theme. When I really stop and think about it, I realize that I am much more outraged over the actual working conditions of the average hospital nurse than I am the sexualized objectification of my profession.

Of course, arguments can and have been made that image, respect and working conditions are all correlated, and those arguments are valid, too.

But I can also argue for a disjunction of those linkages, and it's precisely because I a nurse, and I do work very hard and want the best for my colleagues and patients, and I think if we were half as united and actively doing something about it as a profession as we are getting all upset and wounded over some stupid burger joint, we'd actually get somewhere in our fight for better working conditions and ultimately, patient care.

One the one hand, I find the "naughty nurse" theme of the burger joint very ironic, and farcical, and just plain silly. If you've ever listened to Greggory Isaac's reggae song, 'Night Nurse' and thought it was funny (as I do), you probably see why I'm not terribly outraged.

Yes, it's all very tacky and probably offensive to some people, and I grant that the costumes and advertising probably don't do the women in our profession any favors, but, on the other hand, I'd rather a state Board of Nursing get pissed off and mobilize its resources over an issue directly relevant to current practice, like patient nurse ratios or inter-professional dynamics, rather than freak out about one burger joint's objectification of women (because let's face it, it's not about the nurse costumes, it's really about the women in the nurse costumes.)

It's sort of like applying Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Give me decent patient ratios, working conditions that aren't a page out of The World of Feudal Europe, circa 1250, a decent salary and retirement, and then I'll be happy to discuss and tackle the objectification of women in nursing and the damage it supposedly does to our profession.

I mean, seriously, have you looked at the grill's website? Geraldo is doing a newscast! They have a theme song and a comic book, for God's sake. I repeat: Geraldo is doing a newscast, people.

(And, as a side bar, maybe someone should point out that an eight thousand calorie burger is probably much more scandalous and a whole lot more ethically dubious than the half-dressed co-ed serving it.)