North American Waitress, Coffee-Shop Variety (Know Your Servant Series, No. 1)
1976

Array of seven digital prints 

This work's seven prints skewer the profit-minded exploitation of women's labor by the food-service industry. Its title mimics a public-service announcement or a field guide to exotic and commonplace species of animal. Diagrams and guidelines, mostly aimed at waitresses themselves, reveal the corporate method of reducing women's bodies to a set of regulations, all aimed at serving the pleasure of customers, especially but by no means exclusively male. These accompany three images of waitresses: a diagram of requisite attributes, an ideal waitress, and a real waitress—young, tired, and slightly ragged. At the moment, at least, the real waitress appears incapable of meeting the inhuman standards set for her.