Does a waitress with pigtails earn more tips? A viral challenge in networks shows sexual stereotypes about women

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Some women who work in the service industry sport pigtails at work as part of a social experiment to see if they will earn more in tips from male customers.

From waitresses to dancers, the women who participated in the experiment and shared their experiences on the social network TikTok stated that their tips have increased since wearing that hairstyle at work, denouncing that this demonstrates the sexualization suffered by young women in society. .

"Unfortunately, women are fetishized in different ways because of their appearance," said Lisa Stirling, 25, a waitress who shared the results of the experiment on TikTok.

"If changing my hair is going to affect that in a positive way, then that's something I'm going to try," she added.

Alp Peker / EyeEm / Getty Images/EyeEm Premium

Braided pigtails are associated in pop culture with childhood.

cartoon

;

Bubble, from

;

and Boo from

wore that hairstyle as a symbol of their youth.

And women who wear that hairstyle are often infantilized in series and movies.

In the 1990s, Emma Bunton, nicknamed Baby Spice, wore her blonde hair in pigtails to match her Spice Girls character.

At age 16, Britney Spears wore that hairstyle when she appeared as a schoolgirl in the

music video .

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The so-called pigtail experiment gained traction on TikTok after a waitress identified as Grace posted a video saying she got more tips when she wore pigtails at work, according to BuzzFeed.

She did not describe it as a sociological experiment in the video, but as fact.

"When you wear your hair in pigtails to work and make twice as many tips as usual," wrote Grace, who did not respond to a request for comment on her video, in which she sings to

Lana Del 's

. King, uttering the phrase, "Come on, you know you like little girls."

Grace's clip resurfaced on TikTok in July, more than a year after Stirling's video amassed more than 4 million views, and went viral.

Stirling said that before she used pigtails she made about 12.5% ​​of her sales in tips, and now she makes 16.7%.

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“As soon as I put those braids on, I tell them something clicked with those men and they started throwing money at me,” said Veronica Portillo, 20, who works as a dancer at a

club in Tennessee.

Portillo's first TikTok video of her experience with pigtails exceeds 6 million views.

Portillo recounted that a man asked her for a dance when she had pigtails and said her hairstyle reminded him of his "little niece."

"It's been so sexualized that I wouldn't call it a little girl's hairstyle anymore," Portillo said.

Portillo said that on a Sunday with few customers in the club he can earn about $100.

But by wearing pigtails, things changed completely and he earned more than 600 dollars.

"When I got off the stage some men came up to me and said, 'I love your hairdo. I want a dance,'" she said.

"It's definitely unsettling," she added.

Still, he plans to use other types of pigtails to see if he can get even more tips.