I have to drive by a swarm of coffee stands on my way to work each morning. All have one thing in common: they are entirely staffed by females. A growing number of these stands have another common factor: the female baristas are wearing little more than a smile.

Bikini baristas are a growing trend in Washington, and the nation as well. Just the other day I read about a stand in Colorado that was being shut down because angry residents didn’t want to see young, half-naked girls when they ordered their Americano. There are those who would argue that there is nothing more Americano than having the right to sell coffee in the (nearly) nude. I imagine it would be hard to find enough fit young women who were willing to strut their stuff in the name of A.M. beverages, but the rising number of bikini stands would tell me otherwise. I got to thinking, what would possess a woman to make this her daily profession? I believe that it comes down to one defining factor—the presence or absence of a dad.

The comedian Chris Rock says that the singular goal of being a father is not to have your daughter be successful, happy, or educated, it is simply to “Keep her off the pole.” In other words, the most important job of a dad is to keep his little girl from becoming a stripper. Now, I don’t have children of my own—if you need a reference point for this, read “Operation Contraceptive” in El Diablito No. 51—but I think if I were a father, I would add to my list of goals “keeping my daughter out of her underwear at work,” be it coffee girl or anything else.

Now, I gotta feel for these girls. They are out there just trying to make a buck like anyone else, and in the current state of the State, that is a hard thing to do muster. I like to think that they are doing the best they can with the hand they were dealt in life, which by the looks of some bikini stand employees, would probably be less than Jacks or better, for openers. Not that they aren’t pretty—by definition, they have to be. Not that they aren’t charming—I assume they are (I have never patronized a bikini stand) in order to sell expensive coffee to meatheads. I think that their deficiency lies inside in a deeper place, and it was put there and nailed home by their dear old dads.

Dads, Father’s Day has come and gone for another year. Your short-lived celebration, sorry to say, is over. It’s time to resume one of the hardest jobs around. Now, I know that you get a bad rap, and there are a lot of you out there who screw up royally, and douche bags who frequent strip clubs thank you from the bottom of their douche bag hearts, but I want to make a request: keep your girls out of the bikini barista business. It has got to stop. Tell your daughters they are beautiful, even if they hate you. Make them feel like they are more than a body for men to use, even down to the point of using their bodies to make something as innocent as coffee.

As long as girls are employed in arenas that exploit their bodies in order to make a buck, dads are failing. With the skyrocketing trend of bikini barista stands in Western Washington, Northwest dads are getting “F-minuses” across the board. Let’s not do this to our daughters. If you go to a bikini barista stand and you have a daughter at home, shame on you. If you don’t have kids and you go, stop being a tool and get your coffee elsewhere. We owe it to our girls: daughters, sisters, and mothers alike.

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