What's a Waitress?

Thirty years ago, Federal Judge John M. Woolsey decided that Ulysses was not obscene on the grounds that it was a work of art. Last week New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur G. Klein decided that a seminaked waitress is not obscene on the grounds that it does not matter.

Justice Klein was considering the case of the Bunny, the look-but-don't-touch feature of the Playboy Clubs, which have proliferated across the country like rabbits in the past few years. Manhattan's club cost $3,500,000 and had already gotten a restaurant license from the state.

But City License Commissioner Bernard J. O'Connell denied the club a cabaret license, arguing that the Bunnies' costumes left too much to be desired.* "It would appear clear," he ruled, "that the applicant's main appeal to its prospective customers is the lure of its scantily clad waitresses," who are "using the costume as a lure for the purpose of pushing liquor."

But Justice Klein declared: "If the license commissioner, in his own mind, equates the Bunnies' work clothes with seminudity and . . . even progresses to the point where they become synonymous with nudity, that, too, is at most merely unfortunate. To satisfy his personal moral code, it is not incumbent upon the petitioner to dress its female employees in middy blouses, gymnasium bloomers, turtleneck sweaters, fishermen's hip boots or ankle-length overcoats."

It is possible that Judge Woolsey, who defined obscenity as "tending to arouse sexual impulse," might have dissented. If the Bunnies were not rousing at least a few sexual impulses, the Playboy Club was obviously wasting its money on their non-costumes.

* Not as much as the waitresses at Kansas City's prewar Chesterfield Club, who wore no clothes at all.

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