"It made me feel terrible and made me feel ashamed," Iman McClanahan says.
A woman was asked to leave a restaurant for allegedly wearing "inappropriate attire."
Iman McClanahan says she was wearing what looked like a typical summer outfit when she was turned away from the Stab's Steakhouse in Baton Rouge.
"The owner comes out and she's like, 'Ma'am, you can't wear that in here,' and I'm like, 'What's wrong with what I have on?' And she's like, 'It's too revealing. You can put on a jacket or go somewhere else to eat,'" McClanahan tells Inside Edition.
The 32-year-old nurse practitioner recorded the encounter.
"This is just too revealing at the top," the restaurant owner told McClanahan in the video. "I'm telling you that we have doubled down on our dress code. It's been like this for a while now."
McClanahan says the incident made her feel ashamed.
"I never thought of myself as a plus-sized woman and then it makes me hyper-critical of myself. It's emotionally damaging," McClanahan says.
Photos show McClanahan has worn the same outfit during a previous visit to the steakhouse.
During McClanahan's most recent visit, she was told the dress she was wearing was against the restaurant's dress code.
McClanahan's cellphone also captures a waitress wearing a more revealing outfit.
"The servers have on fishnets, with mini skirts and crop tops," McClanahan says. "If you're going to hold your customers to a standard, then your wait staff needs to have that same standard."
A dress code posted on the restaurant's website calls for business casual, and no revealing clothes, including tank tops.
"It says no tank tops but you're telling me that, in a tank top," McClanahan says. "I'd never had this happen to me before and I feel like I was pre-judged and discriminated against."
Stab's Steakhouse has released a statement about the incident:
"We have a dress code policy that we ask our customers to observe that has been in place for more than three years. A few times a month, we speak with our guests about their attire including asking them to remove baseball hats in our restaurant.
Contrary to reports, our attire policy is not new. It has been in effect for some time now.
Consistent with our policy, we spoke with this guest about her attire. She pointed out that we have waitstaff dressed in a manner that might not meet the standard of our attire policy. For the last several weeks, we have actually been working on a different uniform, so that we are not asking a different standard for our customers than we require of our staff.
We have reached out this morning to both the local NAACP in response to their meeting request and to the father of Ms. McClanahan, at her direction, to meet together to open dialogue and hopefully find common ground."
