Why Do I Find These Little Hats Annoying?
08/10/2010
And do other people have the same reaction? This picture was in the local paper yesterday. It's the country-ish duo Sugarland performing in Gulf Shores last weekend. I have nothing against them, although I don't know their music. But that hat...I remarked on my annoyance to my wife, and she said "Because it looks too little for his head?" Maybe that's part of it, I don't know. It seems like a malformed Sinatra-style fedora (the real thing would be much preferable).
If you find out I'm wearing one two or three years from now, please hire someone to shoot me.
They are definitely annoying, and the too small factor is part of it.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 08/10/2010 at 12:40 PM
Do you mean you want a photo-shoot?
Posted by: Craig | 08/10/2010 at 12:52 PM
No, the traditional kind, with bullets. Perish the thought of my being photographed wearing one of these.
Posted by: Mac | 08/10/2010 at 01:16 PM
I just remembered that there is one student here that wears a hat like that--a really big guy. He has a whole collection of "colorful" outfits. I think he must be a musician.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 08/10/2010 at 02:31 PM
More of a pork pie than a fedora, surely?
Posted by: Paul | 08/10/2010 at 05:51 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU_RxWXijz0
Posted by: Paul | 08/10/2010 at 05:52 PM
Yeah, you're right. But it looks good on him:
http://www.ladyday.net/pict/page6/b_coleman.jpg
Not exactly the same hat, though--taller and the brim is flat--and I think a little wider, too.
Posted by: Mac | 08/10/2010 at 06:10 PM
My first reaction was that he looks like a leprechaun. Couldn't say why I think that, though...
Posted by: Clare | 08/10/2010 at 06:44 PM
Oh yeah. I definitely thought leprechaun hat when I saw it.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet Cupo | 08/10/2010 at 06:46 PM
Go to Google Images and search for leprechaun, and you'll see why you thought of that. (I hadn't.)
Posted by: Mac | 08/10/2010 at 07:21 PM
My first thought was of Tyrolean hats, but it's not one.
Posted by: Paul | 08/11/2010 at 02:37 AM
Hats on men in good weather or indoors always struck me as contrived. A small hat would be almost useless for rain, sun, or cold and so would be all the more contrived.
For me it goes even beyond that. To explain, I have to admit to a bit of gender bias. Vanity is never admirable, but being so heavily conditioned by the culture, I can easily overlook a touch of it in a woman. It is repugnant in a man. And that what I see in that silly little contrivance of a hat.
Even-handed as I am, my gender bias goes the opposite way when it comes to vulgarity. I think and hope that it ends about there.
Posted by: Dave | 08/11/2010 at 04:57 PM
Tyrolean hats are cool, though, even if they are impractical. I have no justification for the inconsistency.
Posted by: Dave | 08/11/2010 at 04:59 PM
You must still have most of your hair. :-) Now that mine is extremely sparse on top, it's amazing to me how much difference even a baseball cap makes in cold weather. It's also a good idea to keep something between bare pate and broiling sun.
So I could sympathize on that score, but I don't think that has much to do with why this guy is wearing this hat. I totally agree about male vanity (not that I'm 100% immune).
Posted by: Mac | 08/11/2010 at 05:15 PM
vanity in men and women normally takes on different forms.
My grandfather hated vanity in me and often told me (rightly) to stop looking in the mirror. then when I was in my teens it suddenly occurred to me that he probably hated the trait in me b/c of his own little vanities - he used to spend half an age in front of the mirror every morning combing his long side hair over his bald patch!
Posted by: Louise | 08/11/2010 at 06:57 PM
Incidentally, I spend a fair bit of time being irritated by my 8yo daughter's antics in front of the mirror!
Posted by: Louise | 08/11/2010 at 06:58 PM
Entertainers per se annoy me more and more the older I get. If they were just prancing around on stage (with small hats or not) I wouldn't mind - that's what they're supposed to do. But when they start telling us their opinions on matters they have no hope of understanding, on the basis that they're famous, I get really peeved.
Posted by: Louise | 08/11/2010 at 07:00 PM
Funny about your grandfather and his bald spot. I sympathize with the poor guy.
Posted by: Mac | 08/11/2010 at 07:36 PM
Oh, it's pretty thin on my pate too and I appreciate a baseball cap every now and then. But that is back to the practical thing.
Posted by: Dave | 08/11/2010 at 07:49 PM
Hats on men [...] indoors
Well, that's just bad manners.
Posted by: Paul | 08/12/2010 at 03:47 AM
You know, Paul, I really wish I could have known your mother.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 08/12/2010 at 08:12 AM
"...that's just bad manners..."
Amen! Though a lost cause, I fear, like hoping that people will get "lay" and "lie" straight.
Posted by: Mac | 08/12/2010 at 09:06 AM
My 12yo son has just bought himself a fedora hat, which looks pretty good. I have instructed him not to wear it inside.
Son: "why?"
Louise: "Because."
(strictly, the reason is "because my grandfather didn't")
Although I think you can wear hats in cars, yes?
I have started wearing hats to Mass in an effort to halt the destruction of Western Civ. Gloves are next...
Posted by: Louise | 08/13/2010 at 12:50 AM
Sorry, I've been too busy to participate.
Congratulations on sticking to the "men's hats off indoors" rule, Louise. Not that it matters in any absolute way, but if the reason for breaking it is just cloddishness and one very small instance in the dissolution of manners, it's worth keeping.
There is some conservative who recently, in a take-back-our-culture sort of manifesto, insisted that men must revive the fedora (I think it was the fedora--at any rate I don't think it was just-any-old-hat). I believe that's going a bit overboard.
Posted by: Mac | 08/13/2010 at 01:31 PM
Well, mandatory fedoras is over-the-top, but I used to love my Daddy's hats. Of course, all the men I knew wore them and couldn't have imagined that they would disappear like they have.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 08/13/2010 at 02:23 PM
On reviving the fedora and Mad Men as well: Some of y'all sound like retrosexuals. Here's M-W take on the word:
Retrosexual is a word that has been used in two very different ways.
It sometimes describes an old-fashioned "manly man" – e.g. a beer and football-loving guy who cares little for his appearance. [the opposite of a metrosexual]
But it has also been used, as in the example above, to describe someone who self-consciously adopts traditional masculine styles – e.g. old-fashioned manners and clothes typical of the early 1960s (think Mad Men).
Posted by: Dave | 08/13/2010 at 08:54 PM
Hey, I ain't wearing a fedora or a pork-pie, or planning to.
I think there's a difference between wearing something like that because you just like the way it looks, and wearing it to make some kind of statement. Although those impulses might be hard to separate.
For me, the idea of not wearing a hat indoors is not a revival of something from the past, but an attempt to keep alive something that's dying. I was about to say it's about as likely to succeed as the effort to use "lie" and "lay" correctly, then I remembered I've already said that. I better go lay down.
Posted by: Mac | 08/13/2010 at 09:27 PM
What are you going to lay down?
AMDG
Posted by: Janet Cupo | 08/13/2010 at 10:07 PM
My burdens, down by the riverside. Or else that boogie. Or a groove. Or my weary tune. I haven't decided.
Posted by: Mac | 08/13/2010 at 11:18 PM
Some time in the early 1990s, I had a brief exchange with a tramp outside Victoria Station, and as we parted he said, slightly shyly, "Can I ask you something?"
Not sure what might be coming next, I guardedly replied, "You can ask."
"Are you Jewish?" he said.
"No, I'm not" I said, slightly puzzled, and then added (to edify him, and just having come from the cathedral), "I'm Catholic, as it happens."
"Well, don't take offence," he said, "but are you German?"
"What?! No!" I exclaimed, and as I rapidly retreated from his ravings he called out apologetically, "I just wondered because of the hat!" (This in reference to a rather battered garment, somewhat in the style of a fedora, that at one time would have gone unremarked on a London street.)
If I'd been wearing a baseball cap, the question would not have arisen. That would have looked perfectly English.
Posted by: Paul | 08/14/2010 at 05:09 AM
I couldn't figure out the Jewish-German association till I remembered these guys.
I wear baseball-type caps when I'm outside in the summer or in chilly weather, a stocking cap when it's pretty cold. But I've been wanting something that keeps more sun off in the summer, having had a skin cancer and some pre-cancerous stuff removed a year or two ago. So I've been thinking about something along the lines of...it's ok to laugh...a cowboy hat. I actually have a bit of a legitimate claim to it, because when I was a teenager and a member of the Junior Cattlemen's Association and raising and showing steers, we wore them. An actual cowboy hat would probably be too hot, though, so I have my eye out for a straw hat in more or less a cowboy hat shape.
Posted by: Mac | 08/14/2010 at 09:57 AM
And by the way, when did the bowler disappear?
Posted by: Mac | 08/14/2010 at 09:58 AM
You could still see them in the late 70s, but by then as a rarity to be remarked upon.
Posted by: Paul | 08/14/2010 at 04:46 PM
Why not a panama?
Posted by: Paul | 08/14/2010 at 04:54 PM
A possibility, if it wasn't too...something, I'm not sure what the word is.
Posted by: Mac | 08/14/2010 at 05:06 PM
Bill used to wear on of those straw cowboy-type hats. I think the last one must have worn out and we got a lot of baseball caps free, but they must be miserable in this heat. I hadn't thought about that before.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet Cupo | 08/14/2010 at 05:30 PM
Yes, they are. It only recently dawned on me that it feels really good to take that hat off when I'm really hot. I was thinking a straw one might be cooler.
Posted by: Mac | 08/15/2010 at 12:17 AM
y'all need akubras...
Posted by: Louise | 08/15/2010 at 04:46 AM
Those are actually sort of fashionable in some circles. I'm not sure exactly what circles but they seem to be somewhat upscale. The hats look a little heavy for this climate.
Posted by: Mac | 08/15/2010 at 11:07 AM
farmers?
Posted by: Louise | 08/15/2010 at 06:30 PM
No, definitely urban. I see them advertised in The Atlantic.
Posted by: Mac | 08/15/2010 at 08:10 PM