The ballcap is the default hat. I like wearing a ballcap nowadays, but I used to feel very self-conscious in one. The reason was that when I was younger I felt that they made me look like a teenage Japanese baseball enthusiast -- not that there's anything wrong with being a teenage Japanese baseball enthusiast, but growing up timid and insecure in rural Arkansas I tended to avoid anything that drew attention to me being not quite white. When I went to college, I learned that being not quite white is sometimes cool and, when executed in a non-threatening way, can often serve as a free supplement to your public persona in the neverending struggle to differentiate your personal brand in the depleted soil of the overcrowded cultural marketplace, BUT I still thought I looked stupid in a ballcap. At some point this changed, either due to my tastes or my face...but it's still hard to find the right one.
I would sometimes wear one of those flat caps in college, much as Brad Pitt is doing in this image. But I eventually had to stop because I wasn't sure what message they send to people other than "I'm trying to say something about myself but I'm not sure what it is." That, and I looked like a fucking tool when I wore one. Tell me: does or does not wearing one of those caps make you look like a tool [if you are under age 55]? The odd thing is that to me they don't evoke any particular kind of tool -- on the contrary, I have seen a bafflingly wide range of tools wearing such caps, from a yuppie frolicking in a park to a wannabe intellectual with scruffy facial hair reading in a coffee shop to a bobbling-headed overweight middle-aged guy playing bass in a bar band and wearing sunglasses at 11 PM. But the hat binds them together, does it not? What is up with this? Is this indicative of some sort of meta-type that exists beyond the scope of our everyday understanding of types? Might other types of this kind exist all around us and point to the true nature of our social/cultural reality? Much like the Michelson-Morley experiment, could this seemingly trivial flat cap question lead to a revolution in the way we categorize people and partition pop cultural phenomenon?I really want to get some feedback about what is up with flat cap guys, so please respond.
By the way, did you know that a flat cap may also be called Bunnet, Sixpence, Scally Cap, Ivy Cap, Golf Cap, Derby Cap, Irish Cap, Tweed Cap, Salmon Hat, UNION Cap, Dai Cap, Jeff Cap, Windsor Cap, Touring Cap, Driving Cap, Skid Cap, or Smack Hat? I didn't, but Wikipedia did. (The best part about that page is that there is a section called "Current Situation".) Also, the general Wikipedia Hat page is really one of the best Wikipedia offerings I've came across in a long time. There's so many hats there whose names I didn't know, as well as hat names whose appearance I had never linked with the word. I learned a lot! Maybe my knowledge of this is unusually poor, though. Time for a quiz. Let's see if you can match the person with the hat:
| People: | Hats: |
Russian citizen Chef Contemporary cutesy-ironic burlesque dancer Zapatista Santa Claus Sherlock Holmes Military general circa 1800 Military general circa 2011 | Deerstalker Balaclava Bicorne Ushanka Peaked cap Fascinator Toque Santa Hat |
Click here to check your answers and win a prize!! Win the prize by posting your score in the comments below, and BE HONEST. Your prize will likely be a hat.
Well, this wasn't where I intended to take this post at all. The point was that this is the ballcap I bought and I feel ok about it. It is nothing to write home about.
Flat caps-- also known as Kangols? Though I guess that's a brand. I can't see one of those without thinking about high school douche bags. And you're on the money about the association-- a hat for a man who needs *something* more to flesh out his personality, and that thing is a HAT.
ReplyDeleteThis blog is getting really good; I think I feel the beginnings of awe swelling. I'm relieved; you've become something of a surrogate (probably only in my mind) to that cousin I met for the first time a few months ago and haven't spoken to since. This is our only connection now. If I'd remembered you were using a pseudonym, I would have said it was mine.
ReplyDelete@a.b.: damn you, a hat is also for a man who is bald(ing), but still wants to have options about the state of things about and on his head.
ReplyDeleteI'mmm .... I'm to upset to say anymore right now. Excuse me for a moment.
*note, hat even present in my user-image.
ReplyDelete@Benji: http://images.wax.fm/dropkick_murphys_tattoos_scally_caps-none-1290141051.jpeg
ReplyDeleteYou know my feelings about hats, Samtron. I need that hair. So stop taunting me with your hlog.
ReplyDeleteI got all the hats right.
ReplyDeleteI had never heard the term flat cap before. I've always called them driving caps. I own one and have worn it from time to time, but always felt like I kind of looked like a fool (not a typo of tool). I have a couple baseball hats and a visor I wear on occasion. I'm not sure why I'm mentioning this.
ReplyDeleteMore to the point, do you feel that people who wear these hats are bound together independent of the orientation of which they wear the hat? I feel like I've seen Herc from The Wire or perhaps Michael Chiklis wearing one backward and he just looked stupid, but I think Brad Pitt definitely pulls off the look with the hat facing the proper direction. I'm of the opinion that as long as you are wearing the hat brim forward you may or may not be a tool, but it isn't the hat that makes you so.
Well!
ReplyDeletea.b. - Definitely worse than the Kangol flat-hat era, were these: http://www.askhiphop.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/kangol-hats.png
Benji - hats are great! If I were a male I would feel a wee slighted when it comes to accessorizing. Females have so many options! So I think I'd definitely be a hat-wearer. I think baseball caps are my favorite. I would probably go the way of the modern hip-hop fan and coordinate my limited-edition baseball caps with my limited-edition Nike sneakers.
Oh! Also! I originally scrolled down here to say: There's a small convenience store near my house that I frequent. The gentleman who's usually on duty wears a NY baseball cap and styles himself as quite American (ethnically, he's Asian). He had never spoken to me before (not easy, really, when you're ringing someone up and standing 1.5 feet in front of them) and so I assumed perhaps he was shy about having an accent or felt his English wasn't great? And then, lo! He spoke! Dude is a muh-fuggin lip-reading deaf!
I'm not sure what the point of this little story was now that it's all here. Maybe something about how your white cap looks rather nice.
i hate hats, but i agree with barry.
ReplyDeleteab: Ha ha, dead on.
ReplyDeleteI don't think "kangol" is a very appealing name for a brand of hat because to me at least it connotes the image of someone sticking the crown of their head inside a kangaroo pouch. Perverse, uncomfortable, and unsanitary,
Barry, I am blushing. Thank you. Is this cousin hanging around? Are you there, cuz? If this is the cousin who's a teacher, he/she is probably not going to respond because of negative associations with being called "cuz" by students experimentally pushing the disrespect envelope.
Ethan, I'm sorry. I know. The thought of you reading this was my only hesitation in writing and posting it. I know you have sometimes been known to wear a hat like that. Four points: 1) I have been known to as well, by my own admission, 2) While you sometimes wear a hat like that, it is not your principle type of hat by any means, 3) I know you're not a tool so you're not included here anyway and yet surely you must concur to the broad generalization I am sketching? and 4) You look pretty good in one of those hats, so what do I know.
Ian, do I? I don't. What are they?
Kaitlin: Congratulations on your score! Your prize is that you get to wear my hat this afternoon after work. I don't know why no one else is interested in this great quiz.
Arlo: I admit I had never heard it before looking it up, either. I usually heard it called a newsboy cap. That is a good question about orientation, and I understand that you are heady with the flush of scientific discovery, but we should try to limit our variables at this point in the process. I think that backwards is definitely sillier, but that it's the same type of dude either way. As for Brad Pitt, well, he's just a very attractive man. He could pull off sticking his head in a kangroo pouch and make it look appealing.
EMMA: thank you, although it is a light beige. Maybe part of the point of your story is how easy it is to make assumptions about a person's actions based on their ethnic background although the cause of those actions may be something else entirely?
Alex: how did you do on the hat quiz? And thank you too, unless you were talking about the cousin part, in which case I'm confused.
No, not all hats do a douchebag make. But the right hat makes a douchebag shine. SHINE.
ReplyDeleteSo, Ethan, I mean no offense to your ball cap.
ReplyDeleteI love anything that says "relentless pursuit." I don't care what is being pursued, just that that pursuit is relentless. Good choice.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who also used to wear a hat all the time and sometimes still does I feel like I should tell my story.
ReplyDeleteWhile I had worn some Chicago Bulls and St. Louis Cardinas caps in my childhood, my hat-wearing life didn't truly begin until college. After discovering a blue hat that read I'M A VOLVO VIKING at a local thrift store, I started wearing it because I thought it was pretty silly, and that as a silly person it would compliment the general silliness of who I was.
After getting lots of attention and compliments, I started to wear it more frequently, and eventually it became a way for people to identify me. This sometimes was disadvantageous, as when, during a raid on a group of students smoking marijuana outside on campus, a friend was caught and interrogated: "OK, we know there were others there. What about the big guy with the blue hat. Who's that guy? We know he had the joint." There are others here who remember this incident and can comment more on it if they like.
After losing the VOLVO VIKING hat at a train station in Spain, I adopted a different hat, a cheap cowboy hat which I had bought as part of a terrible halloween costume. The hat had been stomped and sat upon to the point where it looked more like a generic 'old timey' hat that someone would wear in a more authentic looking Western movie, or, as many would point out to me, like the hat that Blues Traveler front man John Popper wears.
By this point, my hat-wearing was more focused on practical matters, like covering my thinning and usually unwashed/ungroomed hair, but the hat compliments continued, and I accepted the attention usually without question, but sometimes with a nagging feeling of 'wow, this is too easy, why do so many people like hats? do they really like hats? are they making fun of me (likely)? do they just not have anything better to say to me? (more likely)', etc.
This continued with a few variants for a few years, along with the inevitable "hey John Popper where's your harmonica hahahaha" comments. Also, whenever I neglected to wear the hat, I would receive at least 3-5 "Hey, where's that hat, man?" comments, which led me to believe that for some people, the hat was all I really was to them. They couldn't even interact with me without it, because they had no hat to talk about. This is when I started to become extra self-conscious about it and debated whether to shut the whole hat-wearing thing down entirely.
Sometimes I would throw away the hat, if it was too sweaty or just because I didn't want to have the option of wearing it, and then a family member would buy me a new hat for Christmas, so that I would feel obligated to wear it, and get into my old lazy grooming/hat wearing habits again. I will still wear a hat if I haven't washed my hair in a few days, or if it's raining. But mostly I resent having ever picked up the habit.
Benji, I would say to you, put that fucking hat down and just stay the fuck away from it. Throw it away, give it to some kid, just fucking get rid of it now, before you are faced with the onslaught of questionably sincere cries of "Hey, Alliance Maintenance Man! Cool!" Stop thinking about hats, quit looking at the wikipedia page no matter how descriptive and detailed and interesting it might be, and just leave it all behind right now, while you still can, because it's just not fucking worth it. You've had a great life and a great blog before hats entered into the picture, and I think, if you do the right thing, you can keep all that and everything will be ok. Everything will be OK. Everything will be OK.
One time I gave samtron a hat and he LOVED it: http://tinyurl.com/64k755z
ReplyDeleteBut now I guess he's too cool and thoughtful for a nice green cap.
Before I read any of the comments or the answers to your quiz, I would like to be the first to embarrass myself with my probably totally wrong answers, because that's the only honest way I could think of doing it, and it sounds like fun.
ReplyDeletesherlock - deerstalker
santa - santa hat
chef - balaclava
military 2011 - peaked cap
military 1800 - bicorn
russian - ushanka
burlesque - fascinator
zapatista - toque
extra credit? http://i.imgur.com/vsBFJ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/gMg6W.jpg
ReplyDeleteMoving on. I actually liked benji in that flat cap he would wear sometimes. It often signaled a mood of "I don't give a shit what these people think, I'm wearing a god damned hat. It's time for adventure." This was sometimes a short-lived mood, but it was infectious. I think you left such a hat at my house recently. One turned up, and I have no idea where from.
ReplyDeleteRegarding myself and hats, I've often fancied the idea that I would find a really cool hat and try it out for a while. However, this is a difficult proposition for me. First of all, I have so many head gimmicks already going right now that to add a third, no matter my own reasons, would appear to be nothing but raw unadulterated vanity. The other difficulty is just that I have an unusually fat head. I have yet to find a hat just laying around that fits, besides ball caps, and I've always hated ball caps for my own reasons. All the cool dudes where I grew up spit tobacco, drove trucks, and wore ball caps as one of their few actual fashion choices. The tight jeans and nikes came standard, but which basketball team to support by way of t-shirt and cap were up to you. Didn't really fit in there. The other thing is that hats other than ball caps seem to be so universally ill regarded. Why do you think that is? I mean, it's just a flat cap. What do you think about wearing one makes someone a douche bag?
Justin, I don't think you can pinpoint WHY the flat cap does that. It just does. Take a look at that picture. Now, how often have you seen Brad Pitt look like a douchebag? Several times? True. but never more than right there in that picture.
ReplyDeleteActually, I don't know shit about fashion. Just looks like a man in a hat, to me. It probably helps that Brad Pitt has been in so many period pieces in which hats just like that were in favor. Mainly legends of the fall, I guess.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's an unwillingness to admit defeat in the face of such obvious, yet seemingly arbitrary, derision. That the rules don't apply to you and of course YOU can pull it off, you're special. Though, I guess to tell the story of why hats fell so far out of favor in the first place we would need to know a lot more facts.
I guess that's not totally fair. Brad Pitt does look like a bit of a douche in that picture. Maybe it's the hat, maybe it's his oddly hoity screwed up facial expression and chin lifted high, or combination thereof.
ReplyDeleteOh man. I'm glad this ended up sparking such a vigorous and productive discussion. James, I can't thank you enough for sharing, and I applaud your bravery! You're right, though -- for a long time, you were indeed "the guy in the hat". Can everyone out there say "We're here for you, James!" Katherine, don't you dare call him Jimmy at this vulnerable moment. All at once, now. We're here for you, James!
ReplyDeleteJustin -- great work on the extra credit. I love it.
ReplyDeleteWell, thanks about the flat cap and the adventurous mood. Maybe I need to start wearing one more often, in that case. Better to be a douchebag who has fun sometimes than a douchebag who sits around smirking and thinking about how other people are douchebags, right? But I don't think I left one at your house recently. I'd ask Ethan.
Hey, don't look at me. I wore a flat cap for YEARS (it was gray corduroy, my grandpa bought it for me, and I wore it from 10th grade to marriage) and I never looked like a douche bag.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, you *could* say I brought back the flat cap. I do. But that's all old now. Flat caps are SO 1999. Someone needs to let Brad know.