please empty your brain below

You've made me want to wear a hat today.
People in sunnier climes wear them for protection against the sun. I wear a hat when running and a nice panama indoors.
Generally the skin cancer thing is a good reason to wear a hat, jewellery that clanks + big earrings are a no no, as are too many accessories - you start to look like an extra from the Tom Baker era of Doctor Who.


There was a time when women frequently wore a headscarf. They were an essential fashion item as well as a useful hairdo protector. I had a drawerful of them, of various colours and designs. The only woman who wears a headscarf now is the Queen, but she doesn’t give a flying fig for fashion.
I live in the suburbs where you don't see many people wearing hats. It scares me when I'm in the city and you see loads of people with hats on. It scares me to see how these people have taken over and I'm sure there weren't as many hat wearers around back in the good old days.
I had to wear a hat for Primary school, Cubs, Scouts, Air Cadets, Royal Observer Corps, RAF VR(T. Now I wear one to keep my balding head warm.
Excellent post DG, it echoes a point I have been trying to make for some time about reactions to people who wear a veil. Your satire is spot-on.

(And I wear a hat, not having much of a thatch left to keep out the cold. Some might say I ought to wear a veil too...).
@Milo N
Look at photographs of street or crowd scenes from any time up to about WW2 and you'll see that nearly everyone was wearing a hat.

"They muck up your hair"
Only true if you still have yours: My bald pate can get badly sunburnt in summer, and very cold in winter!
Mmm, thought provoking, if only more people could see things more clearly. Human nature and fear of "differentness" often gets in the way though doesn't it?
Oh, it was some sort of cutting social satire was it?
They're taking his to prison for the colour of his ... hat.
Reading just the first line brought thoughts of the Byron Luncheon Club in Metro Land... wonder what they wear these days?
I see trouble ahead.
Those of us who are now bald as a coot need a hat to keep our head warm (this time of year) or avoid burn (occasional summer days).
But if we're doing irrational prejudice, I can't abide men who wear shoes without socks...
Very good and thought provoking DG.
Chapeau!
:O I clicked on the site today hoping to read the long-awaited post about 'the art of allegory.'
It wasn't about allegory at all, just a lot of symbolic narrative about something else :(
:)
I'm with IslandDweller - neither shoes without socks nor sandals with socks, sports trainers with suits, DM's with skirts.
"Short People" by Randy Newman but more subtly done.
Highbury 1938
[photo]
Many hat wearers like wearing a hat because they feel it protects them and gives them a sense of belonging to a community of similar hat wearers, who can together give thanks to their particular hat maker for the comfort it provides.

The trouble starts when some hat wearers get so carried away by such an extreme desire for everyone else to wear the same kind of hat as they do, that they do terrible things to them.
Hmmmm. You might not like hats, dg, but if hatwearers become a belligerent majority, you might have to wear one whether you like it or not.
The satirical intent is not lost on me, but I feel you need to clarify which branch of fundamentalist Hat-ism you are representing here. Are you equally intolerant of the beanie..? Where do you stand on the balaclava..? Is the cap also outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour..?
We need to keep a close eye on the milliners.
What Actonman said:

"The trouble starts when some hat wearers get so carried away by such an extreme desire for everyone else to wear the same kind of hat as they do, that they do terrible things to them."
I need a hat to preserve my beauty from being gazed upon by adulterous eyes
You can tell from the fact that He apparently denands so many of His followers (of all denominations) to don fancy dress that God has a sense of humour.
I like hats, but whether to wear one or not must be a matter for free choice in a liberal democracy. I am not an extremist. I would hate for anyone to be forced to wear a hat, just as I would hate for anyone to be forced to discard their hat.

I have a lot of thick hair that keeps my head warm most of the time, so I generally don't want or need to wear a hat. However, as I get older, I find I sometimes need a warm hat in the winter (and thick warm socks too). I also get far too hot in the summer, so often wear a wide-brimmed sunhat. I recommend an Akubra. The Australians know what they are doing with respect to sunhats.

I think hat-wearing continued to be more or less "de rigeur" in the UK through the 1950s and into the 1960s. But now there are few top hats, bowler hats, panamas, homburgs, fedoras, trilbies, flat caps, etc., worn everyday. Instead, we have the awful baseball hat, and beanies. Ugh.
I wear a woolly hat when is is cold, and a peaked cap or a cricket umpires hat for sun protection in summer. All other times I am bare headed although I still have a full head of hair. Never follow fashion.
First they came for the golf umbrella users and I did not speak out because I was not an golf umbrella user.
I don't know how God comes into this discussion, when it's the many influential hat makers around the world who, thanks to the behaviour of some of their hat wearing followers throughout history, have a lot to answer for.

It's certainly been a good outing for metaphor today! Next week, litotes and meiosis?
If you grew up in Australia, a country with very high rates of skin cancer, you would know why you should wear a hat.
I appreciate the satire but to be serious, I loathe one type of hat wearer: the person who keeps it on in inappropriate places eg the Americans on an upmarket cruise line (Regent) who kept a baseball cap on during lunch in the formal restaurant, people who keep them on in cinemas obstructing other people's view and finally, one specific example, the rude oaf on Question Time from Stoke a week or two back who told a panel member 'shut up mate, I'm talking' whilst wearing his hat. When I was a child in the 50s my (bald) dad always wore a trilby. I am not anti hat but when it is pouring with rain, I do wear a waterproof one and, although I feel a tad uncomfortable, keep it on whilst shopping if only because these days there is enough to carry around. How about another post, this time about an even more unnecessary item of clothing, the tie!!!!
@Serious chap
Sorry but the satire is the serious bit.
It's fascinating how there are two threads here - comments about 'hats' and comments about hats.
Ummm... perhaps the people with most to fear from are the ones who, in addition to a hat, also wear a 'belt'?
My chosen ill-founded prejudice is that against appearing naked in public.

Those of us who do not wish to do so ourselves (mostly) go the extra step, and support the prosecution and persecution of those who do.

A similar but perhaps more widespread one is the opposition to public display of other (less extreme) forms of dress, such as nightwear, bare chests or bare feet. Most supermarkets seem to ban all these.
The problem is certain parts of London have too many hat wearers.
Don't forget the hat...!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RAB96S7BAw
Why exactly do we prosecute (and indeed in some cases persecute) naked people?
so this is what you want?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkkGeDYv3Lc
Naked people are objected-to exactly like the hat-wearers. "To 'protect' the rights of the majority"
I just cannot take seriously anyone wearing a baseball cap and seeing the late unlamented president Bush with one always gave me a feeling of unease. Once flew on a plane and the pilot wore one. Most uneasy flight.
My name for them is prat hats .
Hats are the biz!
Going down the Cresta Run
Don't wear a topi for the sun.
Certainy not a topper
Or you'll come a cropper
at Shuttlecock Corner.
To go with a whoosh
Don a tarboosh
And if you die
Everyone'll mourn you.

www.christopherbellew.com
Hats should be promoted along with a complete ban on umbrellas. These are spiked weapons used by vertically challenged people who wield them at precisely the eye level of an average height person. They also prevent the culprit from seeing where they are going so they are deployed indiscriminately. A single umbrella can make an entire pavement a complete no-go zone forcing normal people to walk in the road. Umbrella use should be punishable by long jail sentences.
Laughing quite hard at commenters who thought this post was about hats.










TridentScan | Privacy Policy