My Grandfather always wore a fedora whenever he and I would walk down the streets of Greenpoint Brooklyn in the late 1950's and early 1960's. I would watch old movies on TV and noticed that all men wore suits and ties and hats even to the ball game. What happened to change that piece of male haberdashery to be banished?
If memory serves, the hat disappeared when Kennedy became president. As I look back on it he seemed to set the fashion statement that men would be capless and hatless and the fedora would be back in the hatbox it came in never to be seen again.
Lately we have seen some reemergence of the porkpie with some of Hollywood's elite and some of the more outstanding male black athletes sporting very smart fedoras.
I know you might be thinking that we do wear hats, baseball hats but that goes only for informal wear not as business attire or a date with the woman in our lives. And to be frank I am just too old to wear a hat on backwards, askew or making my ear the front of my face.
I think that men became emasculated when they stopped wearing hats. We lost some of our masculinity as the battle of the sexes heated up and man acquiesced to the women's liberation movement. Men have to reclaim some of the territory they gave up with not so much as a left jab in the air.
Why did men stop wearing hats? Was it really about a fashion choice? If it were like women's fashions wouldn't wearing a hat make a comeback? The bustle never did but a hat? It must have more meaning than just a bygone piece of attire.
After all a hat keeps us warm and I don't know about you but I feel so much more toasty when my baldpate is covered from the elements. We go from indoors to the seat of our car and its just a few moments and maybe we really feel we don't need a hat. Despite that I think wearing a hat can make a comeback and it makes us distinctively male. I even think the significant other in our lives might like it and it sets off our face rather well too.
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