I believe it to be pretty much everywhere. What I recently learned is that there are several “Red Hat Societys” in my town. Apparently there is some kind of size limit to a group. I wonder if they’ll have turf wars. Roving bands of little ol’ ladies in red hats and purple dresses fighting each other tooth and nail. Soon the streets will not be safe! :eek:
Only if they dance fight- West Side Story style.
And now, the Red Hat Societies of Flyspeck, Georgia, will re-enact the Battle of Pearl Harbor…
It’s really only exploded over the last year or so – once the catalogue mavens realized there was serious money to be made selling red hat tchotchkes.
Please, from this day forward, consider me a member.
In the past, I considered joining The Heartless Bitches but, I just couldn’t work up the mean required.
S.O.B. sounds more my style. 
I always thought it seemed a bit contrived to have a club comprised solely of people who have reached a certain age. Why 50? Why not 51 or 52? It’s just a manifestation of homo sapiens’ obsession with multiples of 5 and 10.
And it always sounded like a kind of defensiveness: “Well, yeah, so, I’m the big Five-Oh, but I’m comfortable with it, really I am, see, I’ve got this club just to celebrate my fifty-ness…”
And I had never heard of it until last year either, when Oriental Trading started featuring a mysterious section of red hat-shaped trinkets.
I guess these ladies have a good time in their clubs and that’s great, but I truly feel sorry for anyone over the age of 25 who needs peer approval to just let go and have fun.
Oh, well. I guess there’s something for everyone.
I don’t begrudge these ladies their silliness. I’ve known several women (one of whom is younger than I am) who probably would have just stayed home drinking too much and feeling sorry for themselves after losing their husbands to death or divorce. Then they joined the Red Hat Society and got a little bit of genuine human pleasure back into their lives. These Red Hat groups give older women a feeling of belonging, and provide some structured fun. That is sometimes the only kind of fun these gals have, so I am not going to snoot at them.
After reading some of the comments about how these groups can provide some much-needed socialization for widowed or divorced women, , especially those comments written by Prancer and Jenny Haniver , I can see the benefit of such groups. I wish that there would be more options for older women, but I retract my earlier, more judgemental statement.
I have a heinous red bra that I would gladly donate–I wore it once and it was just too uncomfortable. However, it wouldn’t make a purse. Possibly a cell phone holder or change purse.
Anyway, there is a huge amount of red hat memorobilia out there. I saw some particularly hideous purple fabric printed all over with glittery red hats. I know the point of the red and purple combo is that it doesn’t go together, but still…bleah.
My mom is a member and I don’t know why. Especially since she does fit the original intent of the poem. Many times has she told me the story of her protest of the lack of a breast feeding area in a store’s bathroom. She decided that the bathroom was filthy and there was no way I was eating in there (I was less than a year old at the time. So switch your faces from skeevy to heartwarming). A saleswoman told her that if mom fed me out in the store, she’d get the manager. Mom said ‘Get the manager. I want to talk to him’. She convinced him that the bathroom was unfit for breastfeeding and he let mom use his office to feed me.
More recently, back problems have required mom to use a cane. She was very unhappy with the standard metal model. She found a carved and loudly painted souvenir cane from Mexico. A friend whose father was in the fur trade covered a cane with ermine scraps. My sister painted another cane blue with white sea shells and gold starfish. The only metal cane she has left is brightly decorated with stickers.
I’m thoroughly confused as to why such a conformist and regimented group would appeal to her.
Besides which, she’s a member of several mah jongg and canasta groups. She has friends, doesn’t seem lonely. I don’t understand it. She even bought some closoinne Red Hat pins (at a flea market, for a fraction of the original price).
Jay Jay Wait a minute. I know you can knit. Surely, you can sew a sampler.
Zoe That post reminds me of Betty. Mom and dad met her when they moved into a condo. I keep trying to get her to join the SDMB (where she would immediately gain the status of revered guru, and we’d all sit around and listen to her wisdom). But, besides other obstacles, she has no computer. She’s definitely a salty old broad (though I’m sure she’d demand a membership shirt which said ‘Salty Old Bitch’). She thinks it’s a waste that the Red Hats haven’t organized for any greater cause (raising funds for research for the many conditions elderly women get, organizing voters, etc) and that the whole thing seems to be an excercise in mindless conformity.
TomCat A 75 year-old woman in Prague? Isn’t she supposed to spend her time telling folks in the neighborhood ‘Yesterday, I saw a rusalka washing your clothes.’ and coming up with new and better recipes for garlic pie?
Twickster Finally, a post that uses the word tchochke. It’s been too long since I’ve heard somebody use that word.
That, and having long conversations in public with her weiner dog.
I like the Red Hats. Mom loved that poem. She never belonged to any official society or anything like that, but then again, she never got to get old, either.
We put a copy of the poem in her coffin, and attatched the Red Had pin to her lapel.
Especially considering that I used to cross-stitch, too. I actually do have a pattern for a cross-stitch of that poem somewhere in my mom’s house…I’ll have to go looking for it when we go up next month.
Me, too! I came across a nice version of it in a knicknack store when I was in high school, and my mom bought it for me. (I don’t care for the Red Hat Society stuff, but it doesn’t bother me if it makes some old ladies happy.)
Dude, I’ve seen handfuls of 'em at Metro stations in both DC and Virginia. 
I meant to add that I’m now 33, and I still have it. :smack:
Hi, my name is Jenny, and I have a problem with smilies…
I liked the poem.
I liked the idea of older women getting out to have fun, even in purple dresses and red hats.
What’s disgusting to me is that
- What started as an encouragement for individuality and fun has started to turn in to peer-pressure clubs encouraging “correct” fun and discouraging what is seen as “inappropirate”
and 2) the rampant commercialization with all the red hat crap for sale now.
But in that sense it’s no different than the proliferating knock offs of “live strong” bracelets, or the multiplying and mutating “ribbons” for various causes.
When you’re a Red Hat
You’re a Red Hat all the way
From your first blue hair rinse
Til your last dyin’ day!
I had a bad experience with a group of Red Hat Ladies once.
::shudders::
My husband and I were taking a tour of a historic home and, as usual, we were the youngest people on the tour (we’re always the youngest people on those types of things, it seems). There was a group of Red Hat Ladies on the tour with us, and they were pushy, rude, and obnoxious. They walked around like those red hats gave them some sort of entitlement and made them better than the rest of us. I thought it sucked.
Of course, I’m sure not all Red Hat Ladies are like this (well, I certainly hope not). But this group really gave me a bad first impression of them.
Part of me can’t help but suspect that whoever started this Red Hat Society thing is an evil genius who has devised a brilliant plan to rip off old ladies and take over the world. :dubious:
Oh, god, thank you. I cannot stand this red hat crap. I was at Wal-Mart last night for the first time in probably a year looking at hats and they were all red, and also ugly.
But what really sucks is that I, okay, yeah, I like to cross stitch and do various sorts of other needlework. And it’s hard to find non-twee needlework, always has been. But since this Red Hat thing, the market’s become poisoned beyond belief. You can’t avoid it. It’s everywhere. Drives me nuts.