People still wear hats, real ones. I may pay more attention than others because I haven’t left the house without a fedora for twenty years, but one does see other hats that are not ball caps on the bus. Every couple of years somebody tells me that they hear hats are coming back in style. I’m still waiting to see this happen. But they are out there.
The actual etiquette of hats is a matter on which there is no real authoritative disputation. It’s whatever the people you’re dealing with believe, and most of the people you’ll meet don’t care. If they do care, then they believe what we’ve all heard – that you remove your hat “indoors.” What exactly counts as “indoors” was once a matter that people would turn to tomes of etiquette to find out when they should get their dander up. And that’s the trick, really. Yes, possibly you can trace a number of courtesies to military protocols. But I think you’ll find it more productive to look to the authors of those many profitable books of etiquette for the origins of the very ideas we think of as established in deepest yore.
Karen Halttunen has done a fascinating study of this phenomenon: Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870. Looking at the phenomenon hindsight we can see a pattern of a rising middle class anxious to raise their social status meeting a landed gentry facing a world in which the gentry was rarely confined to a small enough or close enough group that you’d know everybody in your general eschalon and where exactly you fit in the hierarchy. Both these groups turned to books of etiquette – the up-and-comers in order to pass as their betters, and the established elite as a way to filter out posers. The fact that the posers were reading the same books did not apparently lead people to write the whole thing off – on the contrary, it led to escalation.
By now the most absurd fallout of this escalation has cleared up, leaving some much easier to follow rules behind, although these too are still rationalized mainly through anecdotes or fanciful explanations.
Back to hats – you will find all kinds of rules if you dig. But here’s what you need to know:
It isn’t rude unless people know it’s rude. So don’t bother living with any rule you found some obscure reference to if it’s a bother to you. Furthermore, don’t expect others to live by such rules. Dredging up arcane rules from dusty tomes and then copping an attitude about them is definitely rude.
It isn’t classy unless people know it’s classy. If you’re doing it because you want to create an image of yourself as an old-fashioned gentleman, again don’t bother with rules nobody has ever heard of – unless, that is, that they involve a performance that signals how classy they are. If you completely and elaborately doff your hat in the presence of a lady, then you don’t need to explain that this was once a rule people followed – it’ll just look obviously classy. Of course, men and women intermingle much more these days, and you’ll find it really inconvenient to actually do this every time a woman walks by. Just do as other do who hold doors open for ladies, to show of their “gentleman” credentials: reserve the gesture for old ladies who probably think feminism is destroying America, and young ladies whom you want to fuck.
Otherwise, whatever the rules were once upon a time, things have changed. The new rules are up for re-negotiation, with people who don’t wear hats on a regular basis not even getting a seat at that table. Meanwhile, there are good reasons to maintain some semblance of the dimly remembered donning-doffing-and-tipping rules: a) because otherwise, you’re not taking full advantage of the expressiveness your wardrobe choice offers and b) because it’s a ritual celebration of your superiority to people wearing ball caps.
It does kind of matter how old you are - when a little old man tips his hat to me I think it’s gentlemanly and sweet. When a guy in his twenties does it, it seems affected and possibly mocking. No, you just can’t win.
When I’m in a restaurant, especially a nice one, and I see a guy sitting at a table with a hat on (especially a backwards-facing ball cap), I am ever so tempted to slap it off his head. Thus far, I’ve had the self-discipline to control myself. Probably won’t have it indefinitely, however.
In renaissance Europe, hats were worn inside in front of social superiors. In the last act of Hamlet (ca. 1600), there is a whole Abbot and Costello routine where the inferior (Osric) is incredibly hot from the heat, and Hamlet messes with him.
I don’t know about links online (we weren’t allowed to use teh intrawebs for research for obvious reasons!) but I can recommend a few textbooks if you like?
I’ve been known to read a book or two in my time. So why don’t you give us some cites to books. Even better, find the actual citation inside the book and give us the page number.
Also when he’s inside a church assisting with a funeral or memorial service (as seen in Ted Kennedy’s recent Boston ceremony).
I see guys wearing baseball hats indoors all the time, especially in restaurants. Always irritates me a little, but I know it’s a battle I’ve already lost. Our court still requires men to remove hats when they enter the courtroom, though, unless they’re wearing one for a religious reason (around here, mainly Muslims with skullcaps of various designs).
4th Estate History of Women in Middle Ages (has a long section on fashion and customs)
Europe after Rome
A History of Japan (the Mason one) - definitely had references to ritual behaviour re. military wear with the sword, hand position and helm being important and also how that translated to behaviour by Japanese nobility in non-miitary circumstances
Aristotle’s medieval Interpreters (or something similar - I can’t quite rememebr the exact title)
My god, man, it’s years since I went near those books! I found 'em hard enough reading the first time round.
I follow P.J. O’Rourke’s rule: “A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.”
A guy I used to run into now and then always had on a ballcap. Always. I would see him in a bar we frequented and he was always hatted.
One day he had some Pirate (baseball) tickets. He gave me one. During the national anthem, he removed his hat and I saw that he had male pattern baldness. I almost said, “Jesus Christ, your bald!”:eek:
Went to Amazon’s search inside the book. Found three references to hat, all to hat-making, none to hat wearing.
No hits on hat.
Four results for hat, none to hat-wearing.
No way to search.
This is the quote you need to defend:
I see nothing in those books that give any hint of documentation. Not to mention that two of them are about periods well into Christian domination of European culture so are useless for a claim about pre-Christian cultures.
That’s why I wanted specific cites. I don’t believe you are remembering anything near what your claims are. I don’t believe you have any cites for what you say. I don’t believe there is any such documentation. I don’t believe that it took place “everywhere” as you also say, especially since at least two of the world’s major religions mandate hat-wearing.
Basically, I think every statement you’ve made on the subject, all of them amazingly broad, are wrong and you’ve given us nothing to back them up.
Some items that may support a military tradition of removing headgear:
From here: “Soldiers will not wear headgear indoors unless under arms in an official capacity, or when directed by the commander, such as for indoor ceremonial activities.”
From here (discussing the above): “Now, the intent of the rule is to show respect. It is a tradition from when knights would remove their helmets when entering a house to show that they were not there for violence.”
My understanding was that ladies covered their heads in church in order to be modest, and not draw attention to their looks. Just as ladies would not come to church in revealing dance outfits or whatever. Men’s ego and displays were not bound so much in physical looks, but in status and rank, and taking a hat off for them also showed humility and deference in church.
My mother remembers always having a lace kerchief or something in one’s purse, in case one had to go to church for some reason and was in an outfit without a hat.
I occasional wear one of my three fedoras, or a Panama. I take them off in a home or when seated in a restaurant. Nowadays hat racks are so rare I avoid wearing one if I go to a restaurant without a coat check because there’s never anyplace to put it. I take my hat off if I am in an elevator with a lady present. Well, female; I can’t always tell if she’s a lady.
I take my hat off when the Star Spangled Banner is played.
I adopted these practices based on seeing old movies and reading Miss Manners. BTW she says that even women should take their hats off for the national anthem if they are baseball caps.
I think guys that wear any kind of hat at the dinner table are boors. But they obviously don’t care what I think. Because they’re boors. :rolleyes:
(In the 1970s, a show that Rod Serling did called Night Gallery had these little vignettes between stories. One was a man and a skeleton in an elevator. A woman enters and the man takes his hat off. Then he looks at the skeleton and gently elbows him. The skeleton obligingly removes his head. :eek:)
But real cowboys know to remove their hats indoors.
Exception made, as stated upthread, for places that are comparable to the public street. My aunt married the biggest Texan ever to move North (the man would have made Paul Bunyan look like dwarf) would remove is hat indoors, and the only exception was when he was in a saloon that had wood chips on the floor and only had barstools, no chairs, and no place to hang his hat nearby.
I learned to things from that mountainous Texan:
There are far more indoor places that have hat stands/racks than you would ever have noticed.
I prefer to wear a hat, too, but mine is a bucket hat (floppy full-brim) covered with buttons and pins. So far as I know, that type of hat has never been stylish and isn’t likely to be any time soon, either, but I don’t let details like that stop me.
Quoth Johnny Angel:
Of course, for a significant number of males, the union of those two sets encompasses the entirety of the female gender.
Swallowed My Cellphone, since I’ve started wearing a hat, I’ve found that there’s a remarkable correlation between places with hat racks, and places that have square-backed chairs that you could hang a hat on anyway. If a place has no hat rack, then it probably also has round-backed chairs, leaving the gentleman with few options (the best I’ve found is to keep my hat in my lap at such places, but this is awkward).
Looks around. Yes, we’re on the Straight Dope. We’ve even in GQ.
Claims have to be backed up. Cites are mandatory. When you pull a cite out of your ass that doesn’t back up the nonsense you’re spouting expect to get called on it.
That’s the way things work around here. Telling you that you’re wrong when you’re wrong isn’t rude. It’s mandatory. How could you not have noticed? It’s the reason the Board exists.
