Chapter VI

The Hat

IN NO one article of dress is the ultra-feminine psychology more apparent than in the hat.

For man or woman, the head covering has always been used far more for symbolism than for any of the other basic motives. As a head covering the natural one, hair, has for the most part remained to women. Men, having decided to curtail their hair, demand more of their hats in the way of covering.

It may be as a protection from sun and wind, and it may be as a lingering rudiment of that ancient psychology of sex which gave to the man his distinctive head-dress, and, owing to which, he still feels less a man when hatless. “Where's my hat?" is the frantic demand of the small boy. Be he never so much in a hurry he does not feel truly himself unless that inconspicuous, small, often ugly and shabby, but indispensable mark of masculinity, is on his head.

Boys in their continuous scuffling “play," that innocuous infantile survival of the ancient sex-combat, are particularly merry with one another's hats. To snatch off the other boy's hat; to hold it, hide it, trample it; is a favorite form of amusement. The boy thus rudely un-hatted must fight for his lost distinction, and does so cheerfully.

In the attitude of children toward their clothes we may all too plainly see the proof of the long dominance of the sex motive in our attire; the girl child, trained, flattered, and punished into a premature care of and pride in her over-feminine apparel; and the boy child, needing neither praise nor blame to develop his perfectly natural masculine vanity in the garments which proclaim him Man. His are, to be sure, of a far ruder and more serviceable sort than hers; but his joy in them, his irrepressible pride, is not based on their practicality so much as on their proof of what he fondly imagines to be sex superiority.

In the matter of hats, the scope of masculine expression is not large. A hat he must have, of severe and simple outline. In it he may express, (a) sex; and (b) wealth; also, to a very limited extent, personal taste. Those who dwell in detailed admiration on the dress of men speak mainly of the cut and line of their garments, the taste shown in those minor accessories of socks, ties, and a man's scanty but impressive jewelry.

When they refer to his hat there is nothing to gloat upon but its newness, both in style and recent purchase. The top-hat has always its clear distinction; the crisp straw in summer, the hard hat with the latest roll brim—there is little to boast of. The man, in selecting, tries to choose one suited to his particular style of feature, and sometimes succeeds. So choosing, he generally remains constant to that choice.

We must remember that a man's sex-value does not lie in his beauty so much as in his purchasing power and in the general qualities pertaining to masculinity—or supposed so to pertain.

With the woman it is widely different. While every article of her attire, from the innermost to the outermost, is modified not only by sex-distinction but by the constant fret of change in order to please and hold the varying taste of the male; the hat more than any other article shows this double pressure.

With our naive effort to preserve by force the artificial distinctions with which we have fenced off one sex from the other, we consider it quite incorrect for a woman to wear a man's hat; for her merely to try one on is supposed to give him the right to kiss her. But still. though for riding costume, yachting costume, and such limited purposes, we do find women wearing men's hats, or hats frankly mannish in style, we do not, for any purpose whatever save those of roaring farce and coarsest circus humor, find men wearing women's—to make themselves look ridiculous

When a woman puts on her husband's silk hat or “derby," soft felt or stiff straw, she may look “mannish," but she does not become a laughing stock. When a man puts on his wife's “Easter bonnet," big hat with flowers and ribbons, or small hat with some out-squirt of stiff or waggling decoration, he looks contemptible or foolish

There is real reason for this. The man's hat, whatever its fault, has a certain racial dignity. It is, primarily, a covering for the human head. It is designed to fit that head. It is simple and distinct in outline, restrained in ornament.

None of these things are true of the woman's hat, which, whatever its attractions, is utterly lacking in that main attribute of racial dignity. It is not, primarily, a covering for the human head. It is not in the least designed to fit that head. It is not simple and distinct in outline; and—need it be said?—it is not restrained in ornament. A woman's hat may be anything—anything in size, in shape, in substance, in decoration. Its desirability is based on three necessities; first, it must be “stylish"; second, it must be new; third, it must be “different"; not only different from the previous one, but different, as far as is compatible with style, from the hats of other women. We might add, as a remote fourth, a faint preference for a hat which is “becoming."

To discover a hat which suits the face of the wearer, which is light and easy on the head, and to wear the same sort of hat as long as one has the same sort of face, would surely be a reasonable thing to do. That is it would if the purpose of a woman's hat was to make the wearer comfortable and to express personality. Nothing is farther from its purpose. The first, last, and ever dominant necessity is to express as loudly as possible, not the “eternal feminine," but that abnormal pitiful femininity of ours, a femininity which has surrendered its solemn grandeur of womanhood, and put on, jackdaw-like, the ostentatious plumage of an alien creature.

Study the grave sweet face of some eternally beautiful woman statue, as of our so familiar “Mother of the Gods," miscalled the Venus of Melos. Put upon that nobly feminine head some “cute," “too sweet," “charming,” “latest thing," and see how utterly out of place is such monkeyish display on real womanhood.

"Yes," we admit, “but women don't look like that now. I'm sure Dolly Varden looks just too sweet for anything in that hat."

A pretty child—of either sex—looks pretty in almost anything. Some fresh-cheeked, curly-headed boy may look as well as his sister with a frill of lace and roses around his face. But a grown woman, a woman fit for motherhood, is no longer a child. Her place in life is as gravely important as her husband's. Even a young girl, with wifehood and motherhood before her, has a potential dignity, a high responsibility awaiting her, beside which all this capering and fluttering of gay signals is pathetically ignominious. We have enough instances before us, in marble and canvas, in tender madonnas, brave-eyed saints, great goddesses, to show this truth. We have behind that the whole long story of unfolding life on earth, the female earnest and plain, the male skipping and strutting in gay adornment. Even the male mosquito has feathers on his head—not the female.

In ordinary life we have the well-known fact of the lasting beauty that shines in such severe simplicity as the white face-bands of the nun, or in many of the neat and unchanging caps worn by Puritans, Quakers and others. We even know, in that remote shut-off compartment of the mind wherein we keep our articles of faith, that "Beauty unadorned is adorned the most."?

Beauty, however, is far from our thoughts. With serene unconscious fatuous pride our women put upon their heads things not only ugly, but so degradingly ridiculous that they seem the invention of some malicious caricaturist. In ten years' time they themselves call them ugly, absurd, and laugh at their misguided predecessors for wearing them. If honest and long-memoried, they even laugh at themselves, saying: “How could we ever have worn those things!" But not one of them stops to study out the reason, or to apply this glimmer of perception to the things she is wearing now.

Any book on costume shows this painful truth—that neither man nor woman has had any vital and enduring beauty sense; and further that while man has outgrown most of his earlier folly, woman has not.

There is today no stronger argument against the claim of Humanness in women, of Human Dignity and Human Rights, than this visible and all-too-convincing evidence of sub-human foolishness.

In other articles of costume there have always been certain mechanical and physiological limitations to absurdity. In hats there are none. So that the wearer is able to carry it about, so that in size it is visible to the naked eye, or capable of being squeezed through a door—with these slight restrictions fancy has full play, and it plays.

The designer of women's hats (let it be carefully remembered that the designers and manufacturers are men) seem to sport as freely among shapes as if the thing produced were meant to be hung by a string or carried on a tray, rather than worn by a human creature. There is a drunken merriment in the way the original hat idea is kicked and cuffed about, until the twisted misproportioned battered thing bears no more relation to a human head than it does to a foot or an elbow.

The basic structure of a hat is not complex. Its ancestry may be traced to the hood, coif, cap, the warm cloth or fur covering, still shown in “the crown"; and to the flat spreading shelter from the sun, now remaining in “the brim." In simplest form we find these two in the “Flying Mercury" hat, a round head-fitting crown, a limited brim. The extreme development of brimless crown is seen in the “nightcap" shape worn by the French peasant, the “Tam O'Shanter" of the Scotchman, the “beretta" of the Spaniard, or the “fez" of the Turk. The mere brim effect is best shown in the wide straw sun-shield of the“Coolies."

Among the Welsh peasant women we find the crown a peak, the brim fairly wide; among priests, Quakers, and others, we find a low crown and a flat or rolled brim; in the “cocked hat" the brim is turned up on three sides; the “cavalier" turned his up on one side and fastened it with a jewel or a plume. Among firemen and fishermen the brim is widened at the back to protect the neck from water.

There is room for wide variation in shape and size without ever forgetting that the object in question is intended to be worn on a head. But our designers for women quite ignore this petty restriction or any other. I recall two instances seen within the last few years which illustrate this spirit of irresponsible absurdity.

In one case the crown was lifted and swollen till it resembled the loathsome puffed-out body of an octopus; and this distorted bladder-like object was set on an irregular fireman's brim—to be worn sideways.

For forthright ugliness this goes far, but here is one that passes it for idiocy:

Figure to yourself a not unpleasing blue straw hat, with a bowl-shaped crown, setting well down on the head, and a plain turn-up brim about two inches wide. Then a grinning imbecile child gets hold of it. With gay grimaces he first cuts the brim carefully off, all of it, leaving the plain bowl. Then, chattering with delight, he bends the brim into a twisted loop, and fastens it across the “front" of the inverted bowl, about halfway up. There it sticks, projecting like a double fence, serving no more purpose than some boat stranded by a tidal wave halfway up a hillside. And this pathetic object was worn smilingly by a good-looking young girl, with the trifling addition of some flat strips of blue velvet, and a few spattering flowers—all as aimless as the stranded brim.

Five years ago it was customary for women to wear hats not only so large in brim circumference as to necessitate tipping the head to get through a car door, but so large in crown circumference as to descend over the eyebrows, and down to the shoulders. These monstrosities were not “worn"; they were simply hung over the bearer as a bucket might be hung over a bedpost. And the peering extinguished ignominious creatures beneath never for one moment realized the piteous absurdity of their appearance.

Yet it is perfectly easy to show the effect by putting the shoe on the other foot—that is, the hat on the other head. Imagine before you three personable young men in irreproachable new suits of clothes, A., B., and C. Put upon their several heads three fine silk hats, identical in shape and style, but varying in size: upon A., at the left, a hat the size of a muffin ring, somehow fastened to his hair; upon B., in the middle, an ordinary sized hat, fitting his head perfectly; upon C., at the right, a huge hat, a hat which drops down over his ears, extinguishes him, leaves him to peer, with lifted chin, to see out from under it in front, and which hangs low upon his shoulders behind. Can any woman question the absurdity of such extremes—on men?

When some comic actor on the vaudeville stage wishes to look unusually absurd, he often appears in a hat far too large, a hat which, seen from the back, shows no hint of a neck, only that huge covering, heaped upon the shoulders. In precisely such guise have our women appeared for years on years, with every appearance of innocent contentment—even pride. They had no knowledge of the true proportions of the human body, the “points" which constitute high-bred, beautiful man or woman. They did not know that a small head, one eighth the height of the person, was the Greek standard of beauty; that a too large head is ugly, as of a hydrocephalic child, or of some hunched cripple whose huge misshapen skull sits neckless, low upon his shoulders. They deliberately imitated the proportions of this cripple. Seen from behind a woman of this period was first a straight tubular skirt, holding both legs in a relentless grip, as of a single trouser; then a shapeless sack, belted not at the waist, but across the widest part of the hips (a custom singularly unfortunate for stout women, but accepted by them unresistingly); and then this vast irregular mass of hat, with its load of trimming, as wide or wider than the shoulders it rested on. In winter they would add to this ruthless travesty of the human form by a thick boa, stole, or tippet, crowded somehow between shoulders and hat, so that you could see nothing of the woman within save her poor heel-stilted feet, the strained outline of those hobbled legs, and part of the face if you ducked your head to look beneath the overhang, or if she lifted her oppressed eyes to yours.

At present the Dictators of our garments have changed their minds and we are now for the most part given hats of the most diminutive size, whose scant appearance is “accented" by some bizarre projection, some attenuated crest of pointed quill, or twiddling antennae.

What accounts for this peculiar insanity in hats? Why should a woman's hat be, if possible, even more absurd than her other garments? It is because the hat has almost no mechanical restrictions.

When a woman selects a hat; when she tries one on, or even looks at one in a window, she sees in that hat, not a head-covering, not her own spirit genuinely carried out through a legitimate medium, but a temporary expression of feeling, a mood, a pose, an attitude of allurement.

The woman's hat is the most conspicuous and most quickly changed code-signal. By it she can say what her whole costume is meant to say; say it easier, oftener, more swiftly. Because of this effort at expression, quite clearly recognized by the men who design hats, they are made in a thousand evanescent shapes—to serve the purpose of a changeful fancy. Did he see her in this and think he knew her? He shall see her in that and find she is quite different. Man likes variety; he shall have it.

Meanwhile there is no article of dress more easily judged by legitimate principles of applied beauty than is a hat. Whatever else it may be for, it is to be worn on the head. The head is not a sex-characteristic—-it is a human characteristic. The dignity, the intelligence, the superiority of our race is shown most of all in the head; not only in the face and its frontal crown—the forehead, but in the size, shape, and poise of the head itself.

All these human characteristics are the same in man or woman. Therefore we may lay down this clear and simple principle for a headdress—a legitimate and beautiful one looks equally well on man or woman. A fillet, wreath of laurel, garland of roses, circlet of gold, or crown of jewels—these look equally well on man or woman. Any hat or head-dress of simple lines, evolved for legitimate purposes, looks equally well on man or woman. The Tam O'Shanter, Glengarry, fez, turban, wide-brimmed “shade hat," or close-fitting “polo cap," soft plumed “cavalier” or smart “sailor"—these are coverings for the human head—not sex-signals, though any of them may be made such by mere usage, and a false standard of taste rapidly developed and arbitrarily attached to them. But the Roman general was not made feminine by his rose-garland, nor Sappho masculine by her wreath of bay.

"But there must be sex distinction in dress!" some will protest.

Granting for the sake of argument that there must be some, the question then arises—how much? Should a hat say, “I am a head-covering," or should it say, “I am a signal of distress—come and get me."

Granting, more fully and frankly than above, that there should be sex-distinction in dress, it should be legitimate sex-distinction. It should show the real nature of the sex represented. Women have yet to learn the true characteristics of their sex—and of the other. Let them study any other species of animal they choose, and see the male, always the male, flaunting his superfluous plumage, strutting and crowing, stamping and bellowing, hopping and prancing about, to say nothing of his valorous combat with his rivals, all to attract the attention and win the favor of the observant female.

She does not do all this. Never a female in all the world do we see flourishing unnecessary feathers, erecting haughty crests, shaking gay wattles, capering and posturing to attract the attention and win the favor of the male—never one but the Human Female.

We have to learn that all this gay efflorescence and frisky behavior is not feminine—it is masculine. Our position is analogous to that of a pea-hen who has somehow secured the gorgeous tail-feathers of her mate, and is strutting about to attract him—a thing any pea-hen would be ashamed to do.

She does not have to. She is The Female, and that is enough. It is her Femininity that attracts, and no amount of borrowed masculine plumage adds to that inborn power.

If a woman wants to judge her hat fairly, just put it on a man's head. If the hat makes the man look like an idiot monkey she may be very sure it is not a nobly beautiful, or even a legitimate hat. If she says: “Oh, but it is so cute on me!" let her ask herself: “Why do I wish to look cute? I am a grown woman, a human being. Mine is the Basic Sex, the First, the Always Necessary. I am the Mother of The World, Bearer and Builder of Life, the Founder of Human Industry as well. My brother does not wish to look 'cute' in his hat—why should I?"

Women, supposedly so feminine, so arbitrarily, so compulsorily feminine, so exaggeratedly and excessively feminine, do not realize at all the true nature, power and dignity of the female sex. When they do, even in some partial degree, there will be nothing in the long period of their subservience upon which they will look back with more complete mortification than their hats.

In the matter of the “Golden Lilies” they had no choice. In the matter of the veil, the “Yashmak," they had no choice. In the matter of shoes—save by a lifelong wrestle with obdurate shoemakers and shopmen—they had no choice. But in the matter of hats they had choice—and they chose with enthusiasm and ardor, at great expense, too, and with pitiful teasing and persuasion, the most monstrous, silly useless headgear the market afforded.

We may show that men designed them; we may refer back to the man's taste that admired them on feminine heads; but that does not alter the fact that millions on millions of women, contentedly, gladly, proudly, bought and wore them.

Women of today are educated. They study Art, art with the largest of A's, the longest of histories. They admire, or profess to admire, the still beauty of great statues and fragments of statues which have remained to us from the past. But they have not so much as tried to apply any known principle of beauty to their own garments, selecting and commending them only from a baseless notion of what is “becoming” among the arbitrary list of “styles."

While speaking of women's hats another point is worth mentioning. The size and widespread decoration of these objects, together with the custom of wearing them in houses, has long since made them a cruel nuisance where there was anything to be seen. In theatres for instance, for years and years, calm well-bred women would sit hatted through a performance, knowing, sometimes through protest of the sufferer, that the man behind could not see the stage on account of that huge headgear. At last this custom was forcibly ended, not by any reason or mercy on the part of the women, but through regulations enforced by the management. In churches they are very slow to adopt this wise and courteous custom of hat-doffing, on account of quotations from Hebrew personages of some two thousand years past.

"The glory of a woman is her hair," said one of these ancients. "Let your women be covered in the churches," said another.

The glory of a woman is not her hair today; it is her hat. If Saint Paul had seen our Easter display he would have said: “Let your women's hats be covered in the churches." But we do not reason about these things.

In the theatre we can hear something, even if we cannot see. In the church or concert-hall, we can hear, even if we cannot see. But what shall we say of a woman, a kind, sympathetic, well-bred woman. who will go to a baseball game and wear a big hat? They do it. I have seen three vacant seats behind a big-hatted woman at a ball game; good seats too, in a crowded stand. Now what, if anything, was going on in that woman's head? Did she not know that the one essential in a ball game is To See? Did she not know that there were men behind her, eager men who had paid for their seats? Did she not know that she had no more right to put a yard of hat-brim in front of their eyes than a yard of newspaper or an open umbrella?

Which reminds me that I have seen “the gentler-sex" sit under open parasols in the crowded best seats at an exhibition of outdoor sports!

One further proof—if more were needed—that women's hats have entirely lost their original purpose of head-covering from sun or cold, appears in their present custom of wearing hats in the house for decorative purposes merely, not only in the church, under direction of the Ancients; not only in public places where no convenience is provided for laying off these cumbrous adornments; not only in brief "calls," and the more or less transient “tea” or “reception"; but in the prolonged intimacy of a luncheon, in private houses, where they go upstairs and “lay off their things"—their other outer garments, and then solemnly maintain their supposedly decorative hats. About the table they sit, long plumes and lofty twiddlers waggling, getting in the way of the waiters, often making the wearer's head ache—and all for no shadow of reason.

This is a “ladies luncheon," mind you. They do not have to charm each other. As far as mere flourish of trumpets goes they exhibited those hats when they came in, and will again when they go out. There was a place to put them, and plenty of time to take them off and put them on again. As for that shamefully mortifying excuse that their hair is not properly arranged—surely a lady who has time to dress for a lunch-party has time to comb her hair.

This one instance of the brainlessness which distinguishes the dress of women, supereminently exhibited in the matter of hats, ought to be convincing enough, if we had no others. That those who exhibit this lack of applied intelligence may be otherwise women of good mentality, perhaps of wide education, proves no more than that oft-established fact of human psychology—that the human brain has an enormous area, and that full use in some departments is compatible with total neglect in others. Some of the wisest and greatest of men have not had sufficient intellectual ability to leave off the childish excesses of gluttony, or the more dangerous drug habits. Some of the best and most brilliant of women have not sufficient intellectual ability to wear hats worthy of womanhood, or to take off their unworthy hats in the house.

Even this short commentary upon women's hats is incomplete without reference to one of their most insolent, cruel and offensive features: the use of pins and decorations which tickle, irritate, and sometimes painfully injure other people.

If some gaping imbecile or mischievous urchin went about trailing ribbons and feathers across people's faces, smartly poking them with stiff quills, even scratching and jabbing them with long pins—what would be done with these offenders?

The imbecile would be shut up as unsafe. The mischievous urchin would be punished; also, I hope, instructed as to the insulting and offensive nature of his behaviour.

We cannot shut up the vast number of women whose hats are thus insulting and offensive. We cannot punish them. But surely they are open to instruction.

(To be continued)