Hats Okay

I talked last December about how Disney, at Disneyland, had managed to carve out a space where people felt okay wearing silly hats. Sure the hats are almost universally ones sold there in the park, a kind of approved niche of silly that makes it okay, but still, it’s a start.

Well this is one where the American’s have got it over the French in the opinion of God and myself. When we went to Disneyland Paris, recently, there were plenty of the silly hats on sale, but there weren’t a lot of people wearing them and those that were, were still just kids. I don’t know if that can be generalized out to Americans are more willing to show their silly sides than the French, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that were true. I tried to get the information from God, but he just put me off. He told me that if I wanted to see silly hats, I wouldn’t have long to wait.

So I kept watch for them. We went in to Paris and I didn’t see them. I didn’t even see anybody wearing berets. We went to the other Disney park at their Paris resort, the Disney Studios, and still there was a notable lack of people wearing silly hats. Then we headed back to England and off to the Cambridge Folk Festival. At the festival there were plenty of hats. There were cowboy hats, there were caps, there were hats made of cloth and leather and felt and straw. There were vendors selling a wide assortment of hats many of them fairly silly. There was everything from simple caps with a tassel on top, to chullos with knitted ear flaps, to leather top hats, to high peaked felt wizard’s caps that would have done Gandalf proud.

And by the last day of the festival, you could look just about anywhere and see people of all ages wearing their silly chapeaus out in the sun.

So is it the British that are more willing to be silly than the French, and possibly even the Americans, or is it just music festival goers? I don’t know and I don’t care, I’m just glad that it’s still possible to find people willing to do it, and do it in public.

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