Trucker Hat, Baseball Cap...
Threads #3: Either side of the Atlantic, I look good.
I love the idea of a hat.
There is a photograph of me as a young toddler, maybe 18 months, playing on our front porch in the East Bay of California where I was born. It’s part of a series that my dad loves. I’m wearing jean overalls, a faded t-shirt, an assortment of plastic necklaces, a whistle1, and a backwards baseball cap while playing with a Hi-Bounce Pinky Ball. I’ve always loved the photographs, too, because I look so much like me. The playfulness, the fashion, doing my own thing. An expression of what so many of us queer kids cultivated throughout our childhoods without even knowing it.
Looking back, I can remember a fondness for all kinds of hats — bowler hats, fedoras, sun hats, bucket hats (thanks, Blossom from TV), baseball hats, beanies of all colours and styles. Maybe it was just the 90s (the internet confirms some of this hypothesis). Maybe it’s just because sometimes a cute day2 necessitates the addition of excellent headwear. What I really can’t remember is what any of the actual hats I wore looked like. Did I wear them at all?? Or did I just admire them?
Of the totality of my childhood and adolescence, there are two that remain in my possession. The first is a rainbow, technicolour-like fleece beanie with a deep brim that was likely purchased at the one Walmart in Siskiyou County for a Secret Sister gift. I can remember receiving it on the bus of an away game and having the dual reaction of ‘Wow, that’s ugly!’ and ‘Oh my god, that’s so perfect for me.’ I’m pretty sure my Secret Sister that year was a sweet underclassman who absolutely had the best intentions at heart. I did wear it during that season, but after that it got retired to bedroom, which sounds sultry except for the simple reason that it’s the perfect sleep beanie for blocking out the light AND keeping me warm.
The second is a baseball hat that advertises my dad’s one-man construction company. Embroidered on the back of it is my first name, and my dad had one made for each person in my family, including Alex. It now sports different tourist pins I’ve picked up on hiking/walking trips that remain there permanently for the sentimental value, like medallions on a treasured walking stick. I think my dad possibly had these made up when I was actually off at college/uni, which means that it is likely not a hat of my youth, but it is the oldest cap in my collection and wears the paint splatters to prove it.
Like many pieces in my wardrobe, I can look at the photograph above and tell you when I bought or received each hat, what year that was, at what event or in which country it was acquired, the people or person I was with in that moment along with their reaction (sometimes elated, sometimes deeply skeptical)—a patchwork of the times a little part of my heart/soul/kindredness jumped up and said, “Oh hell yeah, I’m gonna look great in that.” Finds from our delayed honeymoon, the London 2012 Olympics and a second trip to The Championships at Wimbledon, a new year’s trip to the desert, an evening in The Castro, breweries, bakeries, book merch, and even a Shasta mountain trail find that I threw in my friend’s washing machine when we got home because it was too perfect to leave to rot on the mountain road.
I have worn these baseball caps and trucker hats (and other such names) all around the UK, packed them in suitcases for trips back to the US and Europe, snapped them to backpacks and belt loops, sported them with and without a pony tail. A la the famous cerulean scene from one of my favourite films, The Devil Wears Prada, it’s a solid collection, but there are probably greater forces at work than just a spontaneous, individual interest in this particular headwear.
For one, every time we go home to the West Coast of the US it seems like every coffee shop and eatery has their own set of merch (something the UK seems to be catching on to as well. Case in point: today, I am wearing a red trucker hat from ¿Por Qué No? in PDX, but I’m also staring at a pale pink baseball cap with BRICKLANE written in black serif type that I’ll be lucky if I leave this coffee shop without buying.) I can’t fault the independent businesses for their expansion of commercial opportunities (even as I remain highly suspect of capitalism), but I’m also a sucker for a really good design (and will probably never get over the fact that a 5 Panel Hat, like this one, doesn’t work with my face).
This desire to collect hats is also partially driven by living away from family and friends I love so dearly. If I carry the memories of the clothes with me when I wear them, then I’m also carrying the people I love, too. Each time I put on a cap, it makes me smile in front of the mirror or as I’m walking to the tube, remembering that shared meal or moment that’s so much more than the food on the plate or the piece of fabric on my head. When I immigrated at the age of twenty-four, I (and my beloveds) thought I’d likely be back in the US by my 30s. But, life takes different twists and turns and sometimes the best intentions keep getting swept up in the tides of life and decisions…
Sometimes the reasons behind those decisions aren’t always ones that I actively have control over. If you read my essay from earlier in the month—Three Weddings, Two Women, One Marriage—than you’ll know that part of the reason I moved to the UK in the first place was because my home country, and particularly my home state, was actively denying the validity of my romantic relationship. Flawed in its own myriad ways, the UK was (legally-speaking) a far more welcoming place for a same-sex couple with its civil partnerships and long term partner visas. But even with that knowledge, it was still always the intention to move ‘home’ to the US one day, after marriage, after a PhD, after a kid. Like so many immigrants before me…
As I sit here today, it feels shaky to admit that that future eventuality has been a major question hanging over me and my family. It’s a question mark that I’m not rushing to answer, but it is tied up with the image search I did first thing this morning. You see, I use Unsplash to illustrate my newsletters, a website that allows free use of images by photographers for online media, and the search result for ‘baseball caps’ kicked up something that I, perhaps naively, didn’t expect: MAGA hats. It wasn’t until I felt the instinctive gut-punch of seeing those very specific red hats among the photos of beer bros and surfing girlies that it clicked that that style of hat has become (yet another) marker of the politics of our times. A different kind of marketing genius with far greater consequences than occasionally hitting my bank balance with an impulse purchase.
I was intending on writing about how wearing baseball caps are an expression of my queerness, a way of signalling the mash-up of my tomboy femme-ness in the way that feels very bisexual (I promise I will write about bisexual fashion one day; especially for you, Abi) and how that’s changed with my new-ish (again) short hair cut with its active lean into a matrescence3-inspired butch aesthetic—but I think that might have to be another substack post altogether.
While I ponder what it means to build community through a baseball cap, I’ll leave you with some good news. My friend and debut author Elizabeth Lovatt has made merch for her book Thank You for Calling the Lesbian Line and I think it is very cool. The top item is definitely the black cotton embroidered cap that reads LESBIANS ARE EVERYWHERE, a message Elizabeth very much needed and wanted to see when she was coming out. All profits are donated to London Friend, one of the UK’s oldest LGBTQ+ charities, in a move that I think is also very classy. I’ve bought two for friends, and really might need to commission Elizabeth to make a BISEXUALS ARE EVERYWHERE edition whenever I get a (nonfiction) book published.
Right, for now, I’m gonna go try on that pale pink cap4 and head out into the streets of London to write another day.
Wear a cap and think of me, friends.
As soon as I remembered this detail of the outfit, I immediately screamed PRIDE WHISTLE in my head! I fucking love my Pride whistle.
If you don’t immediately feel in your bones what a cute day is, you can read more about what it means to me here.