02 June 2009

Bring back the bonnet ...


Long before the dawn as I lay deliberating upon the mysteries of this reality, I wondered about why it was, after WWII, that westerners on the whole, in general - and mostly - have stopped wearing hats as an everyday thing.

Save, of course, for those who wear baseball type caps. As casual headgear, these curiously peaked caps have crossed the great divide of fashion sense and attained acceptablity among men and women.

And crikey, I even have one to wear in the spa through daylight hours.

While hubby has a collection of them. In the daytime he doesn't leave home without one but then we live in a 'sunburnt country'; and it would be sensible for all Australians to 'slip on a hat' through the hot weather, wouldn't it?

But most of us choose to face the world bare-headed (although for babies and young children we might make an exception).

I guess I'm curious about the psychological underpinnings of this (me and origins!). I wonder what social shift occurred in the westernised world to label the wearing of hats as making a person look 'stupid', causing people to lose the habit of wearing in the everyday what is a very practical item of clothing?