Stop Wearing Your Goddamn Hat Like That
Written by Anthony Burch
Seriously. Stop. We know that the whole “I can wear my baseball cap in a way that isn’t quite aligned with any one of the four natural directions in which to wear a hat” thing is currently in fashion, but we’ve got a few reasons why this is one fashion you really shouldn’t follow. You dumbass.
Functionally, what the hell is the purpose of wearing a hat like this? Do you always walk around in such a way that the sun is at a perfect 45 degree angle to your eyes? If you walk into direct sunlight and it hits you full on in the face, do you adjust your hat like a normal human being, or do you just sort of cock your head to one side and sidestep to your destination? Does wearing your hat cocked to one side afford any degree of protection from the sun, or does wearing a baseball cap in this way essentially remove the hat of its sole goddamned function? I would have never thought one could wear a hat without ever getting any actual use out of it, but you douchebags finally found a way to do it. Everytime I see a guy wearing his hat like this
Stylistically, what does it say, exactly? “I don’t follow the rules of either logic or society when it comes to my headwear, and so I will instead choose to cock my hat in an absurdly pointless way?”
This might make sense were emos or scenesters wearing their hats this way – conformity dressed up as nonconformity is their cup of tea, after all – but given the fact that most of those who use this are relatively mainstream in your tendencies (frat boys, So-Cal preppies, wannabe-gangstas, SRH idiots), one has to reconsider what purpose, if any, wearing your hat like this results in.
And really, girls, did you have to join in? The adoption of this hat-wearing style is usually only seen amongst vapid, preppie blondes with superiority complexes (the same ones who call all males “boys”), but why make annoying people any more annoying? Like giving the Incredible Hulk a machine gun, it’s not necessarily going to make that large of a difference, but it’s still a pretty bad idea nonetheless.
Perhaps my main irritation with the hat-cocking fad is how irritatingly fake it is. While the image of a hat cocked 45 degrees in either direction ostensibly appears to be an accidental, or effortless bit of fashion, it is really quite the opposite – I’ve seen men and women spend up to three minutes cocking their hats at juuuuust the right angle. Cocked just enough to make the hat look noticeably off-kilter, but not enough to render the hat totally side-oriented (a la Will Smith in the intro to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air).
While the preppies and frat douchebags who wear their hats like that tend to stand against emos, scenesters, and everything their sub-culture is built off, they really do share an awful lot in common: in the same way that emos brush their hair in front of their eyes and take pictures of themselves in the mirror in a dishonest, work-intensive attempt to look effortlessly cool, so too do these douchebags wear their hats at an angle that says – no, screams – that they just put on their hat and it happened to fall in this controlled, deliberate fashion. Insecure, self-conscious types who desperately want to look cool without looking like they want to look cool. Emos and preppies – not as different as they seem.
I found this picture a long time ago. It is a picture of a guy named Oliver, who (it has been mathematically determined) is, in fact, the biggest douche on the planet. The reasons for his douche-ity are outlined in the picture itself, but you may notice that Oliver has, unsurprisingly, also chosen to misalign his hat in a uninspired attempt to look cool. While there are many, many other things that make Oliver a douchebag, I would ask those people who wear their hats in a similar fashion to consider the following: if the biggest douchebag on the planet wears his hat in the same way you do, what does that say about you?
What may be most irritating about this fad is that it’s just that – a fad. While right now you may be vehement in your view that wearing your hat in this way is cool and/or badass, in a year or so, people who wear hats like that will be mocked by you and your friends, who will have since moved on to another absurd, ugly, completely pointless fashion. The transitory nature of this fad is something you’ll look back at in years and laugh about, considering the fashion statement an artifact of days passed, back when you were young and silly. It will never occur to you that neither youth nor silliness had anything to do with the “style,” so much as it did your incredible lack of originality and/or individuality. You did it because other people did it and you thought it looked neat. Your pointlessness will quietly, secretly stick with you for the rest of your days, partially forgotten but always nagging.
And so for your sake, and for mine, and for the sake of all those around you, I once again utter six words of dire importance in the hope that you might take heed and save yourself much embarrassment and others the irritation of looking at you. I say the following:
Stop wearing your goddamn hat like that !
