--- Ware Petznick <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hogarth prints
> consistently show men with hats outdoors and not indoors, and women indoors
> often wore caps. What is the driving factor in this tradition that hadn't
> really changed until the 1950s and 1960s in the US?

My pet theories are from personal experience as opposed to extensive research
so feel free to correct me if I'm off-base.

First off, women are usually associated with "indoor" type work like cooking
and cleaning whereas men are typically associated with "outdoor" work like
farming. Caps were worn to keep clean hair off of dirty clothes or dirty hair
off of clean clothes thus women were more likely to wear them indoors and men
wear them outdoors. Men also tended to have shorter hair so there wasn't a need
to wear a cap if they weren't working, which is usually when they came inside
to eat or at the end of the day. Women would also keep their caps on outside
under their sun hats until like the mid-1800s.

> And why were women exempt
> from this rule of etiquette? In church (in terms of a Christian tradition)
> women may wear their hat and a man is expected to remove his? Likewise, with
> the national anthem, men should remove their hats, but women are not required
> so to do (unless they were something like a baseball cap)?

Again, from practical experience, women's hats tended to be pinned onto their
heads which makes them harder to remove. Sometimes their whole hairstyle was
dependant on what hat their wore so taking them off is more of a chore. Men's
hats simply sit on top of their heads so it is easy to take it off when
indoors. I should note that Quakers do not remove their hats during indoors
unless during meeting for worship someone is speaking from God but they then
put their hats back on after the person is finished. This stems from having to
doff one's hat to one's social superiors which Quakers did not do because of
their belief that all people are equal. Hats are removed when someone is
speaking from God out of respect for God, not the person.

Deb



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