Thursday, June 05, 2008
Gentlemen, please remove your caps
From the RoundTable blog
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Dick Culbertson
Culbertson is a retired naval aviator captain residing in Blacksburg.
For some 50 years, I have waited to read some condemnation of the late 20th century habit of men wearing hats, and now caps, under roof and in gross ignorance or disregard of good manners and Southern tradition, in this respect: in the presence of the fairer sex.
In the days of my youth, when the Greatest Generation was returning from rescuing Western civilization from the clutches of the Axis barbarians, it was customary for a covered male to tip his hat when passing an adult female on the street, or to at least nod and to doff it when he was meeting or being introduced to a woman. If seated, he also uncovered and stood.
I don't recall ever seeing an adult male wear a hat under roof, at a dinner table, in an elevator with female occupants, in church, during the National Anthem, during an interment or when greeting a female outdoors, whether acquainted or not. And hats were removed when kissing a female, whether romantically or as a family greeting.
So what has happened? Why have we become a nation of male klutzes and ignorant louts? Did the Greatest Generation pick up boorish ways during their time in foreign lands, and did my group pick up and expand them as we were growing up? And have they now been user-multiplied in this century?
As a longtime student of human nature, I have keenly observed people in their daily comings and goings, during work or leisure time. I have observed that one is unlikely to enter any restaurant, one star through five, and not find at least one male, usually more, in a hat or baseball cap stoking away the calories. Some are clean shaven and as well dressed as a menswear advertisement, while others are in work gear and haven't touched a razor in several weeks. Their hats, especially the baseball variety, appear welded on. As to displaying the courtesy and good manners of deferring to females while wearing hats, it is no longer a part of our culture. It is as out of vogue as starched collars and high button shoes.
This malaise is not confined to just the native males of Southwest Virginia. It has infected males everywhere, scalawags and carpetbaggers alike. Race, religion, color, mother tongue and cultural background appear meaningless in pinpointing these modern day ungallants.
Finally, we males are not totally to blame for this sad state of affairs. Considerable blame must be given to the modern-day feminists who have tried so diligently to eradicate the differences between the sexes and who give dirty looks and sharp retorts to any male who holds a door, gives her his seat or steadies her arm on steep steps or uneven ground.
Perhaps this sorry change in cultural habits also helps explain why so many drivers, male and female, ignore using their turn signals or flick them on halfway through a turn or a lane change, and why so many drivers fail to use their headlights at dusk, in rain and during other restricted driving conditions. But that is a grumble for another day.
In the February 1944 "The Critic," the E.C. Glass High School student literary magazine, a lovely female classmate argued the "affirmative" to the question, "Is chivalry dead?" I was slightly offended at the time, but I fear the customs of our culture have been overtaken by events and, if chivalry is not dead, it has been callously emasculated in the 64-year interval. And many would say that applies to common sense also.
