"A New Chapeaux, I Suppose!"

ah-Choo...

With all the various garments floating atop women’s heads this time of year, a funny thought entered my mind.

Many women nowadays do their Easter parade thing at church sporting all kinds of ornamental designs of Spring. It got me to thinking about the tradition of women and headdress on Sunday at Mass or a holiday service.

How come men don’t wear headgear when they go to church?

I do remember, as a teenager, the de-evolution of the churchly chapeaux. It must have been a sin as a woman in the Catholic faith to enter into church without a covering of some sort. Maybe it was a way of demanding obedience to the church, that patriachal thing, or a symbol of the Virgin Mary since I’ve never seen her without a veil of some sort.

I remember in high school, when I started paying attention to girls and the strange things they do, that they were all concerned about going to Mass “uncovered!” Being raised in a Catholic environment, it seemed we were always going to church for one thing or another. I don’t remember high school girls rushing to their lockers to pull out the ubiquitous beret, beanie or bandana or whipping out, frantically, some fold up fedora or fez hat from their knapsack just before walking through the doors of church. 

One thing is for sure, in the sixties, it was fairly obvious that girls worried about what was gonna accompany their head in church. Those less than organized young ladies resorted to any and every thing before crossing the vestibule.

It was at that point, the devolving of the traditional redress occurred. White veils, scarves and beanies became bobbie pinned doilies, handkerchiefs and sometimes in a fit of desperation, a clean Kleenex!

No kidding!

Don’t quite know when that “tradition” ended. Maybe it ended with the pill and the sexual revolution that it spawned. Maybe not. I guess I need to look further into this intriguing subject, but I probably won’t.

More fun to speculate!

Copyright 2018/ Ben Bensen III