Give credit where credit is due':orgins of the farmer hat

Meg Thompson
Editor-in-Chief

    A strange phenomenon has taken place. You may not have noticed, because though it has just recently become popular, it has existed for years: The farmer hat.

    We should have seen it coming. The fashion industry has been in a lull for quite some time now. They ran out of ideas sometime in the eighties, forcing all of middle-class America to shop at garage sales. (Or at least that is what I have forced myself to believe after revisiting my elementary school scrapbook.) This lack of originality has forced us to make things trendy by altering them slightly because they have, once again, existed for years - the upside-down and backwards visor, sweatpants insides-out and only pulling your jeans up slightly past the calf muscle.

    The term "farmer hat" is interchangeable with "trucker hat." But since farmers existed a few thousand years before truckers, we shall call them farmer hats.

    I confess. I own a farmer hat; however, mine came free with every 300 pounds of seed corn my dad bought. And since he already had 98 other complementary farmer hats and a few matching sweater sets, he gave me one of my very own. It is a genuine farmer hat: the mesh backing, the Styrofoam front with protective, built-in sweat band, the glaring yellow and green, the stitched ear of corn, the unbendable bill - I love it.

    My hat is not any cooler because it was free of charge. The point is that farmers have been cool for years and no one has told them, and they have received little credit for their contribution to the world of fashion. Farmers may not have noticed that their hat is cool because in some cases it has been altered more than slightly. Some are worn with the bill at an oblique angle. Some are worn by incredibly famous teen heartthrobs on the covers of ridiculously fluffy teen magazines. Some are pink.

    Fashion is quite the enigma. The farmer hat is cool because it isn't cool, if you know what I mean. On the coolness scale, it lies somewhere between making out with the seatbelt on and putting vinyl-LP crackles on your CD. It will probably die out in a few weeks and some lone individuals wearing ties with tank tops will persevere, citing they were the first ones to don the farmer hat when actually they were not: farmers were.

    It is not my intention to discourage or encourage any fashion trends; I only want to give credit where credit is due. Farmers have been doing their best to indirectly aid fashion for generations, while simultaneously feeding the planet and keeping beef cattle from roaming the streets and causing trouble. It is not an easy task, but look what farmers have given us over the years, in addition to hats and cutlets: Overalls, Carhart jackets, quilted flannel, non-quilted flannel, Wrangler jeans which must be worn three sizes to small in order to be cool and, last but not least, rawhide.

    Fashion often gets kicked aside in winter, as most people find it more important not to die from hypothermia walking to class instead of looking cool. And that's okay, but if you are female, remember this rule of thumb when you are shopping next summer: if your thumb is longer than the pair of shorts, don't buy them.

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