The Drop of Many Hats
Becoming who I was always meant to be
Becoming a mother makes you aware of all the ways you ignored your own mother, and perhaps the stupidest thing I ever did was not listen to mine when she extorted me to cover every inch of my skin because “the sun is your enemy.” Even a brush with melanoma at eighteen couldn’t dismantle the witchcraft Mischa Barton in The O.C. cast over my desperate adolescent subconscious. I wanted, more than anything, to be tan.
Eventually, though, I had to accept the reality that my skin comes in two colors: blinding white and blazing red. As it turns out, the sun is my enemy. The Irish wrinkles already creeping their way across my furrowed, aging brow are being encouraged by the California sun. I’ve watched too much Real Housewives to feel comfortable with Botox so that leaves me the old fashioned anti-aging device: HATS. That’s right. I’m a woman of a certain age (36). I feel fun and flirty but sexually, in the eyes of the world, I am worse than dead so that means I am now a woman with a hat collection.
It all started with a straw hat I had been eyeing for quite some time and then found in a bonanza Anthropologie sale before Anthropologie pivoted from selling French chic to French trash. It looks like something a character might wear in a story about a woman becoming a school teacher in a town “out west” sometime between the Civil War and World War I. It has a big blue ribbon that you can tie right under your chin in case it blows off, which adds a certain “I-just-time-traveled-here” chic!
Next up is a hat that Kathy Hilton quite famously wore on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Not to toot my own hat horn, but I lusted after this hat even before Kathy made it a major fashion moment (Andy Cohen called it “a lampshade.”).
My brother, sister, and sister-in-law made me the luckiest girl in the world and gifted said hat to me for my last birthday. Whenever I wear it I get an unending stream of comments. Sometimes they’re even compliments! In windy weather the brim blows fully up, which makes the hat look like it got electrocuted. One time a man on the street witnessed this transformation before his eyes and said, “Whoa! Two different looks.” Exactly.
My husband gave me the next hat for Christmas one year. Again, I had lusted after it from afar, at one point showing it to my mom. She salivated at the prospect of so much dark fabric swathing my useless, fragile skin. “I will buy it for you! Langan: it is MEDICINE.” The vibes are secular semi-burqa, and it cuts off so much of my vision that it should be a felony to wear it while driving.
Besides the sun hats, there are the fashion hats. My favorite (previously featured on Safe & Warm) was acquired at a thrift store in Idyllwild (a little bit Idyll and a little bit Wild), a California mountain town that combines the charm of cabins and the ravages of meth. Like an amulet in a horror movie, the hat called to me from a dusty corner of the store. When I put it on my head, everything in my life finally made sense. My friend James says it makes me look like “a ghost from the future.” One time I wore it to the Magic Castle, which is exactly what it sounds like (a castle for magicians), and approximately one thousand magicians (older gentlemen) complimented me on my outfit. It is not good for sun protection since inexplicably there’s a huge hole in it and also it’s made of wool felt. Sometimes you just have to choose fashion over function.
And then there’s this hat, which my sister acquired for me at Kirstie Alley’s estate sale. The estate sale occurred before the late actress’s death, when she decided to divest herself of her Los Angeles properties before finding final respite in the loving arms of the Scientology headquarters in Clearwater, Florida. Other items acquired at said estate sale by friends: a bedazzled Miu Miu duster, throw pillows, a bathrobe from Ellen (RIP). I have not worn this hat out of the house yet. It’s waiting for the right caftan.
This one I bought at the Rose Bowl Flea Market while I listened to the woman ahead of me beg for a discount on her Coachella outfit because she had just lost her job because she wouldn’t get vaccinated. It looks like a chef’s hat on holiday and is so itchy it is tragically almost unwearable!
And that’s just scratching the hat surface (brim)!
Many years ago, I read a book that changed my whole perspective on improvisational comedy. Not in a way that made me stop spending money on it, just in a way that made me get bigger laughs from the five people in attendance at whatever show I was doing in the Western reaches of Hell’s Kitchen. In it, the author (a noted improv teacher), exhorts female comedians not to wear hats because then you’ll be seen as a “kooky lady.” Like many sexist directives, at the time I nodded in solemn agreement and then went to watch my favorite eight man improv team pretend to sodomize each other.
With age, I’ve realized that his advice, like much of the life advice dispensed by male improvisers, was fucking dumb. I love being a kooky lady. I love my hats. I feel like I know who I am in them, and more importantly, they shield me from my greatest enemy: the sun.