Let’s Ban Baseball Caps! (Caps take over the world)

[pampango]

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/258775/20111130/baseball-caps-fashion-men-women-society.htm

Walk down any street in New York City, Los Angeles, London, Tokyo, Seoul, Mumbai, Nairobi, Mexico City or Istanbul and you will definitely see one of three things: people chattering on their cell-phones, people sending text messages; and people wearing baseball caps.

One of the (perhaps) unexpected results of globalization is that much of the world now is wearing the same headgear -- baseball caps (related to a game that most of the global population neither watches, nor plays, nor even cares much about).

In European countries, Muslim veils and hijabs have become a bitter point of controversy and a political hot-potato since the issue relates directly to such contentious subjects as immigration, religion, feminism, identity and race. But at least, veils, hijabs and turbans are beautiful to look at and part of ancient traditions… so, why aren’t the French, Germans, British and Italians similarly outraged by their people wearing those hideous, God-awful, genderless, American-style baseball caps?

But I think there’s a larger theme at play here.

American culture has dominated the world for about the last sixty-five years. The Unites States has, during its relatively short history, given the world many wonderful things of value (electricity, automobiles, air travel, classic Hollywood films, jazz, great literature, and many other gifts). But the U.S. has also exported a lot of garbage to the unsuspecting outside world -- junk food; horrid TV programs; hip-hop music and, uh, the ‘fashion’ of baseball caps, among numerous other atrocities.

I’m all in favor of globalization if it serves to uplift the economic status of poor people around the world; but I strongly object to it if it destroys regional culture (which, yes, includes clothing). Once the precious accoutrements of cultural traditions are lost, they vanish forever.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

1. surely the author

isn't comparing the Hijab to the baseball cap?!? FFS..

sP

[Common Sense Party]

3. Apparently so.

Some people need better hobbies.

[mrmpa]

2. About 15 years ago, I worked with a woman who.........

always wore an old Nike baseball cap. I told her one day that every man I saw in an armed conflict anywhere in the world wore a Nike cap. She came back to me a couple days later, told me she had been watching the news and she saw a clip of some guerrilla operation and what I said about her cap was right.

Also do you ever wonder why after every championship game (any sport) the winner has a championship cap and or tee-shirt with their name on it? It's because the manufacture prepares them in advance for both teams. The losing team's caps and shirts are then shipped abroad so that in the US they aren't bought up by collectors to be sold at possibly higher prices.

[Throd]

4. They are popular because they are practical.

[LanternWaste]

9. Much like the metric system being used in the U.S.

"Precisely. Why should we allow additional avenues of opportunities..."

Much like the metric system being used in the U.S.

[WildNovember]

23. Practical? The only thing they're practical for is keeping the sun out of your eyes,

something other many other hats and head coverings do equally well.

[LeftinOH]

5. The design makes them very practical: The brim shades the eyes from sunlight, rain,

sleet & snow. I have a few of them, and wear them for those reasons -not to be fasionable. When they get too worn & tatty, they get thrown away. The origin of baseball hats is irrelevant now; the same goes for "tennis" shoes.

This article is complete snobbery. There's no problem with baseball caps as long as people who wear them are aware that they are informal attire; don't wear them at interviews or weddings, and if you're going to a sit-down restaurant -take it off.

[customerserviceguy]

21. That's only if you wear them backwards

Sorry, just couldn't resist!

[MADem]

6. What is this guy smoking? And what purpose does his gratuitous slam serve?

This shit is not gonna happen:

But if you look at photos at crowds attending baseball games in the 1930s and 1940s, what do you notice? Almost everyone is dressed to the nines – men with derbies, suspenders, jackets, suits and ties; women in elegant fineries (even during the 1930s Depression when no one had any money!)

I say we go back to those days again. Please, I beseech you, get rid of those baseball caps – they make you look stupid and tacky… uh, just like Michael Moore and Spike Lee.

Let's all go back to wearing waistcoats and pocket watches, and hoop skirts for the "ladies," too, while we're at it--would that work for ya, pal? Hell, let's go all out--togas for everyone!

People wear baseball hats because they shield one's face from the sun better than hijab, turban or anything save a Mexican sombrero can do (and those sombreros are hard to stow when you want to remove your hat). More people in the Middle East should wear them--they have a very high rate of blindness that is exacerbated by the strong sun over that way.

And the whining about regional clothing? Why isn't he griping when American women wear pashminas like John Kerry's wife, or haram pants like any number of ill-advised seventies' icons? Where was the outrage when Johnny Carson stepped on the Tonight Show stage with a Nehru jacket on?

Fashion is fashion, and a lot of people like it. I'm unfashionable--I have clothing that is still usable, that is three or more decades old, and I keep stuff until it wears out completely. So I'm no fashion faddist, but I can understand how each generation has to do their thing and express themselves through their clothing choices--and some people just like buying crap and changing things up. Why ruin their fun?

[snooper2]

7. ROFL, what a tool

[HereSince1628]

8. Baseball caps

are very cheap...people everywhere look for cheap clothing/apparel
are easy to put on...
control loose hair and has an integrated sweatband...
provides a shield from overhead lighting and the sun.
A black hat worn with sunglasses makes you look like an American ninja.
Both paratrooper and combat infantry soldier badges look awesome on the poll of the cap.

The downsides include
it is not so good at protecting a person's ears or neck from sunburn/ultraviolet...
it is not so good at keeping rain off your neck or down your back
many people breakout in zits from a dirty sweatband...
it is no F***ing good at all for watering a horse (as the cap proper has vent holes)
wearing a Chicago Bears cap in Little Chute Wisconsin can get your killed by Packer fans, who would rather wear a wedge of cheese....

And having said that it would perhaps make more sense to address the issues of why NOBODY in the ENTIRE WORLD!!!!!! other than Wiconsinites would wear a foam replica of 1/6th of a wheel of cheez as headgear

[FSogol]

10. I never realized that those were 1/6th of a wheel. Have you verified that by making 6 cheese heads

stand in a circle? Birds-eye-pics?

[HereSince1628]

11. One day at "The Wisconsin Store" two gross of cheese hats

were arranged in a gigantic tower, each layer containing 6 and only 6 of the Holy Uncheddared Foamosities.

[FSogol]

13. Glad I live on the East coast.

Of course, you could create human columns by having six stand in a close circle and then have another six stand on their cheese base, and so on...

[HereSince1628]

14. Yeah...like why don't NY Giants fans wear bagels on their heads?

I mean, it's not even modelled on a 'GOOD' cheese. If it must be done, why cannot this Haute Coultural Fromagerie be done with some class?
Why not use something that harkens to the magnificence of a mature stinky cheese?

[FSogol]

12. Sounds like the author, Palash R. Ghosh , was always picked last for the local pickup games.

:shrug:

[Pyrzqxgl]

15. REPLACE THEM WITH COWBOY HATS or Bring back the Tricorn

[closeupready]

16. Among other reasons, I like them because they give me some privacy.

I don't like being gawked at all the time by tourists and newcomers who haven't yet learned street etiquette here in New York. A cap can be placed strategically on the head so as to discourage nosy busybodies.

[goddess40]

17. Make people look dopey

Especially the ones that wear them backwards. Those that wear them often wear them all the time. They aren't taken off indoors or at social events. Some guys even wear them in the hospital when their wives are giving birth.
I wouldn't be so against them if they are worn with the bill over the face, if they were clean and if they aren't worn indoors.

[LeftinOH]

18. In my high school yearbook, more than half of the guys' senior pictures have

the "helmet head" hairstyle; they removed their caps just long enough to take the picture. That was quite a while ago. Nowadays, lots of kids wear the caps in their senior pictures --kinda tacky. IMO.

[HereSince1628]

19. I agree sort of...but there is something incredibly yeoman-like

in wearing a seed co hat that is stained with dirt from your land, the grease used on your planter or binder, and the sweat from your brow.

I'm also one of those old-school types that doesn't think a hat should be worn sideways or indoors, unless maybe it's at a calving.

[GreenTea]

20. And COFFEE MAKERS!-When they appeared it was the beginning of the worlds downfall!

[Obamanaut]

22. Ban baseball caps worn with the bill to the rear, AND hoodies.

edited to include banning caps with the bills worn over the ear as well.

[Blue_Tires]

24. i do want to ban those who wear teams they don't cheer for

or even know what sport they play...