Dare to Ask: Are Southern men and their ball caps inseparable?

By Phillip Milano

Question

I do not understand the habit some Southern men have of wearing ball caps indoors, in restaurants and movie theaters, in particular. Has etiquette changed while I wasn’t looking?

Jeff, 58, Jacksonville

Replies

I don’t know about the Southern men you’ve encountered, but as one of the GRITS (Girls Raised In The South), I can promise you that no true Southern gentleman would ever wear a ball cap in a restaurant. Etiquette didn’t change; some men just prefer to ignore it.

S.D., 38, female, Tampa

If you’re brought up to think wearing hats indoors is rude, you’ll think it’s rude. If you’re brought up thinking that’s the norm, then that’s the norm. In some cultures, for example, burping at the dinner table is considered a compliment to the cook. In American culture, it’s considered rude. Ball caps indoors don’t, for the most part, interfere with another’s ability to enjoy their meal or see a movie. Now if it were a cowboy hat, that would be another matter.

S. Rollison, 49, Pennsylvania

I never see this in metro areas, but I see it in the rural southern and northern areas of Minnesota. Minnesota is about as Southern as Maine lobster. So it’s more rural than Southern (to wear ball caps).

Gregory, 17, Minnesota

Expert says

Stephen Clay McGehee of DeLand runs ConfederateColonel.com, billed as “an online community of those striving to live the life of the Southern Gentleman or Southern Lady in today’s world.”

So why can’t guys chill with a ball cap on in a restaurant? (For us, it’s because we’d look like a bespectacled chump, but we’d look that way wearing one anywhere.)

McGehee said it’s for the same reason it’s wrong not to stand when a lady enters a room: It’s cruddy form.

“Most people do it because they don’t realize it’s wrong, or because their dad or buddies do it and nobody’s told them it’s bad manners,” he said. “As a rule: If it’s a place inside where someone normally is seated, take off your hat or cap. So there’s no problem wearing one indoors in a mall or hallway.”

He agreed that donning a ball cap everywhere is not peculiar to Southern blokes.

“It apparently started out more as a rural thing. Say most of your relatives were farmers and wore ball caps to keep from getting sunburned or cut down on glare. That’s practical. But now people wear them who don’t need them. It’s like driving a pickup when all you do is carry groceries around. Now they do it to fit an image.”

That image has been perpetuated by the media, McGehee added. Once Hollywood got hold of the stereotyped Southerner look, and once the ’60s and ’70s made rejection of authority and formality de rigueur, it was off to Bass Pro Shops.

“Now it’s a different type of conformity: a rejection to getting dressed up. [Wearing a cap in the wrong place] makes you look like you don’t know what you’re doing,” he said. “They are following Hollywood’s image of what a Southern man should be like.”