Liz Watson’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.
There is no article of male clothing more maligned in contemporary online culture than the fedora. Once the favored hat of gangsters and sexy archaeologists, around 2011 the fedora came to be internet shorthand for a Certain Kind of Dude: a basement-dwelling, Cheeto-eater who loathes his contemporaries and seeks refuge in TV and video games. A guy who believes in the friend-zone, Richard Dawkins, and sexualizing young cartoon characters. A jerk, but a specific kind of jerk.
However, I’ve noticed that recently the fedora has been used as a net term for all kinds of creeps. This is unfair to the fedora, which isn’t THAT bad a hat objectively and shouldn’t have to shoulder that burden. For the sake of the fedora’s reputation and expanding our own misandrist vocabulary, I present to you the Leather Golf Hat.
The equally-loathsome ENFP to the Fedora’s INTJ.
(A caveat: there is one man who looks fantastic in a leather golf hat. That man is Samuel L. Jackson. Thinking you look like Samuel L. Jackson in a leather golf hat is as foolish as thinking you look like Humphrey Bogart in a fedora. If you wear a leather golf hat, the odds are you look like a child’s thumb with an acorn top stuck on it.)
Fedoras shy away from social interaction. Leather Golf Hats love social interactions, especially ones where they can try to start a drum circle or show off their juggling skills.
Fedoras quietly sweat at girls they like. Leather Golf Hats will aggressively quote Terry Pratchett at you and ask if they can french braid your hair. They’re great at french braiding hair.
Fedoras like anime and My Little Pony. Leather Golf Hats don’t watch TV. Except Firefly.
Fedoras live on the internet. The Leather Golf Hat is way more interested in living life.
Leather Golf Hats love talking about how poor they are, because they convinced themselves a long time ago that a lack of financial wherewithal was a sign of a vital interior life. (Leather Golf Hats always have enough money for Burning Man tickets.)
If a Leather Golf Hat does not own a ukulele, he will own a unicycle.
The Leather Golf Hat took two months of swing dancing lessons and has been milking it for eight years.
Leather Golf Hats have big plans for NaNoWriMo, which fall apart when they buy a pair of stilts instead. The stilts are soon as neglected as the novel.
Leather Golf Hats love organizing “booze and boardgame” nights, which inevitably turn into spittle-soaked screaming matches over that year’s $50 Spiel des Jahres .
The Fedora’s personality comes from the media he consumes. The Leather Golf Hat’s personality comes from the things he buys.
Leather Golf Hats love “banter.”
Fedoras are atheists. The Leather Golf Hat is agnostic, because who is he to say if there’s a higher power in the universe, you know?
Leather Golf Hats love making fun of people who do not read. (Leather Golf Hats have not read a new book by anyone other than Neil Gaiman since they graduated college.)
The Leather Golf Hat used to smoke clove cigarettes. He has recently upgraded to nice cigars, which affords him another opportunity for gently oppressive pedantry.
Utilikilts.
Leather Golf Hats love feminism, especially the kind of feminism which involves more girls being in touch with their sexuality and therefore open to polyamory.
The Leather Golf Hat likes to say he is “bisexual, but in like, a conceptual way.”
Leather Golf Hats get an almost erotic pleasure from inside jokes.
The Leather Golf Hat almost certainly majored in Gender Studies and did not notice how often he interrupted his female professors.
Leather Golf Hat have a single piece of jewelry (probably a necklace, but maybe an earring) which he always wears. He would really like you to ask about it.
The Leather Golf Hat owns vests. So many vests. Sometimes in the summer, he wears a vest with no shirt. A banner day for the Leather Golf Hat!
The Leather Golf Hat once harbored theatrical aspirations. He auditioned for high school plays with Bottom’s “Let me play the lion too!” speech and probably played one of the Board of Education Barbershop Quartet in The Music Man. When he was not cast as Harold Hill, he smiled broadly, but something inside of him wilted and soured. This is because his dreams are so thin and material that they cannot sustain even the slightest disappointment. He sinks back into the comforts of goods, which will inevitably let him down as well, but are more easily replaced than dreams.
(The boy they cast as Harold Hill majored in Musical Theater at Michigan, is actually bisexual, and is now in the touring company of Once. He never wears any kind of hat.)
