No Cap, FR FR

An off-hand tweet about men and ball caps goes viral, For Real

After my morning run a couple of Sundays past, I was scrolling on Twitter waiting to cool off enough to get into the shower. I do not remember what I was thinking about or listening to, but an image of a grown man wearing a ball cap at dinner popped into my head. So I hit the draft button, banged out the below tweet, and went about my routine.

Shower.
Mass.
Brunch.
Errands.

I later I took out my phone and I saw that quite a few people had commented on the no cap tweet. They were mostly very very angry. Getting ratiod is certainly something I had seen before, but never experienced. It was strange because most of the folks who follow me do so because they seem to like my output which mostly has to do with ruminations on wisdom, old books, counter-intuitive takes on various “current things” and the like. I have pretty strong opinions about a variety of things, but as I am a relatively affable in “meat space”, with an agreeable demeanor, I was not prepared for the vitriol that came bursting forth. I’ve been called fat before, and people have made fun of my name, and I know my glasses are on the intentionally obnoxious side of things, but I had no idea men (and even a few women) would be so upset.

Having a large number of people see something I thumbed out on my phone offhand-like was pretty fun. So I engaged and interacted with people, cracked back with humor and self-deprecation, and laughed at some of the funnier zingers. But as the days stretched on, and the impressions kept climbing, another emotion crept in.

Sadness.

I had tripped something limbic.

First I think it important to lay out with a little bit more precision and nuance what I meant. My friend Steve Skojec did a great job articulating my point of view for me and even in a funny ratio it is nice to have friends willing to jump into the fray on my behalf, especially when that friend does not share that opinion. So what is my opinion, and why do I care so much about men wearing ball caps?

I am deeply concerned about where we are headed as a culture, especially as regards the primary work of setting up and supporting structures in which men and women meet, get married, stay married, and create a family. This seemingly obvious process by which we create a structured world for the raising of kids and the formation of community is in peril. We are not doing this well. Even when men and women find a way to get together, staying together has become a game of dice. Familial stability ain’t what it used to be. Part of what is driving this degeneration is the narratives around the sexes. Men, in particular, are in trouble. The middle class script no longer holds—it is no longer normative or aspirational. Economic factors are real, but so too are the “soft” factors. The mythologies of the normative script have been deflated.

The men seem least interested in embracing thier adulthood. Why is this? Why do men not want to be men? Is it the myth of comfort? The need to be seen as laid back and chill? Is it because we do not wish to be seen as a stiff or a square or as a “normie”?

The laments about how casual we’ve become are not new. The radical transformation of workplace decorum was yet another victim of the decade from the mid 60’s to the mid 70’s. Like everything else, the way we dressed was altered radically. Casual Friday’s became normative. Post covid lockdowns, even many office spaces became optional. But the real shift came when men stopped dressing up for church. As a kid, we went to mass every Sunday as a family. Every week we had to put on our “Sunday clothes” though this rapidly gave way. But my dad always wore a tie. He wore a tie everyday, and he hated wearing the tie, and taking off his tie was always the first thing he did when he came through the door. He loved to be in his shorts and t-shirt at the house. But alas, the days of men wearing a tie for church is long gone. We’ve been told to not shame guys who want to come. “Come as you are” became the mantra.

I question the wisdom of that. I certainly don’t want to chase anyone away. But why shouldn’t we encourage people to dress for the occasion. I used to be able to say “would you show up for a wedding dressed so casually?” There was a time that people intuitively GOT THIS. Now I do not think many would bat an eye at showing up to an occasion dressed down. What does this say about the affair if you do not think you should dress up? What does “dressing up” even mean?

I’m not entirely sure. But my intuition remains that with the loss of “occassion” we are losing our grasp on the real, and thus what is important and sacred. I know my own personal style choices skew preppy and mid-century, but this tweet was never really about being proscriptive.

It’s about finding a way back to the sacred. “Dressing up” is a small sacrifice to make, especially if we care about re-serving the shared spaces, what the writer Matthew B. Crawford calls the “attentional commons”.¹ These shared spaces must be re-sacralized so as to give us a chance of crafting a coherent self.

The sadness I mentioned above comes from the visceral reaction so many had to lash out at a tweet that dared suggest we should de-slobbify. The mental script was triggered, thus revealing in some sense the true sacred held by many of my fellow menfolk: no one can ever tell me what to do.

Dear Reader, may I suggest we question this cultural value? I get the impulse, I really do. But we will need to rethink this as a larger project of figuring out how to create shared spaces, relationships, and communities. Dressing somewhat intentionally might be a small thing that you can do to contribute to a better attentional commons.

1. Matthew B. Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head