If ever there was a rule saying women must relinquish their sass after turning 50, members of the Salisbury Red Hat Society haven’t been informed.
These ladies are anything but blue-haired and listless.
Status quo makes no impression on these mad hatters — some having turned 50 more than a decade ago — who guffaw at the social faux pas set for women their age. Like living frivolously every now and then and getting decked out in red hats and purple duds.
“We are not confined to what society says a certain age should wear,” says Salisbury’s founding mother, Bea Hall. “We wear what we please. At a certain age you feel like you’re not supposed to wear a certain color and we’re against that.”
A statement that reflects the society’s vision. It was founded on such nose upturning.
The society’s founding mother, Sue Ellen Cooper, got the idea some years ago after reading the Jenny Joseph poem, “Warning,”which reads in part:
“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit …”
As a birthday gift, Cooper presented a friend with a vintage red hat and a copy of the poem. The friend loved the idea so much that she, too, presented a friend with a red hat and a “Warning.” It was soon clear that they had started something. The mothership organization was born.
But the group is not prejudiced toward younger women. Those who haven’t yet reached 50, considered “ladies in waiting,” are allowed to wear pink and lavender instead of red and purple.
Hall was inspired to start the Salisbury sibling group after visiting a cousin in Aiken, S.C., who is a member of the Wise Outrageous Women Chapter. The women wore red hats and purple duds, gathered at formal teas and took spectacular trips.
There are no rules in the club, only a few suggestions: The women should be at least 50 years old; should attend functions in full red-and-purple regalia; should invite other women into the chapter, preferably with the gift of a red hat; and, most of all, should enjoy themselves.
“It just looked like fun,”says Cooper.
Fun. That was the key word for the 68-year-old great-grandmother of two who hasn’t made time to slow down. She’s a square dancer, a 3-mile-a-day walker and international adventurer, literacy tutor, stock club member and, now, Red Hat Society chapter organizer.
And what’s more fun than playing dress up?
“If we dress up like this we become happy and frivolous and silly.”
She approached friends from her computer class and square dances about starting the group.
“Square dancing friends are a lot of fun and up to have fun,” Hall says.
Hall and seven of her friends met for the first time as the new Red Hat chapter at the Wrenn House in August. There, club officers were named. They followed the list of officers established by the mothership club:Queen Mother; Vice Mother, the first to receive a red hat; Hysterian, the historian who keeps a scrapbook of group functions; Sergeant-in-Gloves, the woman who “would ensure proper behavior if we could decide what that would be”; Anti-Parliamentarian, who makes sure no one makes any rules; Barristress, the group’s lawyer; and the E-Mail Female, who is supposed to secure the group’s first e-mail address.
Make no doubt, though, this group of women does not get together just to take a break from cross-stitching. In fact, even Saturday meetings cramp their style.
To these women, age is just a number and old is a state of mind.
“When you’re mentally young, you’re the same age as you’ve always been,” says Faye Smith, 63, a retired nurse who taught 30 years at the V.A. Medical Center. Now she’s a substitute teacher and a Hospice volunteer.
“I feel young at heart and I want to grow old playfully.”
Playing is all Barristress Jane Steinberg, 62, wants to do.
Steinberg was named Barristress not because she’s a lawyer but because she is married to a retired lawyer. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physical education and is a former P.E. teacher and coach.
Steinberg claims responsibility for starting the girls athletic program at Knox Middle School.
“It was like beating my head against the wall,”she says, because men didn’t want to share the school’s facilities. She also started the girls’ volleyball and basketball programs at the school in 1975.
The thing that worries the former P.E. teacher the most as she gets older is losing her flexibility. So, to prevent that, Steinberg, one of Hall’s square dancing friends, keeps moving. She says mature adults should start and maintain a regular exercise routine. If not it could be detrimental.
Sharp minds and bodies is a must in a vivacious group such as this. Hall never thought that, at this age, she would still be as pretentious.
“When I was younger, I used to think turning 40 was old. Now, 95 might be,”she says. “I want to be active and interested in things when I turn 90. If you start at 50 you’re on your way.”
Though the group is still relatively new, there’s no shortage of fun trips. Recently, they drove up to Mt. Airy to visit tourist attractions and eat pork chop sandwiches — all in their red baseball caps and purple sweatshirts.
When people see them in their red-and-purple gear they say, “You look fantastic!”
“When i was in my 30s and 40s I thought, ‘I’ll never do that,’” Hall says, “but now it’s now or never.”
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