I have received several e-mails asking about etiquette related to wearing hats, and specifically, many people want to know about how the custom of wearing a baseball cap backwards got started.

You might think that someone like Axl Rose of Guns N' Roses would have been the person responsible for such a fad. I mean, we should blame him for something, shouldn't we? But, it appears that the style was popularized by rap artists in the mid-1980s who borrowed the look from South Central L.A. gangs who were the real "inventors" of the look. It is likely that Buck Showalter's criticism of Ken Griffey Jr. in 1993 for wearing his hat backward at the All Star Game further popularized the fashion for a generation or more of fraternity boys.

In my opinion, wearing a baseball cap backwards started out with integrity. It was a gesture of cultural defiance, self-assertion and empowerment among the urban poor. It was a symbolic desecration of the second most popular U.S. national icon after the American flag itself - the baseball cap. Since burning U.S. flags was inherently a Caucasian ritual, blacks and Hispanics were forced to come up with something different. It was a smarter kind of irreverence. Wearing your cap backwards hardly ever got you arrested, on its own.

No one has claimed to be the founder of the "Backward Cap Phenomenon." For all we know, it could have been Dr. Seuss.

I am a backward cap.
I am.
I sit upon your head,
Be you a woman or a man.
I was like a thinking cap.
I was.
Would you like me
Here or there?
I would not like my cap just anywhere.
I do not like to advertise the brand
That's on the front.
It's just a scam.
I am a backward cap.
I am.

In my opinion, true commentary on the social evils of runaway capitalism is something to be admired. Unfortunately, for the backward-cap world, the political meaning of the gesture has been gobbled up by commercial America, which has always had the underhanded ability to seize the soulful and the spiritual and turn them into big bucks and mainstream traditions. Now, that is what I call bad manners! If the fans at baseball games only knew how anti-American the backward cap used to be, they would be turning those caps forward faster than Ken Griffey can swing a bat.

According to Dan Zevin, Rolling Stone reporter and author of Entry-Level Life: A Complete Guide To Masquerading As A Member Of The Real World, "Never wear a backward baseball cap to an interview unless applying for the job of umpire." I would add that it is also permissible to wear a backward baseball cap if you are playing the position of catcher in a baseball game. And, if you get stuck, somehow, in a biker bar and don't have your bandanna with you, it might be acceptable to wear that baseball cap backwards. Blending in, even just a little bit, at the right time, can be good for your health.

All the etiquette concerning hats applies to the wearing of baseball caps, except for one thing. Baseball caps are unisex clothing, not something distinctively male or female. If a man should remove his hat or cap, for instance, during the playing of the National Anthem, so should a woman remove her baseball cap or hat. However, a woman (or a man) who is wearing a sort of dressy, daytime feminine outfit (gloves and pearls optional) can properly keep their matching hat on. So, guys, listen up. If you dress-up just right (gloves and pearls optional), even you can keep your hat on all the time.

Are you following me on this? Once upon a time, the backward cap symbolized something meaningful and something worth saying about the downside of American consumerism. Now, as you may have noticed, it is a more mindless, rather mainstream attempt to be "kewl" (pronounced "coo-el").

If you want to be truly up-to-date and commercially correct these days, you should be wearing a Gilligan hat. If you want to send a political message, go for the kufi or a French Legionnaire cap.

-- Be kind and prosper, Dr. Sterling

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