Why Do Ugly People Wear a Make America Great Again Hat
Does This Blood-red Cap Brand Me Look MAGA?
Some sports fans don't desire to exist dislocated for Trump supporters.
Justin Peterson, a 37-year-old graphic designer who lives in Orlando, Fla., owns well-nigh 100 baseball caps, including several featuring the familiar "C" logo of the Cincinnati Reds. But when he and his wife visited her family unit in Cincinnati over the recent Independence Mean solar day holiday weekend, Mr. Peterson didn't bring his red Reds cap. Instead, he opted for the squad's alternate black lid.
"Unfortunately, I don't feel comfortable wearing red baseball hats anymore," Mr. Peterson said. "I don't want someone assuming I'm something that I'm non, or that I represent something that I remember has become pretty ugly."
There are enough of people who are proud to wear President Trump'due south signature "Make America Great Again" caps, of course, as evinced at recent rallies. When Mr. Trump'southward entrada introduced them in 2015, he was dubbed a "marketing genius." Hats flew off the shelves in the shop at the Trump Tower in Midtown as Republican supporters and Democrats alike vied to obtain the accessory of the summertime.
Just four years later, some sports fans, similar Mr. Peterson, accept become reluctant to wear their favorite teams' red headwear, or have even stopped wearing it altogether, because they don't want people to remember they're wearing one of the MAGA hats, which are also red.
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Put more but, they fright being mistaken for MAGA.
Since teams throughout the sports world produce baseball-style caps for sale, the potential for MAGA confusion extends beyond baseball teams like the Philadelphia Phillies and St. Louis Cardinals, and includes fans of the Kansas City Chiefs (a football team), the New Jersey Devils (hockey), Liverpool F.C. (soccer) and many other cerise-themed teams. It appears to exist the latest example of how Mr. Trump's presence tends to have a polarizing event on most anything it touches, even something as seemingly innocuous equally the apprehensive ball cap.
Promotional caps accept as well been affected. People responding to a reporter'due south research said they had stopped wearing red caps ad things like Maker's Mark bourbon and Sriracha hot sauce.
On a recent episode of the humorist John Hodgman's podcast, "Judge John Hodgman," a woman asked if her hubby should stop wearing his red promotional caps from a software company. Mr. Hodgman'due south response: "If you're not a Trump voter, stay away from information technology. Stay away from anything that might resemble a MAGA hat."
Paradigm
Louis Orangeo, 27, a procurement annotator in Bloomfield North.J., did vote for Trump in 2022 and is prepared to vote for him once again in 2020, although he isn't 100 percentage sure. Mr. Orangeo said he bought a MAGA hat subsequently the election, "mainly to troll people," simply stopped wearing it because of negative responses. "I detest having to explicate it and defend it," he said. "It always gets a look and a sneer." He does wear a minor league baseball game team's red cap plenty and nobody has ever said anything.
But Mr. Peterson, the Orlando graphic designer, decided to mothball his red caps after his wife pointed out the potential for defoliation or confrontation. And others have made similar decisions subsequently noticing the responses to their red hats.
"One of my favorite hats is a blood-red University of Wisconsin Badgers hat," said Corey Looby, 31, a database manager from Madison, Wis. "But when I traveled, I would regularly notice glares from people I passed on the street. I don't desire to be associated with MAGA, even mistakenly, so I stopped wearing information technology."
The miracle is by no ways universal; some red-capped fans said the potential MAGA connection had never occurred to them until a reporter brought it up. "I don't like engaging in political conversations. I merely desire to be friends and talk nearly other topics, not politics," said Jason Stygar, 34, an audio engineer in St. Louis. "But equally a lifelong Cardinals fan, I love my red chapeau — I'll wear it anywhere and everywhere. It had never even occurred to me, that someone would mistake it for a MAGA hat, and nobody'south ever bothered me about it."
And some are wearing red caps in defiance, regardless of politics.
"I am not pro-Trump or anti-Trump, but I do have a Detroit Cerise Wings lid and become weird looks when I wear information technology," said Nick Landry, 28, project director for a carpenter subcontractor in Milford, Mich. "I continue to wearable information technology as a social experiment, hoping people will experience like idiots when they realize that it'due south not a MAGA hat and that they're feeling vitriol over something and so stupid."
Fans and teams alike, though, have long been wary about inadvertent political messaging. In 1954, for example, the Cincinnati Reds changed their official team name to Redlegs, to avoid being associated with the communist scare. (They changed the name dorsum to Reds in 1959.)
And during George W. Bush's presidency, left-leaning Washington Nationals fans oft wore caps with the team'due south secondary "DC" logo, rather than the primary "West" mark, lest they be viewed equally Dubya supporters.
But those examples were team specific and localized, while the potential for being mistaken for MAGA appears to have no regional or even international boundaries. That's what Daniel Proulx discovered earlier this twelvemonth when he wore a cerise Molson beer cap while pitching in his softball league in the Canadian town of Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta.
"The other teams would comment and ask if I was a Trump supporter," said Mr. Proulx, 34, an athletic director at a junior high school. "I had no idea what they meant, but it was a consequent question. Later on a while, my own teammates started suggesting that I get a different chapeau. Perchance something blue instead of cherry."
Whatever one'due south opinion of Mr. Trump, these stories are a testament to the MAGA hat'due south success, both as a popular piece of apparel and equally a cultural signifier. Because there are plenty of knockoffs, information technology'due south hard to summate how many of the hats take been sold or distributed since they debuted in 2022 (the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment), simply they have become sufficiently ubiquitous, at least in some circles, to overshadow all other red ball caps.
Aside from wanting to avoid controversy or the potential for mistaken tribal identity, some people who say they have taken their carmine headgear out of circulation encounter this choice as a matter of courtesy or even empathy toward immigrants, minorities and other groups that they consider targets of the president's policies.
Epitome
"It breaks my center to recollect I can brand someone be on guard and uncomfortable just by wearing a scarlet lid," said Jeremiah McBrayer, 42, an data-technology worker from Missouri who shelved his red headwear after seeing some negative responses to it at his local Home Depot. "Information technology is just sad and unfortunate that this is where nosotros are in our country at present."
Has all of this led to a turn down in non-MAGA red cap sales? 2 leading cap brands — New Era Cap Company and '47 — did not respond to requests for comment; neither did Lids, a concatenation of cap retailers. Another retailer, Dick'south Sporting Goods Inc., declined to comment, citing a company policy of not discussing sales figures.
But managers at several sportswear shops said carmine caps have been harder to obtain from distributors lately, and some of them said the scarlet scarcity was direct related to the MAGA connection.
"Three of our vendors specifically mentioned this trend," said Benji Boyter, who runs the retail operation at a Due south Carolina golf and tennis resort. "One of them mentioned it in the sense of staying abroad from too many ruby hats, while the other ii casually mentioned something forth the lines of 'You've got to be careful with crimson hats these days.'"
Many of the people eschewing their red caps said they feel conflicted. On the one hand, they are engaged in a grade of protest and resistance. Simply in doing then, they're granting Mr. Trump power over their apparel choices and how they express their support for their favorite teams.
"It'due south like, he tin can't take ruby-red hats from u.s.a., likewise," said Lendsey Thomson, 33, a sports lawyer in Kansas Metropolis who has stopped wearing his favorite red "KC" cap. "Merely, alas, he kind of has."
At least one fan has decided to repossess that ability. Dave Tarr, a 64-twelvemonth-old retiree and Arsenal soccer fan in Charleston, Due south.C., put aside his beloved scarlet Arsenal cap during the 2022 election entrada. "Then a few months agone," he said, "I but decided that I wouldn't requite Trump or his minions the satisfaction of not doing something that I wanted to do."
And so Mr. Tarr brought his Arsenal cap out of retirement and began wearing information technology again. So far, he said, nobody has said anything virtually information technology.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/20/style/red-baseball-hats-maga.html
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