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the Red Hat
Society | |
The days of elderly women doing nothing but
cooking huge meals on holidays and knitting themselves slowly into senility are gone.
Enter the Red Hat Society -- a group dedicated to the radical notion
that old ladies should have fun.
"My grandmothers didn't do anything but keep house and serve everybody.
They were programmed to do that," said Emily Cornette, founder of a
chapter of the 7-year-old Red
Hat Society and one of the society's nearly 1 million members who are
mostly women over 50. The group has chapters in all 50 U.S. states and 25
countries.
While men have long spent their retirements
fishing and playing golf, women have sometimes seemed to become invisible
as they age. But the generation now turning 50 is the baby boomers
, and the same people who
rejected their parents' way of being young are now forging a new way of
growing old.
Throw feminism, a bit of disposable income and better health for most
elderly into the mix, and the Red Hat Society starts to look almost
inevitable.
On a recent Saturday, Cornette, 75, presided over
a raucous, teasing gathering of 13 women in red hats and two in pink hats.
In the Red Hat Society, women over 50 wear red hats and purple clothes,
while the women under 50 must wear pink hats and lavender
clothing.
"This is something just for me," Cornette said. She kept an eagle eye
out for guests with empty cups or plates that needed refilling. "There
aren't any rules, really. We don't do anything. All we do is have fun."
The organization was inspired by a poem by Jenny Joseph that begins:
"When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple/ With a red hat which doesn't
go," said Sue Ellen Cooper, who founded the Red Hat Society in 1998 with
the first chapter in Fullerton, California.
Cooper gave a friend a copy of the poem, along with a red hat, about
seven years ago. Soon other friends wanted red hats, and they attracted
lot of attention when they wore them.
"The point of this is that we need recess from always doing something
for someone else," Cooper said in a telephone interview. "Women feel so
guilty when they do something for themselves."
This is why chapters are discouraged from raising money or doing
anything useful and from using the word "meeting," since it sounds too serious. "We're a ladies play
group. It couldn't be more simple," said
Cooper.
（Agencies) |
從前，中老年婦女們除了烹飪假日大餐、“在如梭歲月中慢慢變老”之外無所事事，現在這種日子已經一去不復返了。
加入“紅帽會社”吧，這是一個有點激進的組織，致力于推崇“中老年婦女同樣應該享受快樂生活”的理念。
“我的祖母輩除了看屋子和伺候家人外，沒有別的事可干。她們像設定好程序的機器人一樣做這些事。”紅帽會社某分社的創立人艾米麗·科爾奈特說，她也是該會社的近100萬會員當中的一位，這些會員絕大多數都是50歲以上的女性。該組織已有7年歷史，在全美50個州和25個國家都有分社。
長期以來，男人們退休后可以靠釣魚或打高爾夫來消遣時光，女人們有時卻變得和她們的年齡一樣毫不顯眼。然而，眼下正邁向50歲門檻的這代人正是在“嬰兒潮”時期出生的那一批人。這批人當初拒絕他們父輩年輕時的生活方式，如今又在尋求“慢慢變老”的新方式。
對大多數中老年人來說，“紅帽會社”開始成為一種擋不住的時尚，因為它將女權主義、少量可自由支配收入和良好的身體狀況等因素統統結合起來。
上周六，75歲的科爾奈特主持了一次喧鬧搞笑的聚會，共有13名紅帽婦女和兩名粉帽婦女參加了聚會。在紅帽會社里，過了50歲的婦女頭戴紅帽、身穿紫衣，而50歲以下的婦女則必須戴上粉紅色的帽子，穿淡紫色的衣服。
科爾奈特說：“有些事兒很適合我干。”她密切關注著那些需要續杯或續盤的客人。“這里沒有什么規定，真的沒有，我們什么‘事情’都不用做，只要開開心心地玩就夠了。”
紅帽協會的創始人休·埃倫·庫珀說，成立該組織的靈感來自于詹妮·約瑟夫的一首詩，這首詩的開頭是這樣的：“當我變成老太婆時，我會穿紫色的衣服，戴一頂并不相稱的紅色帽子。”1998年，庫珀在加利福尼亞州南部城市富勒敦成立了第一家會社。
大約七年前，庫珀送給一位朋友這首詩的一份復印件和一頂紅色帽子，很快別的朋友也想要紅色帽子，頭戴紅帽的她們吸引了不少眼光。
庫珀在一次電話采訪中說：“我們總是在為他人效勞，可我們自己也需要放松和休息，這就是我這么做的關鍵所在。女性在為自己活著時，總是很有負罪感。”
這就是紅帽會社不鼓勵各分社募集資金或做一些“有用的事”的原因，“集會”這個詞最好也不要用，因為它聽起來太嚴肅了。庫珀說：“我們只是一個女士玩樂團體，一切就是這么簡單。”
（中國日報網站譯） |
Updated: 2005-04-05 10:26
