Author: The Mighty Reptile | Submitted: Mar 3 2004 at 10:14:45 PM Truckers' Caps It has come to my opium-hazed attention recently that there has been a worrying increase in the proliferation of truckers caps on the cobbled byways of Greater London and, in response, I feel compelled to draw your attention (good reader) to this disturbing and slightly sinister trend.
As you may or may not be aware, truckers caps (as defined by the Southfields Polytechnic dictionary of style) are baseball caps fabricated from some form of man-made polymer, which bear the distinguishing features of an air-tex backing attached to a frontice-piece bearing: a) the insignia of some ill defined but suitably 'Route 66' truck stop / record shop / gator farm that no one outside Six Toe County could conceivably have been to; b) the insignia of some American state university / penitentiary (American institutions all seem to bear the same names e.g. Kentucky State); or c) some kind of motto / bon mot such as "Damn Seagulls!" or "I'm with stupid" (though due to their lack of trash fashion kudos I am willing to exempt the wearers of category c caps from the present discussion).
As the name suggests truckers caps were popularised by that icon of American thrift store chic, the long-distance truck driver; a species of person previously lauded for their tolerant road-using style and prodigious appetite for amphetamines. It is not my intention hear to lay some kind of blame at the door of this much maligned sub-genus of human being (some of my best friends are Florida-born eighteen-wheeler drivers).
No, my purpose here is to point out to those wonkey-haired fuckwits that I see noncing around Dean Street of an afternoon that you are NOT truck drivers, you will never be truck drivers and not only that you are constitutionally incapable of becoming truck drivers!! The image being projected by the 'truckers cap' is one of untrammelled masculinity of the type that can only be grown in the shocking cultural emptiness of the American small town and thusly can only be understood with reference to it. This is a type of masculinity I find significant in London largely by its absence. There is a great deal of difference between the British working class and the American blue collar worker and there is a WHOLE FUCKING CONTINENT of difference between it and you, you meaninglessly facile little man. You are, to coin a phrase, borrowing the big man's balls. Combine the truckers cap with a small but 'edgy' tattoo on the forearm of some kind of geometric shape, sweatbands in the colours of some first division football team you don't support (even now in the FT (football trendy) era) and a canvas belt extended in an annoyingly phallic manner and the transformation is complete - you are a vision of United States male in the guise of his most unrestrained form. All would be well were it not for the fact that YOU ARE NOT THAT MALE, your name is Tristan (though your friends call you Triss), you are a media peasant of some ill-defined type (remember they don't call it ephemera for nothing) and you exist bang in the middle of every demographic the National Board of Statistics has concocted. Merely looking like some Floridian superpredator is not going to change that.
"But it's ironic", I hear your lilting cries. WELL WHOOPEE SHIT! Because that's just what we need in this country: more irony, not backbone, not community spirit, not a fundamental respect for our fellow man. No, irony, the most useless form of humour. "I'm doing this because I know it's shit," you are saying. "Well that's because you're a fucking idiot," say I, and no measure of macho trappings is going to change that.
And just because you're a girl don't let that delude you into thinking it's somehow ok (I've seen you loitering around The Pool Bar trying to look like you know why your there). I hate to say it, but it looks a little fetishistic. What are you trying to do? Ward off lesser males with the threat of some huge, mullet-sporting behemoth called Bubba? Are you consciously raising the reproductive bar to admit only those men who could physically tackle this cultural Leviathan? No? WELL DON'T WEAR THE FUCKING HAT THEN! Your name is Jo and you are desperately trying to look cool. To wear these hats is to take part in a heinous piece of cultural mythologising that dehumanises the original wearer and reduces him the level of a mere totem of your hideously malformed libidos. Find an individual form of expression you feckless sheep. Trust me, you will feel better about yourself for doing so.
Now give the big man his hat back and tell him you're sorry.
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