I Love Hoods, Not Hoodies

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Swiss Guards · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: Not Female Clothing · So, Women Don't Wear Those Breeches in Austria? · I Love Hoods, Not Hoodies

The front pocket of a hoody was how I lost a passport once or twice. It's useless for valuable things.

The hoody is too hot to wear under a jacket.

Wearing a jacket under a hoody involves pulling up the hoody to reach the pocket. That would mean losing any less valuable things kept in the front pocket.

The hood poses none of these problems.

It does give you the advantage of a hoody. A hood, that is a kind of cap, covering the ears too, and the lower neck as well, so it's kind of a scarf too. And when it's too hot to wear it, you simply fold it back behind your neck. The shoulder piece is a welcome addition to the warmth of the shoulder region. Or, in summer, I actually do wear hoods in strings, like the cape version of my jackets (miming Hungarian mentes), but most of the year, wearing the hood is not too warm for the shoulders and at night it is, even outside, very sensibly contributing to warmth of the head.

Some people have a problem allowing me to be me ...

A hood is not a masquerade costume. Sure, there are masquerade costumes that are hoods, like there are masquerade costumes that are imitating any historic garb in much lighter materials. But a hood in itself is garb, a garment to be worn and used. As the hoody I left to the side had an US flag, I mean no disrespect to the country West of the Atlantic, where I started learning English and Christianity. But I prefer hoods. They were in use when Quartier Latin was as yet only recently a University student area. Certainly within 100 years of the founding of the Medieval Collegium Sorbonense. Calling these days all of the university "la Sorbonne" strikes a note like calling all of Oxford "Magdalen" after Magdalen College. A flag on a garment is anyway not as solemn as an actual flag. Garments do get torn or dirtied, so into situations where the flag part would need to be exposed to a rejection that if it happened to an actual flag would be suable.

I do prefer some other countries, like Ireland, but there is a change in both US en Eire that makes some states of the Union more pro-life than Eire is now. Varadkar was a disaster. Plus, US has more respect for C. S. Lewis, as he was an Anglo-Irish, a class not very popular with Irish Nationalists ...

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
All Saint, After First Vespers
31.X/1.XI.2024