Beanie (seamed cap)

In the United States, a beanie is a head-hugging brimless cap, made from triangular panels of material joined by a button at the crown and seamed together around the sides. Commonly made of cloth or felt material, beanies may also be made from leather or silk. In some US regions and parts of Canada the term "beanie" refers to a knitted cap (often woollen), alternately called a "stocking cap" or "toque".

This article is about the head-hugging cap made of seamed triangular sections. For other headwear sometimes referred to as a "beanie", see Knit cap. For other uses, see Beanie (disambiguation).
An Android sculpture at Googleplex featuring a multicolored beanie topped by a propeller

Styles

One popular style of the beanie during the early half of the twentieth century was a kind of skullcap made of four or six felt panels sewn together to form the cap. The panels were often composed of two or more different contrasting colors to give them a novel and distinctive look. This type of beanie was also very popular with some colleges and fraternities, as they would often use school colors in the different panels making up the headgear.

Another style of beanie was the whoopee cap, a formed and pressed wool felted hat, with a flipped up brim that formed a band around the bottom of the cap. The band would often have a decorative repeating zig-zag or scalloped pattern cut around the edge. It was also quite common for schoolboys to adorn their beanies with buttons and pins.

Etymology

The cloth-covered button on the crown is about the size of a bean seed and may be the origin of the term "beanie". Some academics believe that the term is instead derived from a type of headgear worn in some medieval universities. The yellow hats (bejaunus, meaning "yellowbill", later beanus, a term used for both the hats and the new students) evolved into the college beanies of later years.[1]

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the etymology is uncertain, but probably derives from the slang term "bean", meaning "head". In New Zealand and Australia, the term "beanie" is normally applied to a knit cap known as a tuque in Canada and parts of the US, but also may apply to the kind of skull cap historically worn by surf lifesavers[2] and still worn during surf sports.[3] The non-knitted variety is normally called a "cap" in other countries.

In the United Kingdom, the term "Benny Hat" may also refer to a knitted style of headcovering. This name originally comes from the character "Benny", played by actor Paul Henry in the British Crossroads soap opera. The character appeared from the mid-1970s to the late-1980s and usually wore a knitted version of the hat.

In Malaysia, "beanie" is better known as serkup. Although widely used for inner piece of clothing inside tudung for women, but it is acceptable to use it as a translated term for beanie.

History

A larger variant of the skullcap, the beanie was working apparel associated with blue collar laborers, including welders, mechanics, and other tradesmen who needed to keep their hair back, but for whom a brim would be an unnecessary obstruction. Beanies do sometimes have a very small brim, less than an inch deep, around the brow front. The baseball cap evolved from this kind of beanie, with the addition of a visor to block the sun.

Cornell University freshmen wearing beanies in 1919

By the mid-1940s, beanies fell out of general popularity as a hat, in favor of cotton visored caps like the baseball cap. However, in the 1950s and possibly beyond, they were worn by college freshmen and various fraternity initiates as a form of mild hazing. For example, Lehigh University required freshmen to wear beanies, or "dinks", and other colleges including Franklin & Marshall, Gettysburg, Rutgers, Westminster College and others may have had similar practices.[4] Benedictine College, in Atchison, Kansas, still carries this tradition for the first week of a freshman's classes,[5] and is said to be the only college in the US to maintain this tradition.[6] Georgia Tech continues to provide freshmen with RAT caps, though their mandatory wear ceased in the 1960s.[7] Wilson College continues this tradition today as a part of its Odd/Even class year "rivalry". [8]

At Cornell University, freshman beanies (known as "dinks") were worn into the early 1960s.[9] Dinks were not officially required, but their wearing was enforced by student peer pressure.[10] An annual ritual was the burning of the caps in a boisterous bonfire.[10]

Propeller beanie
Propeller beanie with a visor

In the late 1940s, while still in high school, science fiction fanzine artist Ray Nelson adopted the use of the propeller beanie as emblematic shorthand for science fiction fandom. This was in self-mockery of the popular image of fans as childish and concerned with ephemera (such as science fiction). References to the distinctive headwear are now used to identify old-fashioned fans, as opposed to more modern fans of media science fiction.

The propeller beanie increased in popular use through comics and eventually made its way onto the character of Beany Boy of Beany and Cecil. Today, computer savvy and other technically proficient people are sometimes pejoratively called propellerheads because of the one-time popularity of the propeller beanie.[11]

In the 21st century, propeller beanies are rarely seen on the street, and are primarily worn for satirical or comedic purposes.

In 1996, student hackers placed a giant propeller beanie on the Great Dome at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The scaled-up propeller rotated as the wind drove it like a windmill.[12]

gollark: HASH THE PASSWORD
gollark: Although lately a bitops bug made PotatOS Hypercycle unable to install on it, as it couldn't verify the hashes on the install files.
gollark: CraftOS-PC is basically good enough.
gollark: CCEmuX tends to be more accurate, as it uses much of the CC code.
gollark: I remember how in ye olden times of CraftOS-PC PotatOS was able to accidentally segfault and crash it in several different ways.

See also

References
  1. Kimbrough, Walter M. Black Greek 101: the culture, customs, and challenges of Black fraternities. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003, p. 38.
  2. Anonymous. Our history, Surf Life Saving Australia, 15 July 2010.
  3. Surf Sports at Surf Life Saving NZ
  4. Haydock, Michael D. Excerpt from "The GI Bill"
  5. Excerpt from Benedictine College Student Handbook, 2010-2011, p. 84.
  6. Minnis, Stephen D. "Beanie Banquet" Speech, Benedictine College
  7. "RAT Caps". Ramblin' Memories. Georgia Tech Alumni Association. Archived from the original on September 2, 2007. Retrieved 2007-04-10.
  8. 'About Wilson College - History and Traditions' Archived April 30, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  9. "Freshmen Codes Have Died But Cornell Legends Live". Cornell Daily Sun. 1 January 1985. p. 51. Retrieved 1 January 2020.
  10. "Felt Beanies Once Topped Freshman Heads". Cornell Daily Sun. 16 September 1980. p. 53. Retrieved 1 January 2020.
  11. "propellerhead" at Merriam-Webster
  12. IHTFP Hack Gallery: The Great Beanie
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