The days of elderly women doing nothing but cooking huge meals on holidays are gone. Enter the Red Hat Society—a group holding the belief 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, head of a chapter of the 7-year-old Red Hat Society.
While men have long spent their time fishing and playing golf, women have sometimes seemed to become unnoticed as they age. But the generation now turning 50 is the baby boomers(生育高峰期出生的人) , and the same people who refused their parents’ way of being young are now trying a new way of growing old.
If you take into consideration feminism(女权主义) , a bit of spare money, and better health for most elderly, the Red Hat Society looks almost inevitable(必然的). In this society, women over 50 wear red hats and purple(紫色的) clothes, while the women under 50 wear pink hats and light purple clothing.
"The organization took the idea from 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 Ellen Cooper, who founded the Red Hat Society in 1998. When the ladies started to wear the red hats, they attracted lots of attention.
"The point of this is that we need a rest from always doing something for someone else," Cooper said, "Women feel so ashamed and sorry when they do something for themselves. " This is why chapters are discouraged from raising money or doing anything useful. "We’re a ladies’ play group. It couldn’t be more simple," added Cooper’s assistant Joe Heywood.
Who set up the Red Hat Society
A．Emily Cornette.
B．Ellen Cooper.
C．Jenny Joseph.
D．Joe Heywoo
