the Red Hat Society

　　Little old ladies just want to have fun    

    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)

    老太太们也要给自己找乐子

    从前，中老年妇女们除了烹饪假日大餐、“在如梭岁月中慢慢变老”之外无所事事，现在这种日子已经一去不复返了。

    加入“红帽会社”吧，这是一个有点激进的组织，致力于推崇“中老年妇女同样应该享受快乐生活”的理念。

    “我的祖母辈除了看屋子和伺候家人外，没有别的事可干。她们像设定好程序的机器人一样做这些事。”红帽会社某分社的创立人艾米丽·科尔奈特说，她也是该会社的近100万会员当中的一位，这些会员绝大多数都是50岁以上的女性。该组织已有7年历史，在全美50个州和25个国家都有分社。

    长期以来，男人们退休后可以靠钓鱼或打高尔夫来消遣时光，女人们有时却变得和她们的年龄一样毫不显眼。然而，眼下正迈向50岁门槛的这代人正是在“婴儿潮”时期出生的那一批人。这批人当初拒绝他们父辈年轻时的生活方式，如今又在寻求“慢慢变老”的新方式。

    对大多数中老年人来说，“红帽会社”开始成为一种挡不住的时尚，因为它将女权主义、少量可自由支配收入和良好的身体状况等因素统统结合起来。

    上周六，75岁的科尔奈特主持了一次喧闹搞笑的聚会，共有13名红帽妇女和两名粉帽妇女参加了聚会。在红帽会社里，过了50岁的妇女头戴红帽、身穿紫衣，而50岁以下的妇女则必须戴上粉红色的帽子，穿淡紫色的衣服。

    科尔奈特说：“有些事儿很适合我干。”她密切关注着那些需要续杯或续盘的客人。“这里没有什么规定，真的没有，我们什么‘事情’都不用做，只要开开心心地玩就够了。”

    红帽协会的创始人休·埃伦·库珀说，成立该组织的灵感来自于詹妮·约瑟夫的一首诗，这首诗的开头是这样的：“当我变成老太婆时，我会穿紫色的衣服，戴一顶并不相称的红色帽子。”1998年，库珀在加利福尼亚州南部城市富勒敦成立了第一家会社。

    大约七年前，库珀送给一位朋友这首诗的一份复印件和一顶红色帽子，很快别的朋友也想要红色帽子，头戴红帽的她们吸引了不少眼光。

    库珀在一次电话采访中说：“我们总是在为他人效劳，可我们自己也需要放松和休息，这就是我这么做的关键所在。女性在为自己活着时，总是很有负罪感。”

    这就是红帽会社不鼓励各分社募集资金或做一些“有用的事”的原因，“集会”这个词最好也不要用，因为它听起来太严肃了。库珀说：“我们只是一个女士玩乐团体，一切就是这么简单。”

    Vocabulary:

    senility: the state of being senile（老迈年高, 老态龙钟，高龄）

    chapter: a local branch of an organization, such as a club or fraternity（分会，地方组织的一支，如俱乐部或联谊会）

    baby boomer: a member of a baby-boom generation（在婴儿潮时期出生的一员）

    lavender: a pale to light purple to very light or very pale violet（淡紫色）

    recess: a temporary cessation of the customary activities of an engagement, occupation, or pursuit（休假，休息）