Among the biggest changes I went through as I transferred to Claremont McKenna College this year was adjusting to the school’s much-lauded culture of free and unvarnished discourse. Unlike lesser institutions (which is to say, all of them), scholars at CMC congeal around conversations of radical openness and plurality without sugarcoating their points of difference. Discovering this can be uncomfortable for newcomers, who must be brought to reexamine the beliefs they clung to while growing up in the stifling darkness of the outside world.
My own initiation came when a classmate suggested that I give up the part of my identity that I hold dearest — my fedoras — lest he be embarrassed to be seen with me. It was then that my journey began in earnest. To respect myself, I needed to understand myself. I needed to understand the fedora.
I’ve been wearing fedoras daily for a little over four years now; currently, I own six, not counting my top hat. I buy most of them secondhand for five or ten bucks from Goodwill. I don’t really remember how it started; perhaps it was some kind of cry for attention, or perhaps I was inspired by friends who would wear old-timey hats in costumes or as a joke. I was not aware of the stereotypes about fedora-wearers, which, as a rather online, autistic white man, fit me uncomfortably well in some ways. I was, however, aware that I looked suave wearing one.
By the time somebody finally had the heart to tell me what I had done, it was too late. I was already destined to be a lone champion of the beleaguered hat. The fedora had chosen me — and over time, I’ve accepted it as a part of myself. It makes my days subtly brighter in countless little ways, from shade to questions and compliments from bemused passers-by to the immense satisfaction of taking it off after a long day. The fedora has taught me that it’s okay to try out unusual interests and styles and to cling to things that help us be ourselves, even if they can feel a little silly.
At times, I wonder whether people slot me into a stereotype more because I wear such a maligned article, even though I’m pretty sure most people have never heard of or forgotten about the image of the fedora-wearing Reddit neckbeard. Ultimately, I’ve decided that I don’t care. I wear fedoras.
This may reflect my contrarian influences, but there’s also no reason not to wear fedoras, other than their unfashionableness. For a low price, they last me years and can be surprisingly water-resistant and durable while still providing shade and glare protection on a hot day. Even a small collection can match a lot of outfits.
Perhaps not everyone should wear fedoras daily. But the fact that almost no one at the 7Cs ever wears fedoras at all undeniably points to a deeper rot in our institutions’ cultures — and our society as a whole.
It’s not like it can’t have occurred to anyone here to don the fedora. People ask to take pictures with mine all the time at parties; almost invariably, they look better with them on. Nor, by any means, are fedoras prohibitively expensive or difficult to find, as I often remind anyone who will listen.
No. What stops 7C students from picking up fedoras of their own must be fear, the kind of unspeakable fear that we almost never notice because it acts as a kind of smoke screen, a false bottom of the mind that we lay down to shield ourselves from fully grasping our profound alienation from our closest friends — that which might be disguised as fear of embarrassment or rejection but which in reality represents our rejection of ourselves, like a self-hatred so deep that we deny ourselves even the prospect of genuine self-expression in wretched, primal terror — terror that we will recoil in disgust when we look in the mirror at night, like a parent rejecting a child. For we have cannibalized every shred of the life our ancestors gave us in our relentless pursuit of affirmation from an outside world that we can never truly touch. We deny ourselves the fedora.
All seven Claremont Colleges are in some way designed to challenge us to reach beyond these boundaries. Yet something about this place also feels uniquely overwhelming, contributing to this self-denial.
I was grateful to be able to come here as a transfer student, and really, I’d wanted to be here all along. But getting what I wanted changed me. The boredom I felt at the George Washington University (GWU) was liberating. I went on hikes. Sometimes I’d just lie down on the National Mall for a long time, looking around. Sometimes I hardly talked to anyone outside of class for days; I just read. It wasn’t what I had intended, but as my time there drew to a close, I was happy.
Here, by contrast, there’s always something I want to be doing, and I feel like I’m constantly striving to catch up to my peers. It seems most Claremont students feel this way to some extent, and I worry that this pressure contributes to the struggles that we all experience as young adults defining our identities and finding “our people.”
In this way, even as the bubbling, bustling environment of our colleges stimulates us intellectually, challenges us culturally and propels us professionally, it also pushes us to conform in little ways that we don’t always notice, adding up into something bigger. At GWU, I never considered letting go of the fedora. The place just didn’t hold that kind of sway over my identity. But I want to succeed here so badly that at times this semester I’ve almost considered it.
On the night of the Harvey Mudd College Paint Party, I spent over three hours walking to different Goodwill locations in search of a white fedora. Finding none, I made the difficult decision to attend the event hat-free; my experience left me profoundly troubled.
Without a fedora, I felt invisible. Nobody seemed to notice me or greet me. For the first time in years, I felt like the 5’4 man I am, being trampled over by giants unaware of my existence. On the way back, I donned the grey fedora I’d left outside; immediately, several acquaintances from CMC recognized me in the dark and asked about my night — and about the fedora.
I began to wonder whether I had become dependent on my unusual choice of headwear. Did anyone truly know me, or were they merely acquainted with the object on my head? What would I be without my fedora?
The fedora is a microcosm of a greater issue. One of life’s great imponderable questions is why anyone should keep living if we will all ultimately be forgotten. No matter how much we commit to bettering ourselves or the world, it is easy to think that our efforts will be such a drop in the bucket, that things would be little different had we never been born. Even if we acquire great wealth or fame, we are all interchangeable in the face of the vastness of time. However much we believe that our next leadership position, leading to our next internship, leading to our next job, leading to our next grand opportunity, will set us apart, justifying the sacrifice of conformity, it won’t.
This doesn’t bother me much. I am unique. I wear fedoras.
Nicholas Steinman CM ’28 is very special.
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