It is pot luck night for the Red Haute Mamas of Villa Rica, Ga., and 50 women, most of them decked out in crimson hats and purple dresses, have brought enough potato salad, sandwiches, cakes and cookies to feed a small army.
“We’re here to eat and then we’ll have a meeting to talk about what we’re going to do next week,” says Marilyn Vershure, 50, the Queen Mom of the group. “This is a disorganization, not an organization. There are no rules.”
That soon becomes clear once the women take their seats around a group of small tables and the meeting begins. There are no parliamentary procedures. At times the gathering takes on the appearance of a sorority reunion run amok. Vershure silences the constant chatter and restores order by ringing a small bell.
The Red Haute Mamas are part of a fast-growing social club known as the Red Hat Society, with 14,346 chapters nationwide and 300 new ones popping up every week, organizers say. Georgia counts more than 7,000 members in 366 chapters with names such as Bodacious Broads, Chocolate Cherry Delights of Metro Atlanta and Hotlanta Reds.
Most of the members are 50ish women who wear crimson hats and purple dresses and who are committed to having fun despite life’s setbacks. Some are part of the “jilted generation,” women who find themselves unexpectedly single in midlife. Others are aging married Baby Boomers who have served their time raising children and attending PTA meetings.
“Been there, done that,” quips Vershure. “We’ve all done our share of volunteer work and now we want to enjoy ourselves.”
And that’s exactly what they do. Unlike the Junior League or civic organizations, the Red Hatters have no charity projects, no fund-raising drives.
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Goal is to have fun
The purpose of the group is to have fun, says Corlis Long, whose duties as Go-Go Princess include organizing trips to museums, art galleries, malls and entertainment events.
“We have a book club, an arts group, a game gang,” says Long, 48, who helped found the club two years ago. “And we’re open to anything anybody wants to do.”
The society began in 1998 when Sue Ellen Cooper of Fullerton, Calif., gave a friend a red hat and a framed copy of Jenny Joseph’s poem, “Warning,” for her 50th birthday.
The poem opens with the familiar lines, “When I am an old woman/ I shall wear purple/ With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.” Cooper’s friend was so delighted she began giving red hats to her friends. Eventually they decided it would be fun to go out to tea wearing red hats and purple dresses.
When Cooper and her friends were featured in Romantic Homes magazine in July 2000, they received requests from other women who wanted to start their own chapters. Cooper’s daughter created a Web site and the explosion began. The society now has national conventions, and stores specializing in Red Hat jewelry and merchandise, such as Nan-Tiques in Lawrenceville, Ga., have proliferated.
“The reason this has grown so fast is there’s an absolute social need for something like this for women,” says Debra Granich, 49, vice president of the national organization.
As women get older, Granich says, their social circles get smaller as friends divorce, move away or die. What the Red Hat Society does is create social groups nationally where women can reach out to other women. When a member of a Red Hat club moves from one town to another, she can find instant friends and support at a local chapter. Some doctors are now recommending that widows or women who have lost friends or family members join a Red Hat club as a way of coping with depression, Granich says.
“The biggest thing about the Red Hat Society is the fact that we’re not about fixing each other,” says Haywood Smith, 54, a Georgia author whose new novel, “The Red Hat Club” (St. Martin’s, 336 pages, $24.95), was inspired by women who have decided to deal with life’s setbacks with frivolity and fun. The book is a tribute to women who, like Smith, emerged victorious through divorce, menopause, spreading waistlines and other tribulations.
“I had gone through my own crisis of having my 33-year marriage end abruptly,” says Smith, whose first work of humorous fiction, “Queen Bee of Mimosa Branch,” was popular in book clubs around the South. Until that book, she had had modest success writing romance novels.
Smith was in the midst of writing an untitled novel about a group of Atlanta women friends who were dealing with unfaithful husbands when she heard about the Red Hat Society.
“My publisher sent me to the national conference at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville where there were 3,000 women wearing red hats and purple dresses,” she says. “Women with walkers were line dancing. I loved it and now I’m a member of the Jawja Hattitudes chapter and Queen Mother of the Red Hat Writers.”
Smith had read “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” and decided she did not want to write such a dark story.
Providing a boost
“I had gone through a difficult time, and I wanted to write an uplifting book for women in midlife,” she says.
Smith’s characters are true Red Hatters who tell racy jokes and meet for lunches of chicken salad, sweet rolls and iced tea. When one of the women discovers her banker husband has a condo — with a mistress — that he bought with their retirement funds, the Red Hatters find a way of exacting revenge.
“I wanted to show the power that women have when they support each other,” Smith says.
Smith’s novel is an accurate depiction of the metamorphosis many women go through in midlife, says Willow Heart Catron, 64, a fellow Jawja Hattitudes member.
“Women are taught to be pleasers,” Catron says. “We spend so much of our lives conforming to other people’s desires. Now I’m at the point where I want to decide what I want to do instead of trying to figure out what another person wants to do. I’m not as wild as some of the other women, but now I feel I have the freedom to break the rules if I want to.”
The Red Hat Society is not the only organization where women can let their hair down. Ya-Ya Sisterhood chapters sprung up around the country in the wake of Rebecca Wells’ best-selling novel, “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.”
Ya-Ya sisters meet secretly to discuss, well, all things Ya-Ya. Which are secret.
The Sweet Potato Queens were the brainchild of Jill Conner Browne of Jackson, Miss., author of “The Sweet Potato Queens Book of Love” and “God Save the Sweet Potato Queens.”
There are approximately 1,000 chapters of Sweet Potato Queens who dress up in garish outfits and tiaras, and do things that make them happy. The highlight for Sweet Potato Queens is the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Jackson where several thousand belles dress in outrageous outfits and sashay down the street.
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The Red Hatters are not as secretive as the Ya-Yas or as rowdy as the Sweet Potato Queens. Membership in the club is open to women of all ages, races and religions.