Ladies put on their red hats, hit the town

Seven hundred women in red hats filled the Palmer House Hilton ballroom in Chicago Friday evening, listening to Sue Ellen Cooper and Linda Murphy tell funny stories.

Every time the women in the audience laughed, the sea of red hats bobbed and rippled.

The women, all members of the Red Hat Society, had flocked to Chicago from many states and countries, including Germany and Australia, to attend the society's convention, called "Jazzmatazz."

Some had spent the morning taking a Chicago gangster tour, and nearly 500 braved Thursday evening's storm to party on a boat at Navy Pier, which remained docked.

"It's all about taking a few days and having fun, and relaxing that clenched tummy we have most of the time," said Cooper, Red Hat Society founder who, in accordance with group members' practice of giving themselves silly titles, calls herself the Exalted Queen Mother.

Before the dinner, Lori Lane and Luanne Carroll of Bartlett prowled the gift shops, which sold clothing and items in red and purple, the group's colors.

Carroll, who calls herself the Bearoness, stayed alert to any red and purple-clothed teddy bears to decorate the Red Hat Room in her home. She has also decorated the Society's float in the Bartlett Fourth of July parade for the past four years.

Lane, who calls herself Madame X, says, "I love two things about the group -- to meet people I never would have met because my occupation (medical office receptionist and former yoga instructor) and lifestyle never would have taken me to them, and of course, dressing up."

Lane started the Bartlett chapter five years ago, by placing a newspaper ad inviting women to come to a tea party.

When 17 responded, the Bartlett chapter was born. Two women in their 40s, who wear pink hats, came; the rest were over 50 and allowed to wear the purple clothing and red hats the group has become famous for.

The society itself started in April 1998, when Cooper gave a poem to her friend, Murphy. The poem, called "Warnings," starts with the line "When I am an old woman" and talks about all the wacky and free things a woman can do in her elder years, to buck the conventions she observed as a younger woman.

The poet, Jenny Joseph, said she would wear purple, with a red hat that doesn't match, to start her unhinged behavior.

That inspired Cooper and her friends to go a tea party wearing the red and purple and calling themselves the Red Hat Society.

Soon, friends and relatives wanted to join, the media took notice, the thing snowballed and women of a certain age began clamoring to join.

"So many women felt the same thing we did -- 'I'm not done and I'm not dead,' " Cooper says.

Today, about 1.5 million women have joined the group, which calls itself a dis-organization and refers to its chapter leaders as "queens." There are nearly 40,000 chapters in all 50 states and 25 other countries.

"Looking back on it, I think it's because we do it with humor," Cooper says. "It wasn't offensive to anybody."

For the first few years, Cooper intended the group only as a place for women to leave the weight of their home, work and family duties for a while and socialize, play and have fun.

Over the years, though, she sees that changing. Now, she wants the group to upgrade the perception of older women in American culture.

"When we're in our red and purple, people talk to us, and interact, and see us as more than little old ladies," she says.

Lane and Carroll say they, too, would like older women to be viewed more positively.

"You go into a restaurant dressed like this," Carroll says, "and men come up to you and say, 'Ladies, you look lovely.' That alone is worth the price of admission."

"Plus," adds Lane, "we get to dance all night, and we don't have to wait for a man to ask us."