The Trucker Hat Said Everything; I Said Nothing.
Written and Styled by: Salena Figueroa
Photography by: Cody Brennecke
Modeled by: Nayah Malcolm and Olivia Shipley
“Jesus is my homeboy.”
Oh, do you know who you are when you put that thing on, Ashton Kutcher? Maybe, you do. Or you know for just this one moment in time when you picked out and placed that exact, navy-blue-rivers-I’ve-cried-for-you trucker hat on your head. A billboard sign, advertising a self that lived loudly and longed for distinctiveness. Because who else has a hat with such a unique saying, encapsulating exactly who they are in this moment? Until it was thrown away. Or maybe it sold for forty dollars and a kiss on the forehead. Or packed tight in a box and stowed away in a dusty corner.
And I’m the fool, left standing in front of a silent mirror. Waiting patiently for something to whisper back, “You do too.” Because don’t I have proof? Don’t I have a label? Yet don’t we all?
As all good identities do, they speak with the conviction of a poet who laughs at the sound of their own voice. And Bowling for Soup laughs along, bare, except for the satin draping of satirical language: a playful smile, a punchline that’s self-aware, and then, an absurd laugh amongst lifelong friends. Their song, “Trucker Hat”, is an adored laugh, an observation of the ironic 2000s personality: I am this because I wore it; I am me because I am reminded of it.
Jaret Reddick sings with his tongue pressed against his cheek, “This is the song that reminds me of my trucker hat / That I used to wear not to block out the sun.” An ironic little joke: a nudge to the uniform we stretched and negotiated, until it showed off exactly who we thought we were. Because what is remarkable about wearing a hat with a silly saying on the front and a stain on the back, if not for remembering a time when we thought we were something? Practicality isn’t fashionable; functionality is boring. But, when that one voice is found, stitched across the top of a trucker hat, loud and obnoxious, screaming about being a “Teenage Millionaire,” as Ashton Kutcher once wore. Then the only impression that remains is a name, one that follows into every room walked into and listened with every syllable spoken.
And I frowned: Is identity only one costume we wear, playing dress-up in various phases as kings, queens, and clowns? Each adorned and recognized for the choices they strut around in. And when the laughter dies down to small murmurs and soft sighs, what’s left isn’t the hat at all, but the memory of needing it. Of believing so wholeheartedly, though briefly, that we can outsource who we were to things that we uniquely wore. Until we watched someone else stroll down the sidewalk, wearing the same things: ghosts we tried to claim as our own.
Yet, as a ghost stared back at me, I didn’t flinch. She stood before me, answering who I pretended to be, and questioning who I truly was. The imposter in a navy-blue trucker hat. Designed especially for me: New York, New York, stitched across the front, and a date underneath that I didn’t understand. I wore this trucker hat to complete my cool-girl style. It was supposed to mean something important about me. It was supposed to prove something about myself that I didn’t know. It was supposed to set me apart from others in my little rural hometown, somewhere in Missouri.
And it didn’t. Not at all. Not for a single second. The trucker hat didn’t care about the vision that I had, wearing it with my baggy denim jeans, an oversized T-shirt with some silly graphic of a bikini top. Instead, the trucker hat became only a fabric shell of who I thought I was, who I wanted to believe in. A pseudonym spoken only once, swiftly disappearing into a closet of nothingness. Though I thought about it a hundred times while listening to Reddick grin through the speakers, singing “I’ll never go out of style on you.” The quietness after the laughter dies: convincing ourselves that we’re still in that moment. The moment when we were certain. When we were true. When we were ourselves.
Because, as all good identities do, they twist, and shift, and skin themselves to reemerge as someone new. Someone who matches the new saying we stitched across another hat, or onto the front of a shirt. Or, tattooed across a lower back: something punchy, yet something true. We wait for someone who won’t slip out of rotation, out of meaning, and into a stuffy space, never to feel impressed eyes roam across and compliment that timeless thing again.
Someone who proves that, for a moment, they were trying to be something at all.
But for me, for now, the trucker hat lives. Hidden in my closet, somewhere.
