The young man sitting in the airport in Baden-Baden was wearing his baseball cap with the peak towards the front, but before getting up to go across and get a bottle of water he turned it round to set the peak behind. On returning to his seat he reset the baseball cap peak to the front. A few minutes later when he got up to join the queue to get onto the plane to Stansted he turned the peak back round to face behind.
Here is my theory. The front-facing baseball cap is for interiority, focus, dialogue with intimates, the bubble of social media. The back-facing baseball cap is for interface with the public. It denotes disdain and nonchalance. It rejects intensity and engagement. That is because we reserve our best for the private and the distant interlocutor and our worst for the public, the sweaty alien.
In my investigations into the semiology of the baseball cap (a reader-friendly book along with gift cap will come out just in time for Christmas) I thought I could discount the side-worn baseball cap, surely now obsolete or at least only sported by the pre-teen. And then today I saw a side-wearer: a man in his forties with big stomach and in his long shorts stocky hocks. My semiotics abandon me! I am at a loss! Stop the press on that stocking filler.
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