Hood
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Hoods are a common article of clothing, often found in urban areas, both in the US and Europe, with Asia coming up strong on the outside and Africa falling well behind. Hoods can be very useful in the event of rain. Most people over the age of 60 have a fear of hoods.
Hoods are often sported by dickheads. The garment and the individual have become eponymous, so we can say that hoods tend to wear hoods. In addition, the garment is worn in the 'Hood, which is African-American for "neighborhood." Thus, it is also true that hoods are worn in the 'Hood.
History[edit]
Scholarly research has corrected the popular notion that the inventor of this distinctive garment feature was Mr. Hood. Rather, the garment was named for Mt. Hood, in Oregon. As part of the Pacific Northwest temperate rain forest, Oregon has a rainy season that lasts from approximately September to the next September. Pre-modern residents fashioned head covers from cedar bark, holding them over their heads and naming them for the defining feature of the landscape, Mt. Hood.
The early hood[edit]
The Snoqualmie tribes bested the efforts of those early bark-hoisters by adding a nifty tie to keep the hat on while salmon-fishing. The result was something like a bark bonnet, a good look for a macho tribal fella and sure to catch the ladies' eyes.
Naturally, this look was adopted by young people looking to get laid. As these people matured and raised families, the hood-wearers tended to cluster together, giving rise to the word "neighbor-hood."
Those who broke tribal laws, such as stealing fish, knocking over old people, or weeing on the neighbor's fire, often did so while wearing their bark hoods, so they came to be called "hoods."
Types of hood[edit]
The clerical hood[edit]
The reputation of the hood was resuscited by medieval monks, who adopted the hood to remain anonymous as they both did the Lord's work and swindled the newly emerging merchant classes out of their money with threats of the hereafter.
After the invention of anonymity by the medieval monks, the practice spread. For instance, no one expected the Spanish Inquisition to adopt this distinctive look, but once the pious bishops saw how useful anonymity could be, it was hoods for all the inquisitors.
The executioner's hood[edit]
Come from the land of the ice and the snow and the midnight sun where the hot springs flow, Germanic tribes swept across Europe, bringing with them the curious custom of execution. Formerly, executioners had been smiling, rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed persons, but when they encountered medieval monks, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes concluded that the hood was way more Gothic-looking and thereby fit in nicely with their scary image.
So was born the executioners' hood.
Lost for centuries[edit]
Someday perhaps scholars will uncover the reason that the hood simply vanished for several hundred years, until it was re-discovered in a library in Alexandria 1500. It became all the rage in Paris, and thereby spread to the fashionable courts of Europe: Vienna, Venice, Florence, Rome, Copehanhagen, Amsterdam, London -- and the others, too -- Poland, Romania, Turkey, Greece and other subsidized countries whose citizenry wished to pour into London and take plumbing jobs.
The hood became indispensable, a mark of cultural sophistication and a fixture on everything from horses to fictional characters, such as Robin "Hood" and Little Red Riding "Hood."
Red Riding Hood[edit]
At one time known as Little Red Riding Hood, increasingly from her teenage years on she fell into bad ways, hanging about hooded in woods waylaying innocent wolves jumping on them and devouring them. The whole Big Bad Wolf thing was a frame, she did in Granny and ate her. Later, she ran the Red Riding Hoods Gang, who terrorised the entire country before eventually, after a spell on probation, she married the woodcutter and hung up her Hood permanently.
Hoods today[edit]
As the popularity of the hood spread, even those at the lower end of the economic and social scale could afford one. Soon, the early connotations of "hoodiness" re-asserted themselves, and those who bumped into old people on the street, lifted cans of lager from the corner shop, shoved meat down their trousers in Tesco, pissed out the window, or sported a tattoo in a highly visible places came to be known as "hoods," the hood being used to cover their dickheads. People over 60 were right to be alarmed.
Fashion has elevated the status of the hood, so that now many fashions aimed at the youth market sport hoods, hastily designed and poorly sewn on by Chinese factory workers so that these hoods are merely a fashion statement, and not the proper covering required by a dickhead.
And in the Pacific Northwest, the hood has maintained itself as the symbol of weary resignation and ceaseless precipitation.
