25 Gay Hats, Ranked

Recently someone said to me that they’d know I was gay even if they didn’t know me because they’ve never seen my head without a hat on it. It’s true that I do wear a lot of hats! And, in general, that gays wear a lot of hats! In fact, recently, Valerie Anne and I casually started making a list of gay TV characters and real life humans looking even gayer in hats. And now I have ranked them, by gayness. I eagerly await your own contributions in the comments.

25. Shane McCutcheon’s Willy Wonka hat, The L Word

24. Beanie Feldman’s valedictorian graduation cap, Booksmart

23. Callie Torres’ surgeon cap, Grey’s Anatomy

22. Marceline the Vampire Queen’s goth sun hat, Adventure Time

21. Therese Belivet’s Santa hat, Carol

20. Blake Lively’s life-destroying rain fedora, A Simple Favor

19. Nicole Haught’s Christmas cracker hat (plus cat sweater), Wynonna Earp

18. Betty McRae’s Rosie the Riveter cap, Bomb Girls

17. Santana Lopez’s Daniel Boone cap, Glee

16. Paige McCullers’ cowboy hat, Pretty Little Liars

15. Kiersey Clemons’ bike helmet, Hearts Beat Loud

14. Willow Rosenberg’s complete and total commitment to hats, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

13. Arizona Robbins’ backwards baseball cap, Grey’s Anatomy

12. Janelle Monáe’s Met Gala hats on hats on hats

https://www.instagram.com/p/BxSa8NsA0kR/

11. Brittany’s unicorn horn, Glee

10. Villanelle’s girlfriend stalker cap, Killing Eve

9. Batwoman’s softball cap, DC’s Bombshells

8. Rachel Weisz’s tricorn hat, The Favourite

7. Amanita Caplan’s Dykes on Bikes hat, Sense 8

6. Stephanie Beatriz’s Don’t Tell Me to Smile hat

View this post on Instagram

Don’t tell me to smile. 🧢 by @shopcohla

A post shared by Stephanie Beatriz (@stephaniebeatriz) on

5. Ellen Page’s ball cap stuck to her head like a Lego, Tales of the City

4. Megan Rapinoe’s beanie

3. Root and Shaw’s motorcycle helmets, Person of Interest

2. Lena Waithe’s entire collection of snapbacks

1. Anne Lister’s top hat, Gentleman Jack

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

Heather Hogan

Heather Hogan is an Autostraddle senior editor who lives in New York City with her wife, Stacy, and their cackle of rescued pets. She's a member of the Television Critics Association, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather has written 1718 articles for us.

45 Comments

  1. I feel very validated in the baseball cap for my local animal rescue which confirms my love of
    a) cats
    b) dogs
    c) gays

  3. 11-year-old closeted me was really hoping to see Alex Mack’s signature snapback on this list.

  4. Hot take, helmets are not hats, or else every batter on women’s baseball league would be on this list.

  5. EXCELLENT LIST, thank you for this, fuck me up Anne Lister.

    Naturally you kept this list to pretty much the last decade and a half, understandable! I would, however, like to humbly add Susan and Carol’s ridiculous wedding hats and Laura Dern’s Jurassic Park floppy hat (Laura Dern’s character in Jurassic Park is GOING TO COME OUT, she just IS), because child Queer Girl definitely thought bucket hat situations was a requirement for all gay ladies!

      • A backwards baseball hat plus makeup makes me feel like I look like a femme gay boy, and I love it.

        • Ok I love this website, but the commenting mechanics are so frustrating. I definitely clicked “submit a comment” at the top yet the site decided to insert my comment randomly as a reply into another person’s comment…

    • Jurassic Floppy Hat!!

      I instantly knew the one you meant but I still googled “Laura Dern Hat Jurassic Park” for the joy of it.

      Google, quite understandably, asked “did you mean Laura Dern _hot_ Jurassic Park?”

    • YES! All the signs are there, I mean, the WHOLE outfit, plus she’s into caretaking animals and Jeff Goldblum had like zero effect on her. He was totally making his move and she jumped out of a moving car and it was not to be with her boyfriend.

  9. This is the queer content I never knew I needed.

    Also in my favourite picture of me and my best friend we are both wearing winter hats and we look very cute.

  11. I would have put Lena Waithe’s hats at number one and also included a shot of some of the various hats from Tipping the Velvet and also given an honorable mention to Julie Andrews in all kinds of drag in Victor/Victoria, but YES.

  12. shane really was a cartoon, wasn’t she

    fyc: roberta colindrez did some good cowboy hat work in Vida

  13. It’s so nice of Lena Waithe to pose on that big heap of gauze strips which will come in handy to wrap up ladies heads after they walk into beams from looking at her pic instead of where they are walking.

  14. Luuuuuuuuv.

    Robin Weigert as Calamity Jane in Deadwood. Her hat totally defines her outfit and I think you only see her without it once in the series!

  17. I would like to nominate Ashlyn Harris and Ruby Rose who both have a very strong showing in this category.

  19. As I was scrolling this post I was like, hey, don’t skip Anne Lister! Oh, right. Number one, at the bottom. But Ashlyn Harris though. I pulled up her Insta feed for a pic as evidence and there were too many to pick just one. I think she cold hold at least five slots in the top 25.

  20. Read the title. Read the byline. Was shocked when this was not just 35 different pictures of Anne Lister’s top hat.

  21. I love this, and hats, with all my heart. Can I petition to be on the list because all you can see of me in the 2018 A-Camp photo is my hat? It’s like cabinmate, cabinmate, thatfedoragirl, cabinmate.

    • It would be 25% me repping about half of all the hats on the list.

      Alas the tricorn would not be be in that number.

  24. #0 the newsboy cap i proudly wore everywhere until my first theatre conference in which i realized all the other sound designers (who were exclusively kinda sweaty, kinda grody dudes) wore the exact same hat so i started wearing a ballcap instead

  26. Spooky I was walking through the park in my bucket hat thinking ‘I really need to check AS today for some reason’…

Comments are closed.