• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Got to Play! -- Sweet Potato Queens, Red Hat Society Jump-Start Life for Women Age 40 and Over

Posted on: Friday, 27 May 2005, 12:00 CDT

Judy Boston keeps a supply of toy tiaras on hand at all times.

"If I have a spur-of-the-moment urge to make someone a queen, I just whip one out," said Boston, a member of the Reel Divas, a group of women who love fly-fishing and wearing tiaras. "There's something that happens when you put a tiara on your head. You just feel different."

Reel Divas is one of six local clubs affiliated with the Sweet Potato Queens, a national organization that encourages its 5,000 members of women age 40 and over to embrace their diva-dom with tiaras and outrageous outfits worn at parades and other public events.

Sweet Potato Queens are slightly younger and wilder than the 800,000 members of the Red Hat Society, women age 50 and older who wear red hats and purple dresses when they get together for one purpose - to have fun.

What makes these mature and otherwise normal women morph into attention-grabbing, devil-may-care gals?

When some women reach 40 and older the time seems right for shedding inhibitions and strengthening female friendships.

"We have a short period in our lives when our health is good, our kids are grown and we have time for ourselves," said Vickie Lynch, a former shy person who now loves the attention she gets in being a Blues Queen, a chapter of the Sweet Potato Queens. "Not long ago I couldn't speak if you put a microphone in front of me. Now you can't get one away from me ."

Lynch's group of about a dozen women dance and lip-sync for performances at charity events and parades. They recently appeared with the Bouffants at a club on Beale Street, but they are not giving up their amateur status.

"It doesn't matter that we are over 40 or if we mess up on our routine," Lynch said. "We have smiles on our faces and look like we're having fun."

Lynch doesn't know why she needed someone to tell her it was OK to put on a wig and a tiara and go out and have fun. But she's glad she heeded the advice of Jill Conner Browne, the author who created a network of Sweet Potato Queens through her books and a parade held on St. Patrick's Day in Jackson, Miss.

Members of the Red Hat Society are drawn to a club that has no rules and purpose other than to have fun.

"I've been going to meetings and clubs all my life," said Margie White, a founding member of the Fogwalkers Red Hat Society and the owner of more than 30 red hats and at least 20 purple outfits.

"With this group, I just throw on my red hat and go," White said. "It's like playing dress up."

The Red Hat Society was accidentally created by Californian Sue Ellen Cooper.

She began giving friends of a certain age red fedoras and framed copies of Jenny Joseph's poem on their birthdays. The poem begins: "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple with a red hat ..."

In 1998 Cooper and those friends decided to dress up in their red hats and purple dresses to have tea at a restaurant in Fullerton, Calif. Other women saw the friends and joined the red-and-purple bandwagon.

Before long, an international organization was born.

In the Memphis area there are about 80 chapters. Some are small groups of friends, and others have 150 or more members.

The philosophies of each group resonate with mature women for a number of reasons.

"At a certain age, people begin to realize that life is finite and it's time to have fun," said Dr. Patricia Millikin, a licensed marriage and family therapist. "And as women mature, they become more sure of themselves and have less need to always please."

As "mistress of distress" for the Ms. Adventurers Red Hat Society, Mary Ray collects the concerns of the members and worries about them so they don't have to.

"When you are young, you worry about impressing people," Ray said. "When you are older, you figure 'I am what I am.' "

Membership in the groups also recaptures the way young girls get together to play with each other, Millikin said. "Then during our reproductive years, women and men tend to prefer the company of the opposite sex," she said.

And although some women maintain female friendship at all ages, others get reacquainted with their own gender after menopause, she said.

"We've become the girlfriends we all had in high school or junior high school," said Linda Feathers, boss queen of the Scarlett Darlins' chapter of Sweet Potato Queens.

"This generation of women is growing older and making up new rules about what being female is," said Betsy Mandel-Carley, a licensed clinical social worker and licensed family and marriage therapist. "Most women grow up thinking they need to be taken care of. Then they find out they can take care of themselves.

"At this time, they start learning to live from the inside out instead from the outside in."

For its name Feathers's group chose to honor Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone with the Wind." They wear flaming red wigs and red dresses.

"She was such a floozy," said Feathers, a project manager at FedEx.

Group m embers work as postal carriers, sales reps, marketing directors, caterers and other mainstream jobs. Their Sweet Potato personae are "totally opposite of what we do in real life," Feathers said.

For most of her life, Boston was more of a tomboy than a diva.

"If someone had told me that one day I'd been running around with sparkly clothes and a tiara, I wouldn't have believed it," she said. "The philosophy of the Sweet Potato Queens is you've got to play. When we forget to play, we get old."

Playfulness is central to the meetings of the Ms. Adventurers group. Talented members put on an Elvis skit at one gathering.

"We all got up and danced with each other just like we used to at sock hops," said Janice Lebo, queen of the Ms. Adventurers. "We get little-girl giggly."

Members of the Ms. Adventurers have been good all of their lives, Lebo said. Now they enjoy benign naughtiness.

"We have been good children, good students, good wives, good mothers, and good professional people. Now we're good for nothing," she said. "Instead of fund-raising, we're fun-raising. But we're tame next to the Sweet Potato Queens."

Despite the outrageous outfits and behavior, the Scarlett Darlins', Reel Divas and other Sweet Potato Queens are serious about their charity work.

The Scarlett Darlins' support the Sunrise Home, a facility in Hernando for children with parents whose can no longer take care of them. The Scarlett Darlins' show up at the home's fund-raising events and have posed with DeSoto County firemen to create a calendar, which they sold for their cause.

"We want young girls to grasp the idea of women banding together as a force," Feathers said. "In any community, women are the foundation."

The Reel Divas provide fishing experiences for underprivileged children and support breast-cancer research.

"The Red Hatters get together for lunch, movies or dinner," Lynch said. "We kick it up a notch."

- Christine Arpe Gang: 529-2368

--------------------

For More Information

If you want to be a Red Hat or a Sweet Potato Queen, you can get information about the groups at several Web sites:

At redhatsociety.com , you will find links to e-mail contacts for local clubs. Many established clubs in the area are open to new members; some are not.

At sweetpotatoqueens.com , you'll find information about this organization and its founder, Jill Conner Browne.

You can see what the Scarlett Darlins' are about at scarlettdarlins.com. The Blues Queens are at bluesqueens.com.

Jill Conner Browne's books are available at the SPQ Web site and online booksellers. Start with the first one, "Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love."

--------------------

Source: Commercial Appeal, The

More News in this Category