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"When I am an old woman I shall wear purple / With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me." These opening lines to the poem "Warning" by Jenny Joseph serve as inspiration (and uniform) for Glory Broussard, protagonist of Danielle Arceneaux's Glory Be, and for real-life members of the Red Hat Society, an international social organization for women "of a certain age" that began in 1998. Its founder, California artist Sue Ellen Cooper, was hunting for the perfect birthday present for a friend when she discovered a beautiful red hat in a thrift store. Wanting to encourage her friend to embrace later life with a sense of fun, she presented it along with Joseph's poem, and before long other friends and their friends and their friends were seeking out red hats of their own.
The women of the Red Hat Society are not just interested in aging gracefully. They are enthusiastically celebrating the next stage of their lives and fighting against the stereotypes that portray older ...
