On a recent night out with girlfriends, Linda Blue, who is 55, wore white sneakers flecked with tiny red shapes and red laces. She carried a white stuffed bear that, when squeezed, wiggled and sang the 1980s pop tune “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” In the parking lot of the Bangor restaurant where she met her friends for dinner, Blue added one more element to her outfit: a red hat. She wasn’t the only woman that evening who paused car-side to don a red hat – 16 others did, too.

As they placed the hats on their heads, they seemed to stand a little taller, walk a bit more confidently, laugh. People stared – and laughed, too.

“It gives you attitude,” said Martha Nason from beneath her wide-rimmed number plumed with feathers.

Blue and Nason belong to a chapter of the Red Hat Society, a fun-loving international social group for women age 50 and older. Described by organizers as a “disorganization” because of the looseness of its membership requirements – anyone 50 or older can join, dues are a mere $35 a year for each chapter, and meetings have no format or particular frequency – the Red Hats started (equally informally) as a birthday celebration among friends in California.

One of those friends, Sue Ellen Cooper, had bought a red fedora at a thrift store several years earlier because it was cheap and pretty. She decided to give a similar vintage hat to a girlfriend as a birthday present. Cooper attached a copy of Jenny Joseph’s poem “Warning” about an older woman who wears purple clothes and a red hat and is unstoppable in her zest for life.

The combination hat-poem gift made such an impression that Cooper gave it to other friends, and soon a cheerful clique was wearing red hats and purple dresses to tea parties in public restaurants. A year and a half later, when Cooper and her friends, some of whom had also formed a group in Florida, were featured in a magazine story, other women wanted to wear the costumes and the Red Hat Society was born in 2000.

Today, there are 40,000 chapters worldwide in 29 countries with an estimated membership of a million. Maine has 275 active chapters, six of which are in Bangor.

“I was going to do this with a very few of my friends, maybe only once,” said Cooper in a phone conversation from California. “It was a time for us to go and be silly. We had no idea until that day what magic there was to this. It never occurred to us that this would spread. But as it built, I thought this could be a wonderful thing for women, a sisterhood.”

Local members of that sisterhood were in full regalia at the dinner Nason and Blue attended the other night with an Old Town chapter, which meets about once or twice a month. Each woman had a unique red topper with a proud provenance. One came from a hunting store. Another from a construction site. Others were crocheted or bought at flea markets or department stores. They were decorated with feathers, bows, ribbons, glittering rhinestones and buttons.

The hats are not small. They are big, bold, loud.

“People look at you and smile. If you get a smile out of them, it’s worth it,” said Blue, who has taken the nom de rouge of “Bluella Moon.” Some, not all, of the women have “other” names they use with the Red Hatters. Nason calls herself “Crowella L. DeRaven.” The L stands for “loves.” They use the names at dinner meetings or other activities such as the backstage tour they once took at Lakewood Theater in Madison.

The dinner was a celebration of the return of members who spend winters in Florida (where they also belong to Red Hat chapters). It was coronation night for Linda Beaulieu, who began the group in the summer of 2002. After everyone ate dinner, Nason called the room to attention and asked Beaulieu to come to the front of the room, where a special chair awaited her.

“Welcome to the royal coronation!” Nason announced. “It’s long overdue.”

Nason called forth other members to deliver gifts – most purchased at a dollar store – for Beaulieu. Cora Paradis, who at 82 is the eldest member of the group, stepped gingerly forward carrying a ring in a jewelry box on a royal pillow, the weight of which nearly toppled the diminutive deliverer.

Nason ran through a list of incantations: Keep sisterhood like family! Keep this a haven for silliness and unfettered happiness! Matriarchs unite!

A man in the next room peeked around the corner to watch. “He’s glad none of us is his mother,” one of the women said.

Finally, Nason handed Beaulieu a scepter (a painted dowel covered in ribbons and fake roses) and crowned her (with a cardboard Burger King crown decorated with more roses).

“Let’s go for the gusto together!” shouted Nason. “Hail to the queen!”

“And may you all obey me!” Beaulieu called back, a mischievous grin on her face.

“I love this organization,” beamed Paradis, when someone mentioned the $3 dues each member pays annually. “I joined because I didn’t know these ladies, and I wanted to meet new friends. The dues are the best thing, and you don’t have to take office. And it’s a chance to act out.”

Act out?

“Yes,” said Paradis, and she waved her wizened hand toward the others. Just getting together, she said, is a form of acting out.

What it isn’t, said almost all the members including Cooper, who is 60, is sitting around while life passes you by.

“We’re not old ladies in rocking chairs. We’re governors of states, brigadier generals, doctors, nurses and teachers,” said Cooper, who has written two books based on the funny and sad stories Red Hatters have shared. “I hope – and I know – the women are getting a second lease on life, a new way to value themselves and to have more fun just for a change. The best thing about women can also be the worst thing – that they give to everyone else first and deplete themselves. They need a little rejuvenation. I wouldn’t want to see women change, but a little recess is very restorative.”

Recess, indeed.

“It brings out the wild woman in me,” said Beaulieu while adjusting her hat. “We’re not going to grow old gracefully. We’re going to have a good time. I’m not going to sit in my rocking chair. I’m not going to knit. I’m not going to crochet. You put on that red hat, and you might be surprised. You never know which way you’re going to go.”

“Red is a powerful color. It’s lively, cheerful and hard to ignore. So it sums of the movement really well,” said Cooper. So does another term she uses: women’s play group.

The Red Hatters have caught the attention of younger women, too. Pink Hatters – those under 50 – join groups willing to open membership to future Red Hatters. “Red-uation” is the name for the ceremony that Pinks go through when they turn 50 and finally put on their red hats.

“It’s silly, but that’s the point,” Cooper said. “We all know life is serious business and has hard spots in it, especially as you grow older. But there’s beauty and joy, too. Even if you’re the president of a college, you want to get silly with your girlfriends and remember how it was to be 8 years old. The thing that’s exciting is that that little kid isn’t necessarily dead. She’s still capable of giggling.”

Alicia Anstead can be reached at 990-8266 and aanstead@bangordailynews.net. For information about the Red Hat Society and chapters in Maine, visit www.redhatsociety.com.