Hatstand - Fanlore

Hatstand is an expression that was much used during the 1980s by the first group of The Professionals slash fans. It originated in the use by AN Other of the phrase "Bodie is as bent as a hatstand" and was soon taken up by other fans who coined the expression "a hatstand story" or simply "a hatstand" to refer to a piece of slash fiction about these characters.

This cover of the Pros slash zine Down Under Express shows an office with a hatstand.

The original group of Hatstanders were identifiable at conventions because they wore identical frog-shaped enamel brooches in a variety of colours, all bought from the same jewellery stall in London. A frog brooch had to be 'earned' by making a contribution to the genre, either by writing a piece of fiction or by typing or otherwise assisting in the production of one. An early controversy in the fandom revolved around who was and who was not 'entitled' to wear a frog.

The term hatstand appears in zine titles like The Hatstand Express or the name of the Hatstand Archive, an archive of Professionals slash fanfiction and non-fiction resources. The Hatstand archive has a hatstand in its logo and some zines show images of hatstands to signal slash content.