The time has come to address the neck tie.
I knew it would come to this one day, and that day is now, not nigh.
Pursuing the vita scholastica these years I have heard many a comment on neck ties, of which I have made mental notes. (Be careful what one says around me, seems to be the morale of the story so far.) Confession time, I wear a necktie most working days in the academy. Me and David.
http://www.freakingnews.com/David-Statue-Neckties-Pics-42046.asp
Many times I have heard a learned colleague say:
• I am glad that I don’t have to wear a neck tie
• The best thing about this job is not having to wear a tie
• I couldn’t stand to wear a tie
I have heard these comments and variants of them a lot. They come from lecturers new to the job and wizened professors. Yes, people do say those things about the necktie, and given the dress conventions we yet respect, it is only men who talk about wearing or not wearing neckties. Though on the feminine side there are a few words later. Just wait.
Having worked in Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia, I can safely say I have heard these cries of Free-from-the tyranny-of-the-necktie around the world. So forget about those lame-brained cultural explanations.
Since I wear a tie most days. I get the personal variant of the syndrome. It goes something like this:
• You’re wearing a tie! (a world of inflections here, none of which are positive)
• Why do you have a tie on?
• Going to see … the bank [doctor, lawyer, parole board]?
As my dress is noted and explanations for this aberrant behavior are gratuitously offered, I expect other more barbed comments have also been made that I missed.
None of these same folk have ever commented, noticed, or explained my tie at a funeral or a wedding, and on occasions I have seen them in ties, at formal, business dinners and the like. I conclude they know of ties.
I hasten to add that I have never ever suggested that anyone else dress as I do. A word of sartorial imperialism has never passed my lips. That imperialism comes from the tieless who just have to comment on my attire.
There are many reasons to wear a neck tie.
– it’s business and I am on duty, which means at times I have to be nice to idiots, including those who make inane comments about neckties.
– the colour and style, souvenirs from trips, gifts from an adoring public (see, I do have an imagination)
– I know how to tie it, and in several different ways, and just to prove it, now and again it is a bow tie! (I admit that bow tie tying is not for me, though I have done it.)
Shopping for the souvenir necktie while travelling has taken me to such exotic places as the Mustafa Centre in Singapore, that most un-Singaporean of places. The pictures do not do it justice. It is … hard to describe.
http://images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://image.orientaltrading.com/otcimg/25_532.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.orientaltrading.com/ui/browse/processRequest.do%3Fsku%3D25/532%26requestURI%3DprocessProductsCatalog&usg=__GPqfTQXIvYuFxZTvzQoyGVIakFA=&h=350&w=350&sz=224&hl=en&start=22&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=rEgebqqojF-V0M:&tbnh=120&tbnw=120&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dneckties%26start%3D18%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26ndsp%3D18%26tbs%3Disch:1
For generations of working men the ambition for their male children was to work in a shirt and tie. That meant head work not back work. That meant secure work.
Those academicians for whom a tee shirt represents freedom were already free, at least free from the prospect of a life of manual labor with its attendant insecurities, last hired, first fired. Like many who are free, they did not even know they were free, so free were they.
Remember that feminine note I promised above? Here it comes. Don’t blink: A necktie some woman likes is usually attributed to my wife. It is noted, it is praised, and before I can say where and how I acquired it the female says some variant of “your wife got it for you.” I have learned to keep silent and let this tape run.
On bow ties I have tried many remedies including this one:
It didn’t help.
I will close by recommending a book, Nicholas Antongiavanni, The Suit: A Machiavellian approach to mens style (HarperCollins, 2006). Everything there is to know about a suit and the accessories to go with it written with verve and wit.
Michael
thanks for this – i really enjoyed it. i have a somewhat different experience to yours – having been forced to wear a tie since the early years of primary school, and continuing to do so to this day, i’ve developed a deep dislike for them. nowadays, i tend to unbutton my top bottom and loosen my tie by about 3pm. the only questions are get are about why my tie isn’t properly done-up!!
warmest wishes
joseph
I must confess that part of the appeal for me of academia (at age 19) was not having to wear a tie (I’d been planning previously to go to law school as a vehicle for getting into politics, and that would have required a necktie). And I still enjoy being in a line of work where dress is casual. But I got a good lesson some years ago while staying with some diplomat friends whom we’d met in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and who were in Brussels when we visited them. John would come home from the Embassy in his suit and tie and quickly change into his blue jeans and casual shirt, and one day I asked him if he didn’t mind wearing a suit. He looked at me and simply said “it’s my uniform.”
David Shapiro, Professor of Economics, Penn State University, USA