Re: The Origin of The Cravat (Was: Are Ties Phallocarps?)
Thomas Clarke (clarke@acme.ucf.edu)
14 Nov 1995 19:48:46 GMT
In article <b27cb$11386.323@daprez> otisg@panther.middlebury.edu (Otis Gospodnetic) writes:
>Mike Bender (mikeb@isi.com) wrote:
>> All of the discussions on the time have missed what I feel is the REAL
>> REASON for the tie -- to create a symbolic separation between the body
>> and the head. The "head" represents the place where thinking takes
>> place and the "body" represents the place where our emotions reside.
>> This also explains why:
>> 1) Women are less likely to wear ties
This is interesting. It is along the lines of what I was trying
to get at when I made an analogy between a tie and a phallocarp.
A tie is an odd choice for a device to symbolically seperate the
head from the body. The tie is blatantly phallic. Only nerds
and rustics wear alternatives such as bowties or string ties.
I think that perhaps the phallic image of the tie connects to
some primitive instinct in humans (men only hence the lack of ties
in women?) which is programmed to respond to a large penis as
a status display. Jared Diamond in The Third Chimpanzee speculates
about this when he wonders why humans have such large penises in
comparison to chimps and gorillas. It is men that are obsessed
with penis size, not women.
Did you note that our great estemed leader could only think to
tell a story about tie wearing at Rabin's funeral? Do ties have
mythic (phallic?) significance?
Ties are certainly taking over the world. Only arabs consistently
eschew them. Even Castro wore a tie in his recent UN visit.
Ties must be very primitive then, connecting to some limbic
level in our brains.
Tom Clarke
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