Re: The Origin of The Cravat (Was: Are Ties Phallocarps?)

Mike Bender (mikeb@isi.com)
16 Nov 1995 20:37:45 GMT

In article <48arqu$9ao@news.cc.ucf.edu> clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke) writes:

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

I never noticed the phallic nature of ties until it was brought up
here. However, this explanation does beg the following questions:
- What about bow ties (perhaps they represent the testicles without
the penis?)
- Why are ties so soft and flacid?
- Why are they supposed to stop by the belt (i.e., a tie should not
reach the genitals)

All of this makes me wonder :-)

Mike

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