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March 28, 2006
The tie is the new smoking
There is a new moral crusade in town, the crusade against the necktie.
May seem weird at first, but the necktie is one of the still most visible symbols for a person being in authority. Now, there are even health reasons being cited against wearing ties for the medical profession .
While the finding merely points out that medical personnel should wash all their clothes properly (and that is incidentally one reason that the bowtie is still fashionable among doctors) it will certainly be used for the purpose of making the tie unfashionable on aesthetic values.
But the mis-guided egalitarianism of the tie-less society might strike back at ourselves. Wear a tie is showing that you are in a position of authority, a position fewer are willing to take today. In politics, the sciences and in business there is a less take-charge attitude, in order for a vaguer socially driven leadership to function. As pointed out by David Riesman in his classic book The Lonely Crowd this has its advantages but it does have some very real disadvantages in that authority ultimately is also about taking responsibility.
Clothes communicate values that have been associated with them, and the dark side of the tie-less society is its signal of not taking responsibility. Symbols sometimes do have their point, and loosing the tie we will still continue to make distinctions through our clothing. In fact, we do so more than ever today, and we are just starting to make social statements through the redesign of our bodies.
Ultimately, we might loosen up the tie, but lets not loosen up the good values associated with it.
Posted by Waldemar at March 28, 2006 08:36 PM