Socks absorb sweat and make a buffer between the shoe material and your (stinky) feet. Underpants protect your rear from rubbing on polyester all day. Cufflinks keep your sleeves together. Hats can protect from wind, dust, sun and rain. Shoes, gloves.....every part of my wardrobe is earning its keep in the workplace of my body. Then we have the guy just there for the ride. The shameless leech who refuses to put in work, hides when the boss is around and takes your food out of the fridge right before lunch. The necktie.
Deemed so important in years gone by that there are (albeit satirical) books published about the correct way to fasten them, men have always been judged as soon as they walk out the door wearing a shirt without a tie. I think we can agree that no man in the business world dares leave his bedroom without one of these strangulation facilitators hung around his neck. Even men in such position of power as director of the BBC can't escape judgment. I have done research over the years, and at no point have I found a reason for wearing a necktie outside of "fashion".
Well I like practicality, and as such have fought for years against having to wear those things. There are ways to look formal without wearing ties. Suits like these collect dust by the wayside, and I fail to see why.
"Well, Dominic," the GQ gentlemen sneer, "it just looks better. Clearly your fashion sense is nonexistent."
So why is a tie fashionable? Why have we come so far, from having women wearing corsets and metal banded skirts, men wearing white powdered wigs and starched collars so stiff they could kill, to our modern fashions, yet maintain that wrapping cloth around your neck is the only way to appear professional?
"Well, Dominic," the clerk at Men's Wearhouse says wearily, rolling his eyes at me for the fourth time, "it's a way for a man - OR woman - to express their individuality."
I'm going to have to disagree. You can make that case for body art and piercings. Even barbed wire tattoos around the bicep say something about you. Sites like Suicide Girls celebrate body art, and I'm sure many piercing sites exist where you can go through and not see two people exactly the same. When I look at a picture like this:
I cannot help but see how.......similar all the guys look. I see an amorphous mass of dark hues and cloth around the neck. Is this what the adult world is? Looking alike? Conforming to have a shot at a job? Thankfully, not everyone thinks so. Instead of using Google to look for ties, I looked at what Google thinks of ties. Seems a divisive issue at best. In a letter to the Financial Times which you can't read unless you subscribe, which is why I can't link it here..........Google's privacy chief spoke out against ties. In the quotes I saw, he seemed to think the same ways I do, even saying that ties constrict the flow of blood to the brain.
Obviously he's trying to be funny, but in the moments of seriousness you can see the points he raises for regular t shirts vs suit and tie in the corporate world. I'm with him.
This final article discusses clip on ties. I have gone this route a few times. Skimming through the article I kept finding objectionable material. He mentions cops and security personnel wearing clip ons to avoid being strangled. Common sense over fashion, I nodded and continued. Then I got to THIS:
Similarly, people in factory environments who wear ties are also advised to wear clip-ons – in the unfortunate event that the tie gets caught in a piece of machinery, it will simply clip off, rather than pulling its owner into the machine as well. (Then again, why people in factories would wear ties I have no idea.)
So what are you saying, sir or maam? People in factories don't have to wear ties because what....only professionals wear ties? So factory workers aren't? What, working in a factory takes you off the list of people who can "express themselves as individuals" in such a way? Get out of my internet browser with that.
I hate ties. If you made it to the end of this you no doubt get that. I do not ask that if you like ties you change your mind. I simply ask that you seriously ask yourself why you like them, and if it was ever your choice.
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