I Can't Take Men in Bow Ties Seriously

I can’t take bow ties seriously.

I think of clowns or old TV shows from the 1950s, where men in horn rimmed glasses and slicked hair pitched toothpaste and soap.

You may not like Donald Trump but he gives off a heavy aroma of testosterone.

Last week when I saw the first two House impeachment witnesses, I thought the one in a bow tie immediately had no credibility. I suppose someone suggested it would make him appear “bookish”. In a Wally Cox sort of way (you young people can Google Wally Cox!)

You may not like Donald Trump but he gives off a heavy aroma of testosterone. An air of confidence. The guy at school who shoved the fellow in the bow tie into a locker. It’s not a nice thought but it may be accurate. In today’s visual culture it’s about images.

Also, it’s not exactly a new paradigm. In the 1950s, two-time Presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson was the same height as his opponent, Dwight Eisenhower. A Stevenson biographer claims the candidate couldn’t ever shake the “egghead” tag. It was a common putdown at the time for intellectuals and for men who weren’t very macho.

Stevenson twice lost to Eisenhower, a man who commanded troops in Europe during World War Two. Stevenson was even called Adelaide by some critics, which once was a common name among women.

Washington is a town obsessed with the word “optics”. I just don’t see bow ties as saying anything other than “geek”. Geeks don’t get elected student body President. Only in fiction (I’m thinking Napoleon Dynamite. Funny film, not reality!)