The newest members of the fold — and really, boys, you don’t write, you don’t call, I have to hear about it from David Porter? — seem to skirting the edge of the reactionary temptation:
If only to preserve consistency with our often ancient ideas, the latest fashion in such circles hasn’t changed in years — among the gentlemen, bowties and tweed jackets are encouraged. Ask us about rap music, a new television show, or weblogs, and you might well be told that we’ve never heard of such newfangled oddities. Fail to hold a door open for a lady? Fear our wrath.
To quote a New Haven local who once had the good fortune to be confronted with a conservative gentleman clad in a three piece suit, a bowtie, and a gold-chained pocket watch complete with pipe, “are you serious?!”
Yes. Yes we are.
There are two ways to wear a bow-tie or a tweed jacket: as if it is the most natural thing in the world, or as a deliberate and self-conscious bit of drag. The problem is that there are very few people today for whom bow-ties and tweed jackets do come naturally. For everyone else, it’s drag — it has to be drag — and drag isn’t serious.
For the bow-tie to come naturally, you must be blissfully ignorant of the present — and that sort of ignorance is impossible. You can, and in fact the Cavers do, rail against the Enlightenment. You can’t claim to have missed it. No matter how distasteful we may find modernity, no matter how much we might like to do so, we cannot go back.
To their credit, they seem to have realized some of this:
But these niceties we hold dear, while gloriously chivalric and ultimately harmless, are nevertheless dishonest. As conservatives, we recognize the limits that our times and our location place on us. We can no more avoid the awful din of popular culture than could a knight of old avoid chivalry. But our white lies serve a lofty purpose in reminding us of the ideals we seek to uphold and helping us to keep something sacred in times that demand the breakdown of all barriers. Thus the conservative can take neither his quaint mannerisms nor the environment in which he finds himself lightly.
But a bow-tie is not a bulwark against modernity. As an unspoken claim that you, at least, have avoided the dissolution of a traditional order, it is prima facie untrue. As an intentional riff on a vanished tradition, it necessarily recognizes its own absurdity. The old sources of meaning have disappeared, and when we choose to ape their forms we recognize that what they offer us is glittering illusion.
We use them not to hold something that might otherwise slip from our grasp — it has already gone — but to recreate them, imbuing them with new meaning. They are, in themselves, harmless, but when we grow solemn about them we forget that we are merely playing. It is exactly our “quaint mannerisms” that we should take lightly. Chesterton, the prophet of God’s mirth, tells us as much: “It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.”
I mean, I agree about most of what you say, but pipe-smoking is actually a delicious habit no matter what you think about conservative aesthetics. Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.
(Also, wearing bow-tie and tweed right should be on someone’s list of things to accomplish in life, once they’ve got the Inner Conservative down solid)
Last night, Helen accused me of “queering the kitchen” by being self-consciously/performatively domestic, which I really wasn’t. I cook and clean and wear skirts not because they’re part of a role, but because it’s part of something that does feel natural. The problem isn’t with doing things like that (or smoking a pipe, or whatever), but doing it as a role without recognizing that it is a role, or insisting that it comes naturally when it doesn’t.
I only heard about it from a comment on Helen’s blog. They didn’t bother to tell any of us. Quite rude, if you ask me.
We decided to public in a softer manner than sending a big “hey y’all, come read my blog” e-mail. We wanted to avoid assuming that we were worth the attention, which I think given the reaction so far might have been a good call!
And as for Nicola: I think I agree with large parts of what you are saying, and I don’t think I intended to use the “Yes. Yes we are.” to entail all that you are assuming. Perhaps it was put poorly. Certainly we recognize that “As an intentional riff on a vanished tradition, it necessarily recognizes its own absurdity. The old sources of meaning have disappeared, and when we choose to ape their forms we recognize that what they offer us is glittering illusion.”
For my part, I was pretty oblivious with regard to the whole Yale blog scene. I never knew there was such a thing as the Yale Mafia. Please pardon what was perceived as rudeness.
Sorry, I seem to have been misunderstood. I did not consider it rude in the least - it was no more than a small joke.
I do the Jewish Mother thing because I care. Welcome to the family, boys.
I’m waiting for the comeback of the ascot.
As I had to explain to my former colleagues on the Hill: “You don’t have to be gay and Republican to wear a bow tie. It’s gay OR Republican.”
3 people referred me to you blog today, because I am known to wear bowties (I am wearing one right now). I started wearing bowties because I spilled a lot and got tired of dry cleaning long ties. Then people associated me with the bowtie. A photograph of my grandfather revealed he too wore bowties
I once was told ‘the majority of men who wear bowties do so because the majority of men do not”.
I wear’em as they feel right.
I started wearing bowties after finding myself on the wrong end of a burly gentleman who grabbed my long tie and lifted me off my feet. I dangled helplessly as I tried to free myself.
I could have avoided bar fights or started wearing clip-ons but bowties came more naturally to me.
I am guilty of bowties and tweed on a regular basis. I have a closet full of both. It is so cool here in the Northwest that I can get away with tweed year-round. It’s no drag. It is my tribe’s uniform. Some of the ties and jackets in my closet were my father’s. My teachers and mentors and friends wear them. And it’s not a conservative thing. I’m a lifelong socialist.
I have been wearing them ever since my first one at age 7, my father and grandfather both owre them. I wanted to wear one seing my fahter wear them, and once I learned to tie my own there was no turing back. I guess you could say it runs in the family even now with my two sons wearing them every so often. I also have several in my closet about 50 or so and I think there is 15 or so netween my sons. I too am wearing one right now, and wear them almost everyday.
Hello, I think there is issues on the site. I just tried to use the text on the menu bar and it diverted me to another site which I have never used. Can you aid with this?