IN "BLACK Widow," a popular movie of a few years ago, Debra Winger tells a colleague that she just sold her car for a lot less than it was worth. The man who bought it, she blushingly admits, was wearing a bow tie.
For years, women have been saying that some men are irresistible in bow ties. Unfortunately, we all know the tie itself is no guarantee. A man who thinks he is irresistible in a bow tie may be sadly mistaken.There appears to be no middle ground on bow ties. Men can either wear them or they can't. And women either love them or loathe them.
Bow ties are tricky.
Worn on the right man, bow ties may convey a certain flirtatiousness. Make no mistake - a bow tie is different, and the man who wears one probably wants to be noticed.
The editors of Esquire, in the book "Man at His Best," suggest that a man considering a bow tie should first decide whether or not it fits his "personal style."
If he can't decide, he probably shouldn't risk it.
There is really only one true test. A man must wear a bow tie and then wait to see if women snicker or fall all over him.
Actually, Esquire's editors are not enamored of bow ties. They say if a man wears one, he should be sure that "the bow is as wide as the distance between the corners of your eyes."
Obviously, a bow tie is no good if it is a stupid clip-on.
It must be a real bow tie that actually wraps around the neck and can be adjusted in length and tied carefully to suit the wearer.
When tied, it can't be too short or too long. Either extreme looks ridiculous, but too long is worse.
It makes a man look like a clown.
As a teenager, I remember my mother encouraging me to wear a bow tie and even tying it for me. Her dad and brothers wore bow ties.
I liked the way the bow tie looked. Besides, I didn't have to keep pushing it back inside my jacket or out of my food.
But I didn't like the tendency of my friends to yank on it, inevitably destroying the knot. That never happened with a long tie.
So I stopped wearing a bow tie - until last month. One day, I just had an urge to be different, so I pulled an attractive little bow tie off my rack. It was in excellent condition, having never been worn.
I studied bow-tying instructions on a little card I had kept for years. The first five or six tries at tying it were disasters. The loops kept disappearing and slipping through my fingers - and then, suddenly, without warning, it worked.
It was just not that hard to learn how to tie one on.
Almost universally the comments I got from other men were "Did you tie that yourself?" It was always uttered with a touch of resentment, as if to intimate the bow tie was not valid unless the wearer tied it himself. Proudly, I said, "Yes, I tied it myself!"
As for women, they didn't snicker, but they didn't fall all over me, either. So I must have failed the flirtation test.
But, hey, I don't care. I like the lighter touch around the neck, and I like wearing a tie that doesn't get into my food.
More important, when I think of the sophistication that someone like Charles Osgood oozes when he wears his meticulously tied bow tie on CBS's "Sunday Morning," I think I'm in good company.