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ON AN unseasonably warm and sun-filled day last December, I boarded
a plane bound from Boston to Newark, New Jersey. I had a business meeting
that evening and for once a flight delay did not seem possible. Our boarding
time passed; our departure time passed. We passengers waited and perspired.
(The air circulation on a standing Boeing 737 is not too good.) The pilot
began to make cryptic and only partly intelligible announcements: ‘ ..10
minutes more’, ‘we’ll know ..’, ‘no planes ..’, ‘New York airspace’, ‘Gorbachov’,
‘R±ð²¹²µ²¹²Ô’.

Trading information across and down aisles, my row-mates and I pieced
together that no flights would be permitted in the airspace over New York
while Gorbachov and Reagan were visiting various landmarks. While it would
have been logical for us to disembark, we were not permitted to do so: we
had to be on the plane with the door closed so that when a time came in
which we could take off, our pilot could avail himself of it. Minutes grew
into hours. I had nothing left to read. I was hot and agitated. In boredom,
I turned and looked down the centre aisle of the plane. As far as I could
see, there were men wearing red neckties. Fearing delirium, I stretched
and squinted and looked again: red ties were de rigueur.

What did it mean? Was the red tie the newest badge of courage? Were
those businessmen the soldiers of the US economy? Were they the front-line
troops of the 20th-century civil battle field, the competitive market place?
When it occurred to me that the novelist Stephen Crane was born in Newark,
I decided my brain was overheated, the red neckties a coincidence and I
turned my attention to eavesdropping: ‘We have sold the prototype; now we
must develop it.’

When I arrived in Newark five hours after boarding the plane in Boston,
I chose to ignore what I saw at the luggage claim area: a woman wearing
a masculine grey suit, a red necktie and, atop the tie, a strand of white
pearls. One of the men I met at dinner that night was wearing a pink necktie;
I learnt he had two daughters and taught at an all-girls school. I began
to draw deductions, but checked myself. I gushed to him how refreshing it
was to see a man wearing a pink necktie, and then, channelled my mind to
business.

Months passed. When I encountered a group of red neckties, I averted
my eyes; I had to do something in order to halt my thoughts of the significance
of red in the animal world: a warning, an attractant. Then, a few days ago,
my browsing at the local library put me face to book with Signals in the
Animal World (translated from Signale der Tierwelt, 1967) by Dietrich Burkhardt,
Wolfgang Schleidt and Helmut Altner. Out of curiosity, I opened it to read
it as a retrospective of the state of ethological knowledge 20 years ago.
Red neckties were back in my mind already when I reached the section ‘How
is a Signal Flag Rolled Up?’.

The authors wrote: ‘There are ..good reasons why such signals should
be displayed only occasionally ..in the struggle for existence ..it is better
to be inconspicuous and well camouflaged and to display the signal only
at the right time.’ It’s so erroneous, but so tantalising, to extrapolate
to humans. Does a buttoned grey suit jacket not conceal most of a red tie,
at least two-thirds of it given that the neck-end is the most narrow? When
a jacket is unbuttoned the full tie is exposed.

I should not have continued reading. The authors wrote about an example
I knew, the three-spined stickleback: ‘Normally the males are of a nondescript,
greyish brown colour …’ The red belly is a double signal. It warns any
rival entering its territory to expect to be attacked. On the other hand,
the same signal inspires the appropriate response in a female which is ready
to mate.’

Are the men in grey business suits giving mixed signals when they unbutton
their jackets? Are they issuing a warning that they are tough or are they
hoping to find a date? Is the meaning of the signal determined by the receiver
or the sender? What does it mean when a man wearing a red necktie removes
his jacket?

Generating more questions than answers, I sent the questions ‘Do you
own any red neckties?’ and ‘Do you think a red necktie symbolises anything?’
to men in an on-line computer conference in which I participate. Answers
flooded back into my message box. Some were introspective: ‘I own four of
them. I just like the red with otherwise boring greys and navy blues ..
but I like red in other places too ..wall paper ..sport shirts ..flowers
..they are almost the only ties I wear. I do think many guys who now wear
red ties think they symbolise ‘power’ and use them to establish or signal
their ‘dominance’. Actually, on days that I am going to see my president,
I deliberately choose my reddest ..because he always wears one and I ‘out
red’ him ..ohhh ..’

Some responses were factual: ‘I own about 10 to 15 red ties. I have
owned at least some red ties since 1965. Red is supposed to symbolise authority
and conservatism. At least that’s what I’ve been led to believe.’

One response was unique: ‘Yes I own one, have had it for some years,
wear it occasionally on Christmas. To me it symbolises nothing, but my wife
gets a kick out of it if I wear it at Christmas time. She’s into seasonal/holiday
costumes.’ And one response was succinct: ‘Yes. Neckties in general are
a phallic symbol. Red emphasises this.’

As intriguing as the answers were, even spurious correlations were absent.
It looked as though clues to red neckties as behavioural signals were not
going to be found. Then, I thought again about my plane experience, and
identified a correlation I’d missed: as the consequences of the deregulation
of the airlines in the US became more and more apparent – smaller planes,
longer waits, crowded flights, cancelled flights, misdirected flights –
it took more and more courage to undertake air travel. Some soldiers of
the business world log hundreds of thousands of air miles a year. They have
adopted a red badge to signify their courage. The hypothesis gains strong
support from the fact that red neckties supplanted a large-scale but short-lived
and post-deregulation flirtation with yellow neckties, which gave the wrong
signal in any context.

What about the woman with the white pearls atop the red necktie? There
is no accounting for taste.

Diane Calabrese, an entomologist, is based in Dedham, Massachusetts.