I come from a long line of clavicle men. My father was one, as his father before him. The earliest record of this family trait can be traced to a thin pamphlet titled "Can I Touch It?" published by my great-great-great Uncle Julius in 1870. During a three-year period, Julius measured the length and angle of some 120 female collarbones, correlating the statistics with a personality test he developed and administered to the subjects while they were naked. By all accounts, he was a bit of a fanatic.

Unfortunately, not one copy of Uncle Julius' seminal work on the subject exists. The virtues of a woman's clavicle have thus been handed down religiously from generation to generation of Blyler men through an oral tradition accompanied by bottles of Calvados and frequent homages to Goethe. Dreamy German Romantics are all the members of the Blyler clan have ever been.

I was about 15 when my father first sat me and my brothers at the dinner table to sing the virtues of the clavicle. A sensible mathematician by trade, he suddenly turned lyrical:

"If the eyes are the windows to her soul, then the clavicle is its artifice. Like a finely fashioned stiletto heel, the collarbone dramatizes a woman. It frames the face. Lifts the shoulders. Accentuates the neckline and breasts, raising her high upon the pedestal of goddess and muse ... Yes, my boys, it's that good."

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