Stuff Female People Like - No. 14: Handbags

This series is inspired by www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com.

14. Handbags

Most of the men I know are completely baffled by how and why female people like handbags. It'snot just that they don't understand why we like them so much, why we pay so much for them or why we have more than one. It's the very concept of a bag that they don't get.

If you don't believe me, suggest to your nearest and dearest straight male that you buy them a Manbag and watch his face contort at the very idea.

So why do female people like handbags so much?

They hold all our stuff

Yes, that may seem obvious, but it is no small thing.

Maybe it's an evolutionary thing. The man - the hunter - had to travel light because he may be away for days on end chasing the woolly mammoth and avoiding the sabre toothed tiger.

The woman, on the other hand, was stuck with a thing sucking on her breast and had to carry tools to gather fruits and vegetables, as well as have a way to carry those back with her. And she had no damn hands to carry them because of the little baby.

And even if you put businessman and businesswoman side by side, with their mobile phones and their pens and their moleskin mini notebooks, the businesswoman still has more stuff. There's the goddammit-I-might-get-my-period stuff, there's the I-might-need-to-take-care-of-the-kid stuff and, last but not least, there is the grooming stuff - lipstick, at a very minimum.

They complete the look

Ever since industrialization put soap making on the assembly line rather than in the home, and the work of the housewife - making candles, preserving food, sewing clothing and linen - was no longer a valued job, middle class female people have primped and padded and pouffed and painted themselves to produce maximum effect regarding their presentation. What the hell else did they have to do all day, after all?

Being well groomed is a head-to-toe business, you know.

The clothes, the shoes, the earrings, the belt, the necklace, the eye shadow - hell, even the lingerie - must all come together in a seamless assembly of color, shape and texture. And the handbag, my dear, just like the shoes, can make or break the ensemble.

Blue outfit with black handbag. Ah, non! Quel horreur!

They are little works of art

Yes, they are.

Like shoes, artisans who make handbags are designers who combine form and function, portability and beauty into one gorgeous little package.

Handbags are things of beauty.

Bedecked with jewels, cleverly interwoven leather, stunningly colored fabric. Hell, handbags can make seatbelts look pretty. Just take a look at the picture in this post.

Isn't it lovely?

Handbags reflect who we are

Woebetide the husband who buys his wife a handbag without knowing exactly what she wants.

A handbag says something about a female person's taste, her sense of color, how zany/traditional/silly she is.

If you see two twin female people and one has a cloth bag with a hippie peace sign on it, and the other had this season'sLouis Vuitton, you are looking at two verydifferent women.

Expensive handbags are status symbols. They say how much the female person is valued (if it was a gift), how much she values herself, how successful she is. Handbags are the sports cars of the female midlife crisis.

And so, female people love handbags.

And long may it continue!

I remember, when I was a kid, going into my mother's cupboard (closet) to look at her handbags. She had one - an evening bag - covered in what seemed to be metal sequins stuck together, which moved like shimmering waves.  The lining was beige silk and the whole thing spoke to me of glamorous evening like in Dallas or Dynasty.

I've had various handbags that I've loved.

There was the antique one found at a vintage shop - with the bone clasp and the silk lining.

There was the little Donna Karan given to me by FB - my first (and only) designer bag.

There was the sloppy green bag with lots of pockets and buckles that was like Mary Poppins' carpet bag... you could fit anything in there.

There was the hairy bag made of cow hide we found on holiday in Mexico - with one small white patch which gives the bovine origin away.

And then there's the red leather bag which I bought, on sale, when I got my last job and knew I was going to be earning a shitload of money. I also bought the matching purse (wallet) to go inside it. It's bright and bold and beautiful.

Like me.