Yikes, this gal better run for the hills (not the ones that ‘have eyes’) because this article has gotten into the hands of the wrong crowd. Seems that all ladies and gents do not feel the same about handbags as many of us. And I thought we were normal?! ❗
I SKULKED around the purse section at Marshalls.
I peered through racks of leather straps willing a woman nearby to put down my purse. She had nine purses in her cart. How come she had to pick up mine?
It wasn’t exactly my purse. Yet. But I saw that red bag three days before and I didn’t buy it because I was worried that it wasn’t red enough, or that it wasn’t big enough, and I wasn’t really committed to buying a purse yet anyway, and I thought $48 was too much to spend for a purse, or maybe $48 wasn’t enough to spend on a purse. But mostly I didn’t buy it three days ago because I hate purses so much.
Woo boy. Maybe I should call someone about this. A professional someone, I mean.
I am 41 years old, and I am still not a purson.
Continue reading this *blasphemy* after the jump!
Story via Hampton Roads
It hits me for every important event of my life. Purses are required at weddings and graduations and high school reunions, occasions when women are supposed to speak the language of the purse.
It’s the same thing that happens when men are expected to be able to communicate in the idiom of box scores and RBIs.
Some women can talk style and size and quality of a potential handbag. I jiggle the change in my pocket as they claim to feel naked without a purse.
The women in my family even shop for purses together as a multigenerational bonding ritual akin to nit-picking and back-scratching among other primates.
I can handle that. It’s only when I get around women speaking in the dialect of the luxury handbag that I freak. Those women know why you would spend hundreds of dollars on a bag with someone else’s name on it. They can tell a real designer zipper pull from a fake one. They not only know the name of that designer handbag that costs $15,000, but they could recognize it across the tarmac in a snowstorm that would close the Denver airport.
Not me. That bag could be strapped into the seat next to me on the plane and I would not even notice. I might even think it was put there for my convenience to catch my empty soda can and used yogurt cup.
I’m pretty sure this is a bad sign. A tick against my femininity. A marking that I am not as womanly as I think I am, not as girly as I ought to be.
My girlfriend Dawn says she’s fine with her purse. She feels this unfeminine only when she tries to buy a blazer. She’s afraid every other woman takes one look at her shoulders and runs to the bathroom to scream with laughter about how she is built like a man. That’s OK, because those gals are already in there hysterical over my purse.
I know I ought to be content to keep on keepin’ on – to carry my money in my pocket, my keys clipped to my jeans. But some occasions do require a purse. The right purse. A purse that is of the variety that tells the world I am a woman’s woman and that I speak the language of women.
My daughter says that’s my entire problem.
“You can’t impress purse people. They know each other already. They recognize each other’s markings,” Kelsey said. “Just do like I do and pick a purse you like. Gaaah. I’d think you’d know that by now.”
Yeah, so do I. But I keep hoping. I keep wishing that someday I would stalk the aisles of the world, proud and free and female in my complete confidence in my purse.
Until then, I guess I’ll just have to brush up on my box scores.
