Why Is It (Still) Such a Big Deal When Men Carry Bags?

It appears that we, as a culture, have collectively declared war on men-kind.

“If someone so much as says “my boyf–”, on social media, they’re muted,” thus opens that scathing British Vogue article that everybody in this timeline with a digital footprint has been talking about ad nauseam. 

Meanwhile, a comment on the podcast Delusional Diaries reads: “Boyfriends are out of style. They won’t come back in until they start acting right.” 

It has 10,000 likes. 

In his essay, “The Angst of the Male Thirst Trapper,” author Stephen G. Adubato argues, “the culturally dominant ideal of manhood is that of the sensitive, neutralized male who never gives offense or makes anyone feel uncomfortable.” In the same piece, Joe Enabnit, founder of a private Minnesota gym, is quoted as saying, “In the past it was easier for men to feel useful.”

The discourse feels less like a knee-jerk response, and more an emphatic thump of the metaphorical fist against the metaphorical table; a pushback, as @databutmakeitfashion notes, by women seeking structure, independence, and control in the face of amplifying tension between gender norms. 

“Where being single was once a cautionary tale,” writes the Vogue piece, “it is now becoming a desirable and coveted status.” And lest we forget, by the end of And Just Like That, Carrie Bradshaw herself, poster-child for the modern independent woman, ends up “not alone, but on her own.”

And front-and-center to this debate, now more than ever, stands the man-bag, a political statement as much as it is a fashion accessory.

Is Calling a Man-Bag a Man-Bag Embarrassing Now?

“Men are finally embracing handbags. Once banished from the male wardrobe, now spotted all over celebrities and in designer collections, handbags have been gaining traction over the last few years” announced a reel on the GQ Instagram that dropped the same day as that fateful Vogue article.

In the montage that follows is a mix of Jacob Elordi and Pedro Pascal toting their beastly Bottegas and Chanels, A$AP Rocky in new (new) Celine, Pharrell with a mini Speedy slung crossbody, and Timothée Chalamet and David Beckham with their mini and maxi Hermès Kellys, respectively.

This may appear to be a far cry from the days of Jerry Seinfeld’s European Carry-all (“It’s not a purse. It’s European”). Or when Joey Tribbiani of Friends strapped on his compact briefcase and was met with widespread ridicule – a plotline so silly by 1999 standards that it warranted an entire episode.

But even though men do need – and oftentimes freely carry – purses today (“At first, I thought it just looked good, but it’s practical too,” Joey says, “Check it out! It’s got compartments for all your stuff! Your wallet! Your keys! Your address book!”) how far has the attitudes around it shifted really? 

Even the wording around it feels derisive: “murse,” an amalgamation of the words man-purse, or man-bag, a slang for the, erm, male private parts, appears to be reductive – if not downright dismissive – of the item’s merit and utility. 

Isn’t it time we called a spade a spade, or in this case, a bag a bag?

The Man, the Bag, the Struggle

“They’re just words!” you say, “it’s not that serious.”

Perhaps it may help to invoke the designer Rick Owens, whose SS26 runway presentation featured a life-sized statue of him (quite literally) taking the piss out of the fashion industry’s self-seriousness.

For his infamous “free willy” FW15 menswear show, Owens had the models walk in deconstructed, upside-down jumpers, their “man-bags” on full display, treating them, in the designer’s own words, “indifferently and casually, to make them lose their male sacredness, and to taunt masculine pride.”

And it was scandalizing, to say the least.

An angry Karl Lagerfeld denounced the spectacle as “disgusting” on French national television. Owens’ response? “I was delighted, because that’s exactly the kind of uptight white guy I wanted to provoke.” 

The point I (and I’m sure Owens, too) am trying to make is that in fashion, we have the tendency to take ourselves too seriously, or conversely, not seriously enough. And as people who exist adjacent to this industry, men are not (nor should they be) immune to taking an interest in it, beyond the standard streetwear sneaker or testosterone-dipped briefcases and backpacks.

And now it’s easier than ever to participate: anybody can (and should) be able to make a moodboard, consume fashion content via a meme page, or buy from their favorite brand, without being made to feel bullied or vilified because of it.

Furthermore, even as more and more bearers of the XY chromosome are stepping out of the once-de rigueur, now-demode fashions of bulging, masculine pockets, the entire process of discovering – and actually settling on, and using – the perfect bag to store their belongings in is in itself a struggle.

The last thing we want is judgment and gender disparities adding to the stress.

Do Bags Even Have a Gender?

Fortunately, we have enough pop-culture precedent to go by.

Aside from Joey and Jerry’s much-derided handbags, Marlon Brando reportedly slung his own leather satchel on his shoulder way back in 1957, as did Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover (2009) because “Indiana Jones has one”. Jones himself remains a devotee of the rugged canvas number that accompanies him regardless of whether he’s out treasure-hunting, escaping an angry indigenous mob, or falling to near-certain, crocodile-chewed death.

Elsewhere in the celebrity-verse, A$AP Rocky remains extensively papped in his all-Bottega fits, Lil Nas X fronted the campaign for the Coach Tabby, and Jacob Elordi’s range of tiny Fendis and oversized Speedys continues its assault on the patriarchy, as do Bad Bunny, Jeremy Allen White, and Harry Styles with their ludicrously capacious totes (as I-D Magazine writes, “No fr… They look like they are going to explode.”)

Not to mention, David Beckham has been at it since basically forever.

It also makes good business sense to separate men’s handbags. Hermès revived the fanny pack for its Men’s Spring 2019 show, Gucci continues to reappropriate the Jackie for its menswear runways, and Fendi has since updated the Baguette for its male Carrie Bradshaw counterparts. 

And bags have always been the brands’ bread and butter: getting the men to opt in – Vogue Business reported last year that designer bags represent 15% of all men’s bag sales – especially men like Alan Tang who “don’t necessarily want to wear a women’s purse” or have issues “with carrying a bag that looks (and feels) too feminine,” will always be a lucrative proposition.

So, as much as fashion would have us insist that it’s no longer interested in upholding traditional gender divides, those anxiety-laden Google searches asking “Are man bags acceptable?” “Can a man carry a purse?” “How to wear a man bag?” and “What do you put in a man bag?” aren’t going anywhere.

Although really, what do you put in your handbag? 

As Tim Dowling documents his own travails in The Guardian earlier this year, “I am even more uncomfortable going out and about with a classic Gucci Jackie bag. This is not because it is too feminine – the Jackie featured heavily on the catwalk in the autumn/winter menswear shows – but because its retail price lies somewhere north of £3,000. Even if I stuffed it with my laptop, my phone, my glasses, and the cash equivalent of my overdraft facility, the bag would still be worth more than the contents!”