I can never take a simple walk through a mall. Each department, each store in fact, holds its own joys and contradictions, terrors and taunts. There’s the mass confusion at the perfume department: how the hell do I want to smell, anyway? Flowery, spicy, sultry, full of fun? Mildly interesting for my age? I never got the concept behind perfume: sure, I like the smell, but am I trying to attract myself? Shouldn’t I be wearing the smell of a freshly manicured baseball field, ready for tonight’s big game? Would smelling like lilies of the valley really make him wild with desire, or would he have flashbacks to his third grade English teacher who maybe also smelled a little like pee?
And let’s not even talk about the junior department, with its pube-skimming skinny jeans, its frothy tiny skirts, its toss of sex and hair, all of which remind me that no, I am no longer a junior, howeverlong I pause there, fingering a skimpy sweater for some fictional teenage daughter.
But I think it’s the purse department that really sends me into a whirling tizz. Purses confuse me, enrage me. Though they never satisfy, they also never cease to call out to me, titillate and tease as I walk by them on my way to buy the pressing things on my list. My ever-lovin’ list, which guides me and prods me all day long until I can cross off all the crap and just call it a day, for chrissakes, until one fine day when I’ll have done everything on all my lists and I will be allowed to peacefully croak, thank yew.
However and in the meantime, I can never just walk on by the “bag” department. The reasons are myriad. First of all, the purse I am usually carrying is so old and decayed I am shamed into pausing for a look-see. Secondly, I have two X chromosomes, after all, which release a hormone which tells me to always have an eye out for the perfect purse which is out there somewhere, but always just out of reach…I just KNOW the godot of purses, the holy grail of bags, the nirvana of carryalls lurks buried somewhere in the wreckage of buckles and clasps, cunning hidden pockets, smart little zippers and flaps.
But each time I pause, each time I turn around like a purse zombie, as if something is literally pulling me bodily toward the display, I get a dull, sick feeling in my gut…because the truth is I don’t WANT a purse. I don’t want to carry around a sack of stuff, always slipping down my shoulder flipping searing hot coffee onto my arms, or throwing my back out, or being something I am constantly afraid of losing or having ripped off.
And don’t we, as women, carry enough baggage? Offspring? Old relationships? Glass ceilings? Regret? Women have always lugged around too much. What we carry has to symbolize how much money we have (Coach, Prada), or the knockoffs if you can’t afford the real status symbols. And what do knockoffs say? They scream: Wow, I don’t have much money, but I can fool a certain percentage of the population whose opinion I don’t even care about because they’re not in the know enough to know it’s a knockoff (big dummies!) but hey, it’s better than nothing!
We carry purses because there is so much that the world expects of us. To keep our makeup fresh, our hair perfect, our nails chip-free, our orifices smelling minty fresh. Besides, where else would we keep our XXXLong Waterproof Mascara, our Arctic Cloudberry Nourishing Day Cream with Age Defying Capsules, to say nothing of our Plump Crazy Lip Puffer and of course our Smart Shade Concealer (30spf) with Nu Insta-Glo Bronzer.
Besides, it looks to me like purses are growing. Mommy purses are back. Excuse me, but why do I suddenly want a gigantic purse? How many blackberries do I need? Or is this just status again? As in: I need all this room because my life is so busy and exciting that I can’t possibly fit my stuff in these small purses that don’t throw my back out? Sorry, but I don’t want a purse that weighs more empty than mine does full.
And why are we always searching for the perfect purse? Because we get it home and it just…doesn’t…quite…work. The cell phone hangs out strangely or the compartment for it is so tight that the camera is activated and takes movies of the inside of our purse, thus is dead the very moment we need it, say when we drive into a creek or are desperate to reach our ex after a few designer cocktails…don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about…or the makeup bag is a bad fit or the compartments/as/wallet is a disaster of grand proportions. In one purse (measuring 8” by 5”, for crying out loud) I counted 23 compartments…for what?? There is definitely something labial about the whole thing.
I think some of these compartments are actually gates to other worlds, to purses alien women on other planets lug around, alien women who are equally wondering what the hell that little sleeve is for and feeling just the tiniest bit less-than for the not-knowing. Besides, how can we ever predict what clever technological device is going to be invented that will be necessary for Life on Earth and therefore what correspondingly genius wee pouch in this year’s gottahaveit bag will be de riguer? Not to mention that the necessary new technology will ALSO enrage me…
But wait, there’s more! The actual decision itself. Buying a purse brings up the pesky question for me: just who am I, anyway? Am I the plaid purse type? Leather only? Boho? A PATTERNED purse?? I’m certainly not the type to change purses with my outfit, my God is that a foreign concept or what. I’m lucky I leave the house with shoes on. I can see myself dumping out one purse and stuffing my assorted junk into a matching bag, no doubt forgetting the thing I desperately need in one of those eentsy compartments.
And don’t even start with those adorable clutches, or bags with just the hand strap (no shoulder strap) for dancing through the daisies. I NEED that hand! That hand needs to make calls! That hand has to hold onto another sack of stuff no doubt; it has to gesture and hold coffee and DRIVE, multitask, for crying out loud! Clutches are for women who lunch, who come home to rooms cleaned and tidied by other hands, pas pour moi.
And so I leave the bag department, exhausted and fragmented, only to stumble upon…lacy undergarments, bras that uplift me and puff me up, shapers that tubify me and photoshop me, nip and tuck me with their lycra, their straps and their gear, and it’s then that I know I have entered the living, breathing hell of…LINGERIE…
NOOOOOO!!!!
