Carrying around our gender baggage

From manbags to ‘mandals’ (male sandals) to guyliners (male make-up) metrosexual fashion-aware males have got a macho makeover and are giving women a tough competition while stepping out in style, writes Indu Balachandran

I was racing to the airport check-in when it happened. My fancy designer handbag fell down, and out skipped and scattered every tell-tale evidence of my life — right before a live, amused audience of about a hundred.

That embarrassing day I resolved I WILL do something about throwing away the 68 inexplicable objects I cart around — whether I was popping down the road, mid-cooking, to buy coriander, or attending an international conference in Outer Mongolia. However, 67 of these objects leapt right back into the innards of my bag. All I had discarded was a weird passport photo of myself.

I used to look around and marvel at my male colleagues who lived life out of a slim wallet, never worrying that there is no life-saving equipment hanging under their left armpit. Oh well, thought I. Men don’t have lips that need retouching with three shades of lipstick, men don’t need a mini torch to search within the bag for spare earrings should one suddenly dine at a fancy restaurant. And men don’t have to secretly tuck away tampons in the sanctum sanctorum of a bag, and men never carry romantic novels to read in waiting rooms of gynaecologists, because they never visit gynaecologists, because they never have babies…

And then I saw an episode of Friends! I am sure you did too, The One With Joey’s Bag. Joey looked perfectly happy carrying a handbag, despite the ragging and chuckles… and perhaps Louis Vuitton and Hugo Boss were watching the same episode as I did. Because suddenly they unleashed Man bags into the world. What an idea! They called them Murses (men’s purses) and Motes (men’s totes). And very shortly Ryan Gosling and Karan Johar were flaunting these man bags all over town.
Soon Vogue and GQ were devoting more pages to this why-didn’t-we-think-of-it-earlier idea for men’s fashion. Of course, Harrison Ford had in the early 80s itself, made the masculine hip-hanging leather pouch famous in Indiana Jones. (His Indian counterpart, Amitabh Bachchan did carry around a humble male jhola bag in the film Anand, around the same time, but that didn’t quite cut it with fashion watchers). And it was only well after 2013 that the man bag trend really caught on. See what a simple rebranding of an object can do! Metrosexual fashion-aware males were already opening up closets and stepping out with ‘mandals’ (male sandals) and ‘guyliners’ (male make-up). Similarly, men’s handbags got a macho makeover simply by calling them Crossbody Bags, Carry-all Satchels, the Messenger Pouch, and the Sling-on Duffel. Jet-setting young business guys finally had alternatives to the boring ‘briefcase’ carried around by our fathers! But perhaps the biggest bag invention of all is the great unisex leveller: the Backpack.

From the laptop-toting IT professional to the make-up carrying-supermodel; the nappies and bottles obsessed mommy to the textbook-stuffing schoolkid, the whole world is buying themselves backpacks. Even Munnuswami my plumber, has got himself a fancy designer rexine backpack with ‘Guchee’ emblazoned across. Nowadays, I enter airports with a roving eye — marvelling at the big revolution in bags. The 7 kg limit for hand luggage doesn’t deter anyone, male or female, from shoving into their backpack at least 10 kg of Things. Ranging from a week’s emergency underwear — should the main bag get lost; pickle bottles guaranteed to spew oil onto that clothing, to even a foldable sitting stool should the queue at the bathroom get too long. But not so for my stylish friend Maddy. Spotting him once at the departure lounge I was pleased to see his sleek leather man purse slung rakishly across his hips and facing backwards. “It’s Burberry’s latest Fanny-pack for guys”, he said. Fanny-pack? Certainly not the butt of jokes, like Joey in Friends.

Curious to know what men carried around in their purses, I shamelessly asked Maddy. “Oh this is very useful to carry my wallet, my ID cards, my camera, my music, my photographs, my health reports, my tickets, my conference presentation, my reminder notes, my shopping list, my road trip maps, my mirror, my mosquito repellent, my newspaper, my novel, my travel expenses, my restaurant bills, my watch…” he went on and on. All that in one small bag! “Behold!” said Maddy, as he proudly pulled out the one and only object inside the man purse: his smartphone!
(He Said/She Said is a monthly column on gender issues—funny side up. The author ran away from a bank interview to join advertising and then ran
away again to be a travel writer. Resulting in her novel ‘Runaway Writers’. Reach her at [e-mail])