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I’m a guy but I want to carry a purse

I have a secret.  I’m a guy and I want to carry a purse.

I’m quite secure in my masculinity, but I don’t want to be the only dude out there carrying a purse.

But really, it makes sense — just ask any woman.  In my pockets, I carry my cell phone, my wallet, my keys, and my iPod nano.  In my hand, I often carry a water bottle.  That’s a lot of stuff to be carrying around — but I’ve limited myself.  I’ve emptied my wallet of everything but the essentials, and I don’t carry around gadgets I would like to have with me all the time — my Nintendo DS and my digital camera.  I have chapped lipped often, but I travel without chapstick except on the chappiest of days, instead having some both at home and at the office.  (I used to leave a stick in the car, but that quit working when the temperatures passed 100°F; I left work one day and found a chapstick-puddle in my car.)

What’s the solution?  Carry a purse!  Now, it doesn’t have to be styled as a woman’s purse — someone needs to come up with an uber-manly design, a design far manlier than the messenger bag. 

The messenger bag comes close to being the man purse (murse), but falls a little short.  It’s acceptable to carry one around a college campus, or to carry one in and out of work; but you can’t really carry one around at the mall, or to dinner, or to a party, or whatever else.  But women can take their purses to those places.

I was hoping that Friends would help bridge the gender gap.  There was an episode where Joey explained how much sense it made for him to carry a manbag, and I was right alongside him.  But by the end of the episode, they convinced him that it was womanly and he got rid of it (but not until after he had tried wearing panties instead of men’s underwear).

So, I’d like to issue a challenge to you guys out there — start taking your messenger bags to places you normally wouldn’t.  If you’re a bag designer (I’m sure my blog has a huge readership among the bag designer crowd), try to make the perfect manly design that men can carry with confidence everywhere and not be shunned by their friends and strangers.

I’ll make it a point to try to stretch the boundaries of where I can carry my manbag.  I will try to ignore the laughter and hope I don’t become to ostricized.  You guys do the same — together, we can change the world and make it a place that welcomes men carrying bags.

Fri August 11th, 2006 2:17 pm

Filed under Gadgets, Life