Adventures at Midlife

Second Son insists that I have a purse obsession, a charge with which I take extreme UMBRAGE. (Gosh, I LOVE that word. It has such a Lady Bracknell quality to it.) I may be occasionally obsessed with shoes, but I generally limit my available satchel selection to two dozen or so. I did have a fling with Kate Spade on eBay a few years ago when I was trying to add a little New York caché to life here in Dusty Corner, but it was a fruitless effort.

More Intelligent Life, an offshoot of The Economist and one of my favorite new Web finds, has a charming little article by Paula Marantz Cohen on the bags in her life. Cohen, a novelist and essayist and Distinguished Professor of English at Drexel University in Philadelphia, has a seasonal ritual of buying a new purse (or pocketbook, as she would prefer to call them):

My seasonal pilgrimage is not apparently unique. A recent survey states that the average American woman buys at least four handbags a year. The “at least” is intriguing, since it suggests legions of women who can’t resist a fifth or sixth handbag — not to mention the fashionistas who buy one for every outfit.

Depending on their age, men may have backpacks or briefcases — or, in the case of metrosexuals and Europeans, the man bag — but the fact that they generally go out with nothing more than what they can carry in their pockets is a source of envy for both Cohen and me. Where did this need to haul around our lives all the time come from? Why do I think I can’t leave the house without my Tweezerman tweezers?

If one thinks anthropologically, handbags may be a vestigial expression of women’s biological desire to nest. We need to feel that all the necessities of life are immediately within reach — and these necessities have increased in number as civilisation has grown more complex.

(I’m reluctant to think too deeply about purses since a colleague told me that, according to Freud, women who forget or lose their purses actually want to lose their virtue. They’re a stand-in for our, um, wombs. Yikes.)

I generally agree with Cohen’s list of requirements for the perfect bag, especially the dictum that it not be too expensive. One of my favorite pages in my monthly Vogue (yeah, I read it, for the ARTICLES, which is what men say about Playboy) is the very back page where the fashion editors always list some outrageous accessory, frequently a bag, that can fetch $10,000 or more. The only thing more ridiculous than the bag is the person who will actually PAY that much to own it. I realize that, by spending so much, said bag lady will own much more than the bag — the knowledge that she is part of an elite, exclusive group that can afford such baubles.

We’re such an absurd species. No wonder the knock-off industry is so big, and such a problem.

Part of my need to stop at the purse section of every store or flea market I wander into is that, even after all these years, I’m still looking for the perfect purse. It’s my Holy Grail. After I make up my mind and actually purchase one, when I get it home, it’s always too big, too small, too cheaply made, too expensive, too gaudy, too trendy, too boring.

Would Freud say I’m dissatisfied with my femininity?