If you’re old enough to remember grunge and if you watched “Friends” when it was still the most popular show on prime-time TV - in fact, if you even know what prime-time TV is - then you might remember the ‘zine. Short for magazines, ‘zines were underground, homemade publications, sometimes produced on the earliest desktop publishing software, and sometimes just typed on a typewriter, and then photocopied and sold or handed out to anyone who would take one. People made ‘zines for all kinds of reasons. Activists made ‘zines to share news or political content. Amateur writers self-published their work in the form of ‘zines. Humorists, artists, photographers, poets, weirdos - anyone could make a zine with pretty much no equipment. ‘Zine producers were bloggers for the Stone Age.
Two friends of a friend of mine produced a ‘zine pretty regularly. I don’t remember what it was called, nor do I remember the two women’s names, but I do remember that they were both librarians, and that they were a bit older than me. They both had young children, and they sometimes wrote about their children and about their lives as the mothers of toddlers. Those children probably have children of their own now.
I never actually met these women, and I never had my own copy of the ‘zine. My friend shared it with me when the two authors published it, which happened maybe three times over the course of two years. They were full-time working mothers of very young children and so they didn’t have much time to write, let alone type, photocopy, and distribute their small publication. But they did the best they could, because they had something to say. They had a distinctive voice - funny and sardonic but not mean. Silly but not precious. Passionate about the rights of women, especially working women, but not “strident” or “militant” or whatever adjective people like to use to ridicule anything even remotely feminist. My friend and I were big fans of their work.
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Other than cat videos, handbag videos are my hands-down favorite thing on the whole internet. “Pack the cafe bag with us,” reads the caption for the Tom Bihn Instagram video, and they reeled me right in. I watched that video three times, rapt all the way through. I cannot get enough of handbag packing videos.
And it’s not just social media ads - there is a whole YouTube subgenre in which people pack and unpack their handbags, tote bags, and backpacks. I love them all. The commercial videos tend to begin with a pristine brand-new empty bag, and you watch as a disembodied pair of well-manicured hands packs the bag with a wallet, phone, water bottle, book, notebook, pens and pencils, makeup, sunscreen, keys, and every other imaginable random accessory that a person might need or want to carry. These are fun to watch because everything is new and clean and pretty and elegant, and what’s better than a perfect bag with perfect accessories?
The homemade YouTube videos, though, are even better. In those videos, a woman unpacks a bag and shows us what she carries every day in her Longchamps Le Pliage or her Prada backpack.. Sometimes, the bag is new, and the person in the video is showing the audience how much it can hold, and how well - pockets and other organizational features, ergonomics, etc. These are usually sponsored videos in which a handbag company pays an influencer to share her impressions of their bags. But sometimes, people just record videos of themselves, taking everything out of their bag, whatever it looks like, and showing those things to us one at a time, without filters - a Fendi wallet and some balled-up used Kleenex; an elegant leather notebook and a Bic 4-color pen, a few hairpins and a few old receipts, a half-eaten granola bar, some gum - everything and anything that a person takes with them when they leave the house and all of the other things that they accumulate along the way. It’s not all stylish or beautiful but it’s all interesting and revealing.
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It was that Tom Bihn video that made me remember my favorite ‘90s ‘zine; specifically, the “purse dump” issue in which the authors and a small group of their friends emptied their purses and wrote about the contents of each other’s bags. Each participant agreed to empty their purses exactly as they were, and to allow others to freely examine the contents and write about everything. As a reader, of course, I did not have any way to verify the claim that the purse dump descriptions were complete and accurate and unfiltered, but I also didn’t have any reason to believe otherwise. It didn’t matter, though, because it was excellent reading, far better than anything I’d encountered in Vogue or Allure or even my then-beloved Vanity Fair. What could be better than reading a detailed (and hilarious) commentary on the things that a person carries around with her, the things without which she doesn’t leave the house?
I saw myself in some of the contents of these women’s handbags - lipstick, of course! I don’t carry other makeup but I always carry lipstick. Two pens, because what if your first pen runs out of ink? Hmm? What then? Bandaids, because if you work in an office, you’re going to get paper cuts. A book - sometimes two books - because you can read on the subway. A snack - but not water. People didn’t carry water bottles around back then.
But I also found inspiration. A pebble or shell from the beach - what a great thing to carry around! A good luck charm - of course! I should also have a good luck charm! Sugar packets and wet naps swiped from restaurants, and sealed in ziploc bags - I immediately resolved to swipe sugar packets and wet naps from every diner and restaurant in the greater Philadelphia area, so that I could also carry around ziploc bags of these very very useful things.
Fast forwarding 30 or so years, I find the same I-feel-seen recognition and the same inspiration in purse contents videos, commercial or otherwise. I still carry lipstick and band-aids and a shell or two. I don’t really carry sugar packets or wet naps unless I’m traveling. I always have a pen and usually I have two pens. I carry several hair clips and hair ties, and an extra set of contact lenses. My purse always contains a little plastic tube that itself contains Tylenol, ibuprofen and a few Benadryl tablets. I have a tiny LeSportsac zipper case on a keyring, which contains my earbuds (always with me) and a quarter for the shopping carts at Aldi. I didn’t used to need sunglasses, but now I never leave the house without them. I carry my Kindle with me if there’s even the slightest chance that I’ll have five or more minutes of waiting time or downtime. The inspiration comes in not so much what to carry as in how to carry it, how to make ordinary utilitarian items look pretty so that rummaging through my purse is a joy.
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And of course I bought the stupid Tom Bihn bag, too. This was not my fault. That bag chased me all over the internet for weeks until I finally caved. That is some effective advertising because I didn’t even like the bag when I first saw it. But it grew on me. I started imagining myself packing it just as the person in the video did, and after a few more viewings, I found that I couldn’t stop thinking about this bag and how it would fulfill a very specific need. I haven’t had a utilitarian nylon crossbody bag for a long time and it just felt like it was time to revisit that style and that aesthetic. I’m very happy with it so far, and it will be perfect for my upcoming road trip to Cleveland. That’s what a bag is for, of course - to make you feel prepared when you’re out in the world. Maybe I’ll write a whole post just about the contents of that bag. Videos are not my thing.
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