The Big Bag Theory

New York women love their bags. Well, I guess women anywhere aren’t really THAT different, but in New York, having a great “it” bag is an overt symbol that you truly have a place among the fashionably elite. (Or that you have a credit card with a generous limit.)

I know women who’ve spent more than a month’s rent on a new bag. “It’s an investment”, my friends confidently say as they recount stories of trying to explain this investment to perplexed (and sometimes angry) boyfriends and husbands. Many of them still speak reverently about their first real “it” bag, purchased on a shoe string while at their first jobs when they should have been paying rent and buying food. Somehow, brand names like Hermes, Chloe and Fendi have completely scrambled Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Since when does a fashionable sack of leather eclipse food and shelter?

New York bags also tend to be on the bigger side because you literally need to carry your life around with you in the city… laptop computer, water bottle, necessary files for your next meeting, wallet, phone, blackberry, a good book or newspaper for passing the time on the subway or bus, an umbrella (because it could begin raining at any given moment), a change of shoes for once you get to the office, a sushi chef who will whip you up a healthy lunch while you’re on the go… Suddenly those TV commercials where a woman pulls a pharmacist out of her bag don’t seem that far-fetched.

But even though New York women heave around giant carry-alls by day, most are smart and savvy enough to replace them with small clutches for evening activities or for any activities where you find yourself in a small crowded space. In such spaces, (like bars and clubs), there’s an inherent understanding that you don’t bring your big bag, or if you do, you stash it in a corner or under the table so that it’s out of everybody’s way. And you CERTAINLY don’t push your way through crowds, banging everyone in your path with the Cocker Spaniel-sized leather duffel slung over your shoulder.

Ok, well maybe SOME women do, and for those women, I have a theory that continues to ring true time and time again. It’s called the Big Bag Theory and it simply states that the nasty public attitude of a woman is directly proportionate to the size of the bag she carries in a crowded venue and inversely proportionate to how much space she should be taking up as a single individual in that crowded venue. (There’s a multiplier effect if she is in the company of a cocky, arrogant, “Mine’s bigger than yours” man.)

Simply put, any woman who shows up at The Fillmore, an iconic New York live music venue, carrying not only a giant shoulder bag, but unapologetically forcing her way through the crowds, using said bag as something approaching a weapon, not just a convenient place to stash some cash and a tube of lipstick, illustrates the Big Bag Theory perfectly. The bigger the bag, the bigger the, um, well… bag.

I could tell the moment I saw Princess Self-Centered with her straw-like, shoulder-length, over-processed blonde hair that she was going to be trouble. She would swing around, hitting everyone in her orbit with her giant black bag (and not to be a bag snob or anything, but it wasn’t even a particularly great bag – if you’re going to repeatedly bump into me, at least bump into me with Chanel or something). She kept hitting Special K, me and a number of other people with her bag and then as she became progressively more aggressive about her quest to obtain a better place to stand to watch the band (um, try getting to the venue EARLY like the rest of us), she literally started throwing elbows. No joke, she wound up and drove an elbow cleanly and decisively into the arm of the woman standing in front of us. At this point, Prince Arrogance (the oh-so deserving husband) began talking trash to the people that Princess was harassing and this was the point at which I slithered out through the crowd (clutching my tiny bag, thank you very much) to summon a security guard and within minutes, we had the Royal Couple ousted completely. A coup of the people.

Hopefully, it’s a LONG time before I run into that kind of purse-onality again.

PS. The current bid for the Birkin Bag in the photo was $21,499 at the time of this post (on Portero.com).