The mystery of women’s handbags

“Madam, wetin be this now? How long will it take you to look for a bunch of keys in this your small handbag? Abeg hurry up jo before I piss for body.”

A woman’s bag as Bermuda Triangle

It was late Saturday evening; I had arrived at home in a frantic state, sweating and in distress. My bladder was bursting at the seams. Earlier on that fateful day, I had been practically dragged by friends and family to one social function or the other with so much to eat and drink. First, somewhere in Ikeja, I attended the wedding of a close friend. It was a typical Yoruba wedding turned to an Owambe party. The bride and groom were nearly overshadowed by family members and well-wishers consisting mostly of women in colourful Aso Ebi clutching different sizes of handbags. I was particularly struck by the array of handbags on display that I have decided to make it the subject of today’s piece.

At the parties, what stood out in the women outfits were their handbags. Indeed, a woman’s dressing is not complete without the ubiquitous handbags. They came in different colours, shapes and sizes. Over the years, the handbag has become an item of fashion, a fashion statement. Some bags are as expensive as the price of a first grade Tokunbo car! This is not an exaggeration.

Arriving from the parties, I suddenly discovered why I had been in awe of women handbags and why I had considered them mysterious. Having been terribly pressed to answer the call of nature, I was in a hurry to get into the house. But there was a problem. The keys to the house, kept in my wife’s bag had suddenly disappeared. She searched her bag for several agonising minutes for the bunch of keys. I can’t remember now but we must have stood at the door for close to 10 minutes as she combed through her handbag hysterically in search of the keys.

But I have seen this scenario play out many times.

Why do objects kept in women’s handbags disappear like those fabled ships in Bermuda triangle? How many times have you observed women bury their heads deep in their handbags in search of something they kept there? It’s kind of strange. Isn’t it? As my wife furiously searched her handbag, emptying the whole content on the floor, I grew from being annoyed to joining in the search. It was like for a pin in a haystack.

But it has been much worse

Recently, I stood in a queue at my local supermarket to witness another drama involving a woman and her handbag. It was her turn to pay for the items bought. She reached casually into her handbag for her credit card. But it turned into another search for Osama bin Laden. The ATM card had disappeared! The agitated woman rummaged through her bag. She searched everywhere. At a point she emptied all the contents on the counter. Several minutes later and after another round of search, the card reappeared miraculously. Exasperated, she intoned. ‘’This stupid bag’’. The other day too, it was my niece birthday. As usual, I was at my wit’s end at deciding what would be the perfect gift. But when I observed her reaction to a handbag a friend of hers clutched adorably when she visited recently and knowing her to be a handbag freak, I decided to give her yet another gift of that designer’s accessory she has always craved for. Never mind that she has a wardrobe full of totes, large enough to open an accessory shop. At the Palms Shopping Mall Lekki, I was again confronted by a countless of handbags from top designers ranging from Fendi, Louis Vuitton, Mulberry, Dior, Jimmy Cho, Versace to Veronica Bradley.

The enthusiasm of the shop attendant, as she took me through mind-boggling prices of handbags of different shapes and sizes set off a chain of questions and thoughts. Why do women carry handbags? Why do women buy so many types of handbags and whose idea was it to have so many different styles and types? Why are women handbags getting bigger and heavier? What exactly do women carry in their handbags? Doesn’t all this make a woman handbag sound like a mystery? Could it be that women are just genetically wired to a secret love for handbags? Why is it that an adorable handbag can’t be passed up by most women? A woman’s quest for the perfect handbag should be taken seriously especially if you are the one sharing a bank account with her.

Why do certain women have no problem spending a fortune on the perfect purse? From designer purses to adorable monogrammed handbags, a stylish purse just can’t be passed up. Over the years, designers have come up with even more expensive handbags. You could buy a car for the price of certain designer handbags. But for every designer handbag there is a woman ready to buy. The media do seem to help in calming women’s fix for the perfect purse. Scroll through any celebrity magazine and you will most certainly have a first peek on what purse a certain celebrity is carrying. Of course, this just adds to their need for that specific bag or a really good knock off. Women most definitely hold their purses as prized possession.

Have you also ever tried to take a peep into a woman’s bag? Why won’t they just throw all of these items into a plastic bag and save themselves a whole lot of money? Will this go against every inborn genetic marker that dictates a woman’s need to carry an adorable purse? I have always asked this question: Do women like a handbag because of the designer name? If you saw it on another woman’s shoulder without the designer logo visible, would you still like it? For a lot of women (even though they won’t admit it) the answer is a no!

I suspect that the majority of women interested in designer handbags these days do not know much about the bags themselves, all they know are a designer logo or name. If these people were to see a Gucci handbag right in front of them, would they know it was a Gucci unless they could see the logo? And would they still like the bag as much? Wouldn’t it be extremely frustrating for women who own authentic designers bag to get comments like “oh I love your Prada handbag” but in reality if the women making that compliment didn’t see the logo on the bag she wouldn’t look twice at it. Does recognizing a couple of logos make them handbag enthusiasts? I have also seen that there’s a definite trend for large bags, but what on earth are women carrying in their bags to make them so heavy? Nowadays, men manage to walk around with the three essentials (comb, wallet, keys) tucked neatly into their pockets. Women, on the other hand, seem to carry everything but the kitchen sink! Perhaps it’s their lifestyle growing ever faster and more hectic that it requires them to have a ‘mini life’ with them at all times.

Gadgets are getting a lot of the blame for heavy handbags too. Okay so the iPod is far smaller and lighter than the iPods we were using some years ago, but now we have electronic organisers, BlackBerrys, digital cameras and often a personal as well as a business phone. Do they need all of these gadgets knocking around in the bottom of their bags with their hair bands? Maybe, they’re not doing so much harm after all, but health experts and chiropractors warn that back problems are often cumulative, so while you feel right as rain waltzing through town with a new tote, five years down the line wearing it mostly on your right shoulder could be putting your back out of alignment.

However, it’s difficult to monitor what the average woman carries in her handbag and evaluate it, but one disturbing trend is that handbags are getting bigger, heavier and more expensive. What a woman considers essential is on a different scale, far grander and more imaginative level, than men could ever perceive. But it seems to me that the handbag of a woman is both a weapon and a shield wherein lurks the means for urban and suburban survival and defence, as well as the means for taking the world by storm.