Monthly Archive for September, 2005

It’s kind of hard to make out, but somewhere amid my deskal clutter is the tiny handbag, 8" X 5"

Holy moly. You regulars are aware that I am not ordinarily given to flights of goopy sentimentality, but I’d have to be made of marble not to be pretty choked up over the completely unexpected mammothity of good vibes y’all have loosed into the aether. Thanks to everyone who’s written in support of my continued existence. For once, I completely agree with every last fuckin’ one of you. I am moved to dedicate the domination of my next pork mole taco to the greatest little bunch of patriarchy-blamers the internet has ever known (I’ll dominate a veggie burger from P. Terry’s Burger Stand for the vegans, but the Klingons are just gonna have to tuff it).

OK.  Where was I?

Oh yeah, the tiny handbags.

You know the ones I mean? They’re the little clutches with the little handles that you see blonde women under 35 gamely attempting to turn into shoulder bags by squeezing them with their armpits.

It may amuse you to know that I spent a couple of days last week sporting around town with one of these tiny handbags. Is there anything I won’t do to blame the patriarchy?

My findings are these: if the tiny handbag is not a misogynist conspiracy, I don’t know what is.

Even if you are the sort of person who only totes around the tiny things that will fit inside one of these purses (your house key, two bits, and a Xanax), a less efficient container is hardly imaginable. In keeping with the venerable and sadistic women’s fashion tradition of shackling, impeding, and inflicting wherever possible, the bag appears to have been designed specifically to immobilize an entire arm.

You either have to hold it in your hand, which, if you only had two hands to begin with, decreases your handiness by a full 50%, or you have to dangle it from your wrist, where it bangs into things, or you have to hang it from your elbow, where it still bangs into things and also makes you look like a dowdy old Republican, or you have to shove it up around your shoulder and, as I mentioned, squeeze it with your pit in a perpetual struggle against gravity.

Furthermore, access to the bag requires two hands: one to hold it and one to unzip it. And will accommodate, my tests show, neither a copy of Black Like Me nor a field guide to Texas spiders.

Do you see the insanity? Do you grasp the fiendish plot? You have to dedicate a whole limb to this bag. Who wakes up in the morning, flings open the shutters, and cries out, "Today I only need one arm! I will cripple myself with a moron fashion accessory and take on the world without my field guide to Texas spiders!" ? Even if leaving the house with diminished spider identification abilities were advisable, couldn’t one just as easily shove their key, their two bits, and their Xanax into a pocket, or hire a sherpa?

Of course, this is true of any handbag, which is why I can only endorse pursey leathergoods with long shoulder straps, or wheels.

Secret Power Linerâ„¢ makes you look one size slimmer! Instantly!

I can’t stop! So it’s officially Fashion Week here at I Blame The Patriarchy. Over the next few days I’ll be ridiculing assorted fashion trends, standards, and practices. My brilliant thesis, in case you’re just joining us, is this: fashion = misogyny.

"Whoa there, Twisty," you say. "Why such a killjoy? Fashion is fun! Through fashion I choose to creatively express my individual personality! "

Unto you, my young onion, I say this: Pause. Reflect. For although fashion, like singersongwriting, expresses many things, believe me, your individual personality ain’t one of’em (for personality expression–if I may suggest–nothing beats playing the accordion!).

What does fashion express?

Fashion expresses your affiliation with your particular cult. It expresses your loyalty to consumerism. It expresses your insouciant indifference to indentured servitude in 3rd World labor markets. It expresses your status within the caste system. It expresses the misogyny of sadistic gay male fashion designers. It expresses the taste created by money. It expresses your acceptance of the patriarchally-approved Standard Two-Gender System. It expresses the extent to which you have internalized the woman-hating doctrine of femininity.

Fashion, to sum up, expresses your obeisance to patriarchy.

"Excuse me? Patriarchy?" your fashion statement says, having spotted its idol in the shoe department at Nordstrom’s, "Omigod! It is you! I hate to bother you, Mr. Patriarchy, but I’m just such a huge fan! I mean, all your work, like "Millions Of Women Suffer And Die In Poverty," or "The Slut Asked For It,"  it’s totally awesome, and I really loved you in that "Nomination Of A (Male!) Veterinarian To Head The Women’s Health Section Of The FDA" show the other day, but my all-time favorite has got to be "Compulsory Motherhood!" Would you mind–I mean, could I please get your autograph? What? Oh! Oh, sure, of course I’ll suck your dick first! What? Oh, god yes, I’d be honored if you used my head as a beer caddy! It’s just such a thrill to to meet you!"

Next: the consummate stupidity that is the teeny satchel handbag
Previously: Partial Feminist Analysis of a Sick Mail-Order Catalog

Thanks to Judy for the Molly Ivins link

My fellow Americans, it has just come to my attention that in the UK hardly anybody is tooling around with a "Support Our Troops" ribbon on their car.  The contingency seems almost too exotic to contemplate. The mind reels.

What are those Brits doing, not Supporting Our Troops? Why do they hate America?

Is it possible that they have perceived what appears to have eluded American consumers of prepackaged sentimentality: that the phrase "support our troops" is actually defined by the OED as "an empty gesture; to affix a meaningless 79-cent magnet to the exterior of an American car; of or relating to a race of bigoted white American buttmunches"?

Perhaps our magnet-eschewing British brethren know what bigoted white American buttmunches don’t: that nobody in the history of jingoistic sloganeering has ever read a magnet and said to herself, "You know, I’ve never supported our troops before, but this magnet really speaks to me! I do Support Our Troops, by gum!"

It seems extraordinary to those of us who have lived among the magnet-people since the American invasion of Afghanistan, but the cheap yellow made-in-China ribbon shape has not entered the British national lexicon as a sort of automotive hieroglyph symbolizing one’s love for President Jesubush and for killing and for being white, and one’s hatred of chicks and fags and science, and one’s pious hope that Jesus will kill everybody soon.

Here’s what I want to know: without ribbon magnets, how does the country know who its stupidest citizens are?

Also, how do racist godbag nutjobs identify each other in the parking lot of Home Depot?

White Dude #1: [eyes White Dude #2's Buick LeSabre appreciatively] "You ’support our troops’?"

White Dude #2: "You bet I do!"

White Dude #1: "Wanna check out the half-dead homo Jew I’ve got in my trunk?"

You, my fellow Americans, have come to take the magnets for granted. You may even think you don’t notice them anymore, but really you do. Each day, as you take to the highways and byways with a smile on your lips and song in your heart, they subliminally undermine your unpatriotically chipper outlook with their promise of ignorance and medieval Jesosity. I invite you to picture driving to the Central Market without having to subconsciously absorb the fuck-you message of 70 or 80 of these idiot things. There you’d be a stoplight, your hide unchapped that some moron has positioned his ribbon so that the trunk lock sticks out of the center of the loop. You’d feel light as a feather. And that’ s just not right.