Gender Grenade

by Matthew O’Brien

I like to shop, always have. I have also secretly loathed the process a little bit as well. However, a new shirt, new shoes, new furnishing, if its superfluous and ultimately unnecessary, sign me up.

Some equate a shopping experience to sex. I have heard people report the same kind of euphoric feelings that a person is likely to experience during intercourse as also being present while in the midst of a shopping spree. I completely agree. Shopping, to me, is exactly like sex, as there is usually an overwhelming amount of anxiety leading up to the moment, followed almost at once by an equally, if not additionally, overwhelming amount of uncertainty and guilt.

Being poor and living in New York doesn’t really allow for the freedom to make frivolous investments, and my purchases, although completely non-extravagant (most recently a $35.00 flannel shirt, a $16.00 CD) are all carried out with an enormous amount of self-criticism on my ability to save money. There’s buyer’s remorse, which I think a lot of people are faced with to some degree when making purchases that may be deemed extraneous, then there’s whatever it is I have. Which is pretty much feeling the need to go to confession and receive the sacrament of reconciliation after I buy a hoodie.

Being that the holidays are right around the corner, I think I can best liken how I feel on the inside after a nonessential purchase by using the metaphor of how a person may feel after eating that one, or, maybe two extra slices of pie after dinner. When they put their fork down on the plate, aware they lost their self-restraint momentarily, they’ll recognize the slip-up, maybe be a little upset, but resolve to adhere to the rules of moderation a bit better next time. I, on the other hand, after I set my fork down, am more likely to excuse myself from the table, run to the bathroom, purge, and then go for a ten mile run along the West Side Highway, wearing three layers of sweatpants, a weight vest, and carrying 5 pound dumbbells. All while sobbing and taunting myself out loud with insults.

Like a bulimic who brings a pint of ice cream back to their room to binge in private, I usually prefer to shop alone. This last time though, I was accompanied by my friend, Emily, who wanted to buy herself a jacket in Union Square and had asked me to come along. Ladies, if you are shopping with a man, or I guess just out in public with a man in general, I ask you on behalf of our gender, do not ask us to hold your handbag, please. Set it down on the floor, I will guard it with my life and tackle the person who looks at it in the slightest of wrong ways. Just please don’t make me hold it.

We don’t know what to do with it at all; how to hold it, how to stand while we are holding it, where to put our free hand, where to look, anything. It immobilizes us. It’s like shouting “think quick!” pulling the pin out of a hand grenade and tossing it to us. Also, I don’t know if you’ve seen the majority of women’s handbags recently, but they are colossal. And shiny. Gone are the days of a modest looking baguette or clutch, they’ve been replaced with designers stamping their logo on military-issued duffle bags. Combine that with the glossy finish that reflects and shimmers under the retail stores fluorescent lighting, acting like a flashing beacon that says, “Look at me! I have no testicles right now!” and good luck with remaining inconspicuous.

Women are supposed to be the more compassionate of the two sexes, but that’s not true. Because if they were, they wouldn’t ask us to hold their handbags. “Can you hold my bag for a minute?” Honestly, it’s like you leaning in and casually mentioning you were menstruating and if we could somehow help out.

It’s like being naked. I didn’t know whether to hold it by the straps; if that would make me look more effeminate? Or if I should just sort of clutch a fistful of material near the zipper. That’s manlier, right? I’m certainly not going to sling it all easygoing-like over my shoulder, but holding it at my hip makes me feel no less ill-at-ease either. So I just sort of end up holding it the way in which someone would hold a dirty diaper; at chest level and about a two feet in front of me.

The cruelest of all is when we are made to be set in motion with it. Remaining stationary with your handbag is one thing, and we can usually position ourselves behind things in such a way to make the duration tolerable, but if you spot something hung on a rack opposite the side of the store we are on and you make a mad dash for it, leaving us to either stand there alone holding a bag, or follow and transport it across the sales floor and subject us to the stares, snickers, and curious looks of sales associates and customers, well that is just excruciatingly unkind.

Maybe this is some sort of litmus test women have been employing for years to gauge the long-term potential of a guy, because unless he is truly desperate, or me, he will likely not willingly parade around all day with a giant handbag in the hopes of a one-night stand. I get that, and I support the process of elimination tactic. But… I don’t think – and I may just be displaying the ignorance that is sometimes inescapably inherent in our sex – that we have any such technique for these public experiments. How do we know you’re a keeper? It’s not like we make you hike us a football and tell you to go long for a hail mary pass down a crowded street, so why are you so freely publicly emasculating us? Oh right, that whole enchanted vagina thing. Amazing.

Bottom line is; girls, you have an ace up your sleeve, literally. So, next time you hear some chauvinist popping off at the mouth about how men are the superior sex, just smile politely and ask him to hold your handbag.