Let’s get this out of the way: I love dresses. Anything that lets me look like I give a flying turd about looking nice while in reality being just another excuse to not wear pants is a perfect fit to my increasingly I-don’t-give-a-flying-turd existence. But we all know the problem with women’s purses: they’re either impractically small, or unbearably huge. That middle ground for a purse is hard to find, and it means that carrying around my wallet or lighter or Reuben sandwich has always been a battle with me.
Then you, dresses-with-pockets, then you show up.
I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to go home with a cute dress, put it on in front of my mirror to discover that it has pockets. Or even better is when I don’t realize it until I’m already wearing it out for the first time. I’ll smooth out my dress or touch my body in an attempt to seem objectifyable to men and lo! where has my hand disappeared to? Suddenly it is not seen by anyone, and for a fleeting moment I believe myself to be an amputee. Or a magician. Or that my hand has taken a spontaneous trip to Narnia that for some reason lies in the seam of my dress.
But no! Even better! I have POCKETS. Suddenly my big bulky purse is no longer needed, or whatever lucky guy friend I’ve dragged along can stop keeping my money and ID in his pockets because now I have my own! I am an independent woman!
Therein lies the beauty of what your existence means. While women have made giant leaps in today’s world, society is still generally sexist and trying to keep us down in many ways–one by making our belongings easier to steal. Don’t believe me? Try to steal a man’s wallet from his pocket. Now try to steal a woman’s wallet from her purse. Odds are you’ll just grab for the whole purse, am I right? That means you’re not just getting her money, but her phone, her iPod, her make-up, her birth-control pills, her Midol—you’ve just sentenced her to a very expensive shopping trip. And all because she had to carry a purse, something men never have to understand.***
(***And I don’t include those shitty men’s messenger bags, and neither should you. Because while their wallet, sunglasses, and douchey Macbook are probably in them, no one is going to bring that fashion atrocity out to a bar at night because it's both stupid behavior and an anti-poon force field. Blech.)
But you. You, my pet, my turtledove, my darling…you set me free. You give me a place to put my cell phone so I don’t have to bring a purse. I don’t have to set my bag on the disgusting sink covered in some uncomfortably off-color film while I pee in the single-stall bathroom at the bar by the train tracks. You give me a practical place to sneak my tampons when I don’t want all the people, who I for some reason think are paying attention to me in class or at a restaurant, wonder what the hell I would need my entire bag for if I’m just going to the bathroom; with you around, I don’t have to put on a sweater just to hide it in my sleeve or pretend to drop my pen so I can slip it in my cleavage. You give me years of my life back that I will no longer be spent digging through my purse for endless minutes to find a lighter or my phone or my headphones or my debit card or that condom I found in my roommates desk that I stole to make it seem like I’m getting some.
You make me a woman. You set me free. And you give me life.
God created man in his image. Then created you, because you are better than all of us.
Thank you,
Your biggest fan
P.S. Call me.