More Dads Receiving Messenger Bags Than Ties

Tag : Tool Cases & Bags


In the days of the Camel Filters Man, real men--with their MarkSpitz coifs with a John Bolton mustaches--didn't carry anything(except rope and a Swiss Army knife to take a cigarette break whileclimbing mountains in Nepal).

Oh, during the work week--when they weren't panning for gold likethe Camel Filters Man with a Farrah Fawcett look-alike watchingadmiringly--real men might carry a briefcase.

But today the 10 pound, spit-shined Mahogany colored briefcase withits gold plated combination lock and feet is considered a LeatherLunchbox, having been retired by the leaner, meaner messenger bag.

Of course women didn't carry messenger bags either in Camel Filtersdays. They carried practical purses that swung from their wrist aspotential weapons like the Queen's in case a date became tooforeign--and developed Russian hands and Roman fingers.

For travel, women carried a polypropylene cube a.k.a. a cosmeticcase which was so top heavy when you removed the six pound hairdrier and hot steam rollers, it tipped over and spilled the Agreehair conditioner all over and broke the mirror.

Families before wheeled and shoulder luggage, carried sets ofgranite-textured hard plastic pullmans in garish,easy-to-identify-on -the-conveyer colors--that's my bag; thechartreuse one!--that required skycaps to get them to the ticketcounter. And strapped on the car's luggage rack to tell the wholeworld you were going on vacation. Cypress Gardens or Bust!

Even groceries were consumer unfriendly.

Before bags had handles, you had a celery stalk blocking yourvision, a wet spot from the ice cream slowly ripping the brownpaper bag and could only hold two bags at a time.

And phones? They were heavy, attached to the wall and you had toshare them with the whole family.

When you did get a chance to use one, you usually got no answer ora busy signal before the popularity of answering machines and callwaiting--as did anyone trying to reach you. P.S. They had nocameras.

(Helen Gurley Brown, who wrote a book called Sex and the SingleGirl years before Samantha and Carrie inhabited the nationalimagination, remembers how women put the phone in the refrigeratorso the ring wouldn't wake them up while they pretended they weren'thome to appear hard-to-get to suitors.)

But men?

If you told the Camel Filters Man that one day he'd be wearing airfiber Spandex cycling pants, a shaved head and carrying a messengerbag, he'd ask which sports team was hazing him.

If you told him he also be carrying prebottled water with himeverywhere he went, he'd ask what's wrong with chlorine pills and astream?