#4: Women & Pockets

A few weeks ago, I was walking in my neighborhood when a backwards baseball cap decided to let me know it was a YALE FEMINIST. 

I’m rarely convinced by clothing that shrieks. THE FUTURE IS FEMALE is a t-shirt I mistakenly bought in college, when I knew nothing and thought this t-shirt would proclaim I knew something. Now, I wonder if the person—who was most likely a woman, most likely working in a sweatshop—made more than a cent for making that shirt. THE FUTURE IS FEMALE BUT THE EXPLOITATION IS NOW! #MaleFeminist.

Incidentally, the head YALE FEMINIST covered was talking about brunch.

Sometimes it really is too easy, that joke.

This is the t-shirt. In my defense: mine was black, and looked better.

The only shrieking from clothes that I tolerate, even look forward to? When women yell at each other about pockets. I crave this connection: it’s one of the purest moments of joy between strangers you can see. The gasp of astonishment upon realizing this woman has the gift of pockets. She can do whatever she wants; the world is her smooth-hewn oyster, and she’s gulping it down with ambition.

A quick consult with Google helps explain the phenomenon: 

• Fast Company (2018): “Yes, even your pockets are sexist. These startups are fighting back.” (The headline in the tab just says “These startups make women’s clothing with pockets.”) 

The article offers a quick gloss of the pocket. In the Middle Ages, both men and women carried small pouches on the outside of their clothing; but as women’s fashion evolved, especially after the French Revolution, into the idea of femininity as burden-free (visibly, at least, and for upper class white women), the pouches disappeared. For men, the pouches evolved into pockets.

Pockets, in other words, were for people who are mobile, who interact with the world and have items that are their own. “This is a design issue, but one that takes into account women’s supposed social roles,” historian Hannah Carlson says in the article. “What is the point for women to have clothes outfitted with pockets if you also believe that their place is in the home?” 

• Vox (2016): “The history of pockets isn’t just sexist, it’s political.” (As if sexism weren’t political?)

This article does a wonderful dive into fashion history, examining the resurgence of pockets for women during the Victorian era and in the decades following, in the case of suffragette activism.

But the blunt gender binary kept running the train. Citing a Christian Dior quote—“Men have pockets to keep things in, women for decoration”—the article boils it down: “Men are busy doing things; women are busy being looked at. Who needs pockets?”

This, I would argue, is inherently political, in the sense that politics construct, and sustain, imaginaries about entire classes of people, then enshrine those constructions into legislation. 

• Marketplace (2014), meanwhile, did not mess around: “Why women’s pockets are useless.”

Because they’re not designed to be useful, that’s why.

My current YouTube video obsession is the In My Bag series from various fashion magazines (Vogue, British Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, etc.). The format is gloriously simple: a celebrity, usually female, sits on a luxurious couch, her bag beside her. She pulls out, one by one, whatever is in her bag and describes it to the viewer.

I cannot overstate how compelling this is.

You have the products that the celebrity has obviously never used, let alone even seen: “I can’t live without this…er…restorative lash lift serum from [Company I Am Associated With].” You have attempts at I’m So Normal! jokes about receipts. You have a book, rarely.

Sometimes, these videos are genuine. I have a soft spot for Alexa Chung’s—both the one she did for Harper’s Bazaar UK, and the one she did on her own channel: “Have you ever wondered what’s in my bag? I certainly have.” In these cases, I smile along, alone, as I lay there on my bedroom floor, mid-flail through physical therapy exercises.

If I were to do a What’s In My Bag video, it would consist of:

• a giant bottle of Advil (chronic illness);

• a fistful of anti-nausea ginger candies (see above);

• a near-empty tiny jar of deodorant;

• my keys; my work keys; my water bottle;

• my Washington Nationals baseball cap that I taped over yesterday with SOTO (look: Juan Soto is a once-in-a-generation talent that the Nats traded away);

• a book;

• my wallet, which includes my metro card and my library card that I sometimes try to pay the bus with;

• my phone, earbuds, and a tangled charging cable; and

• the sunglasses I keep telling myself I should get a case for, except those sunglasses are over five years old, why fix a good scratched thing?

No restorative lash lift serum yet, but I’m still waiting for Advil to get back to me on the sponsorship deal. 

Most of the clothes I own have pockets, some actually quite spacious, but those are to put my hands in.

The Accomplished Woman who can fit her apartment into her bag.

The only street harassment that I hope every woman can experience is that of another woman screaming about how much she loves your pockets. It’s a phenomenon of genuine, unbridled adoration; it’s cold water in a heatwave, or just water, period: essential for life. 

There was the time during a heatwave where I was stupidly going outside for a walk when I heard somebody say: I LOVE YOUR SKIRT. I turned around, already tense, only to see a woman, still on her phone, staring.

I beamed. “They’re pants. WITH POCKETS.”

NO, she gasped, and I said, YES.

We walked across the sidewalk. She actually apologized for shouting at me earlier, and I was almost insulted. Apologize! HOW DARE YOU APOLOGIZE, I said. POCKETS FOREVER.

Or the time I was on the metro platform, when a woman looked up from her phone to tell me she liked my pants. “They have pockets,” I said. 

“OH MY GOD.”

Or a month ago, when I went in for a diagnostic breast ultrasound, where I waited a half hour in my own sweat for a doctor to swipe a rod across my chest. In the waiting room, the attendant said how much she liked my pants (they are sunset orange), and when I told her, BUT WAIT, THEY HAVE POCKETS, she said WHAT! THAT’S AMAZING! and I felt like I could tackle anything; except, unfortunately, the genetic predisposition to fibrocystic breast tissue that landed me in the waiting room in the first place. 

It’s almost a secret society, women and pockets. Members induct other members, not through hazing but through beaming smiles of delight. Pockets. Good pockets. Pockets for comfort, pockets for ease; pockets for nothing other than pockets, the reality of them, not the ones sewn-shut (why), but inviting and open; everyday pockets, pockets for each ordinary day, because you’re human and want to hold onto life anyway you can.

Your Turn! What’s your small good thing of the week?

Let Me Tell You About Gidget

While Gidget doesn’t have or need pockets, she does have a primordial pouch, which is one of the many delightful things I know about her, including that today she decided to wake me up at 5:45 and lodge a complaint with management about the lack of 24-hour room service.

A Continual Note of Gratitude

Like everything I write these days, this was written during the 8AM EST session of The Writers’ Hour, an online hourly Zoom writing session hosted by the London Writer’s Salon. LWS is an online writing community so lovely and supportive that reminds me why I love writing in the first place.