'Not the husband, occasionally the kids, always the handbag'

From: More than a kernel of truth in sex stereotypes
by Elizabeth Farrelly
2 Jan 2008

" ... Most women, invited to fill a go-bag against pandemic, tsunami or snap-frozen nuclear winter, will straight away say "baby photos". But if you observe their actual behaviour, it's the handbag they anxiously clutch. Not the husband, occasionally the kids, always the handbag. Take me, take my purse.

Said purse, to the objective eye, might seem little more than lipstick and baby wipes, cards, keys and comms devices. In fact, the female handbag is a veritable omnibus, secreting within its folds and crannies enough of life's essentials that the average female castaway could colonise afresh, should the need arise. Fish-hooks and pocket knives, clothes pegs and doggie bags, things for digging boy scouts out of horses' hooves, even the odd seed. It's why you should never stand between the female and her carry-on during evacuation. And why you should never stand behind her during pre-boarding X-ray.

More than that, though, the handbag is the keeping house of the female dreaming; an external uterus designed to nurture, shield, transport and bring forth. The built form, if you will, of femaleness. No wonder the dillybag assumed such significance in Aboriginal culture and mythology, with deities of both sexes regularly producing humans from, and protecting or transforming humans in, their multiple pendant dillybags.

Any husbands miffed at being the designated handbag may find comfort here, and in the vast handbag frenzy that is the Boxing Day sales. And next time some cheeky Maureen Dowd asks, "Are men necessary?", they should chuck the obvious one-word riposte: accessorise! For if there is an equivalent male form, it is surely something projectile: ball, car, speeding bullet. Something focused, linear and directional.

All of which is why women, in general, shop so well, dropping naturally into the unfocused trance, so beloved of retailers, that finds the right seeds and berries by intuition, not analysis. It's also why men tend to shop rarely, badly and under duress, often breaching shopping's first commandment by pre-deciding, online if possible, then making a beeline. As if shopping were a problem in need of solution, rather than a meditational orison. ... "