a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2809 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Same old, same old. How the hipster aesthetic is taking over the world

Here's Central Perk from Friends:

http://cdn.scahw.com.au/cdn-1d0ec3d5a48e030/ImageVaultFiles/id_366642/cf_7/628-centralperk.JPG

something something HIPSTERS

I could gut the shit out of this essay but I've been gutting the shit out of things too much lately so I'm just going to leave the author's wise words about totes:

    With apologies to Freud, my tote obsession has nothing to do with purse envy. Don’t call it a “murse” or a “man-bag”, two derogatory terms for what is clearly its own practical, potent genre. It is time for gentlemen everywhere to embrace this necessary vessel and overcome their shame, to shout from the rooftops: I’m a tote bagger, and I am proud.

    Somehow, a square of cloth sewn shut into a pouch and given arm-straps and maybe a logo has inspired a deep current of anxiety in the male population. The tote has “feminine connotations”, according to Reddit. “Is it gay for a guy to carry a tote at school?” wonders a user at Yahoo Answers. Even Styleforum, that den of menswear fashion, has gotten in on the embarrassment. “I am afraid to just carry the [leather tote bag] in my hands as I am worried it would look like a handbag,” writes Baby Pink, a username that seems like it would carry even more, uh, baggage about effete anxiety.

    Yet tote bags were originally as manly as could be. LL Bean designed the modern tote’s first ancestor in 1944 with the Bean’s Ice Carrier, a hefty bag made of reinforced cotton for carrying giant blocks of ice from “car to ice chest”. How much more rugged can you get?