Two boobs good, four boobs better

Ah, the man bag.  We all have one.  The back pack, sports or gym bag.  The briefcase, the laptop bag or the over the shoulder single pouch man bag.

Let’s face it, no matter what shape or form your man bag comes in, it’s still a man bag.

Our fathers even had man bags, they were called “satchels” or something and they were used to carry their schoolbooks and penny apples to school.  I had a man bag once, actually I’ve had a few over the years.  From the single strap back pack to the full on designer Hugo Boss hand stitched leather multi compartmented man bag.  It was a Christmas present that just happened to come at the same time that I got my first car.  Now it sits in my boot, because my car is my man bag.

My Hugo Boss man bag, ain't it pretty?

I actually love my Hugo Boss man bag.  It has a little pouch for my iPod, that actually houses a now out of date Kit Kat Chunky.  It has a zipped pocket just big enough for a portable flash drive, which is actually where I have a handful of parking receipts I forgot to claim back from a job once.  It has enough room to hold a laptop and charger, a Ross O’Carroll Kelly book, a VIP pass to a Leeson Street downstairs wine bar and a mankini.  At least that’s what the designers must have had in mind when they reckoned that someone would pay hundreds for a giant wallet.

It must be, because apart from the Kit Kat and the parking receipts all I have in my man bag is an old copy of FHM, Empire film mag, a wooly hat, and two odd gloves.  What does a man need to carry around with him that he can’t fit in his wallet?  Nothing.

If it can’t fit in your wallet, that’s what the baby jesus gave us pockets for.

And yet, we’ve all at some time fallen victim to the conspiracy that is the man bag phenomenomeonomonenm.

Why is it a conspiracy?

Because women have women bags, more commonly known as handbags.  Even though some of these “hand” bags are big enough to traffic humans in, they’re still considered to be a handy way of carrying around the things that a woman of today needs.

And what would that list of essential items look like?  Take a look inside your woman’s bag right now and have a gander.  Or take a random woman’s bag off her on the bus/train/LUAS without her blowing her rape whistle and you’ll see some or all of the following:

• Lipsticks – 7 assorted colours.  None of which she is currently wearing.
• Cherry flavoured lip balm, just in case she ever does kiss a girl, she’ll want her to like it
• 3 earings that don’t match
• Hair brush/claw/scrunchy thingies
• Nail varnish
• More balled up used tissues than the under mattress of a horny teenage boy
• Someone else’s house keys
• That eye brow pencil that she tore the apartment up looking for
• Various receipts for important things like thongs on sale in La Senza, her Bagel Factory lunch, but not the €200 pair of shoes she promised to return so that she could pay her share of the rent.
• Stain removing wipes, which makes that stain on her blouse all the more suspicious
• Plasters and painkillers
• Spare knickers

Shocking, no?  I was going to mention what I found, something called a “tampon”, but wikipedia just keeps telling me to turn around and forget everything I thought I saw.

Why the spare pair of knickers?  If we carried around a spare pair of y fronts (we’re men of the world remember), the accusations would be flying around like shame at a bukkake party.

Women want us to carry around the man bag so that they can carry even larger bags around and fill them with even more stuff.  Women say that they need to be ready for every instance, fair enough.  Men do too, this is why the Swiss gave us Toblerone’s.  No, wait, I mean Swiss Army Knives.

Mmm, nougatty almondy goodness

Look at that bad boy.  There’s so many tools on that one that you could actually lead an army into victory.

If the army needed a plug rewired or a tiny magnifying glass or a small pebble removed from a horse’s hoof.

Ok, maybe not.  But if it did ever happen you wouldn’t want to be the kind of man who wasn’t ready for the situation, so it’s your manly duty to go and get one of these.

The cost?  At least 3 of your Earthly dole cheques, but that doesn’t matter.  It’s an investment in the future of what could possibly happen one day, but probably not.

It is quite big though.  It might have you sitting lop sided if you put it in your wallet and sat down.  It’d weigh you down and might catch the loose thread in your coat pocket and create a hole that it would fall through.

You know what?  When you go and buy it, go and buy something to carry it around in.  Because it’s something that you’d want on your person without needing to have it in sight all the time.

Maybe a bag of some sort.

Fuck.

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