There is something that happens when I step outside, with no purse or bag. I almost feel naked, like my fevered August teacher dreams where I’m in a classroom with no clothes on. I always stop and think I’m forgetting something, then realize, no, I just have pockets and put my keys, phone, chapstick and mints in my pockets. No purse or bag feels like freedom and lightness. Perhaps it’s because I no longer need to carry around diapers or the minutiae that babies and toddlers require. Or perhaps it’s because I’ve lived most of my adult life without pockets.
When my daughters try on clothes, they always check for pockets. It’s a significant factor in the decision to buy, keep, or wear clothing. I often wear dresses and skirts in my daily professional life, but many of my pants do not contain pockets, or the pockets are so small and poorly designed that I cannot reasonably carry anything without the object creating an outlined relief on my leg or backside. No thanks. So I end up carrying a purse, a bag, a tote, or a clutch to hold my small but necessary items when I leave my home.
I have often made the joke that the purse and handbag industry has worked hard to make sure women’s clothing does not have pockets, so they can ensure the necessity of their industry. Then a friend told me about Hannah Carlson’s book, Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close.
Carlson argues that pockets reveal a great deal about the details and functions of daily life, and also a great deal about power distribution. “That the allocation of a fairly straightforward functional element of dress should be gendered is more than just a funny quirk, one of those mysterious traditions akin to placing men’s shirt buttons on the right and women’s on the left. However arbitrary, left-facing button placement has not interfered with anyone’s dressing in the morning. Differentiated pocket allotment is a more significant matter, and its immediate disadvantages continue to rankle.” Pockets don’t help us get dressed, like zippers, lacings, buttons, belt loops or snaps. In fact, it is more true that clothing altered to fit the pocket than the other way around. Carlson traces the history of pockets. Initially, pouches were worn outside the body and connected to a belt by men and women in the middle ages. But pockets began to emerge when men began wearing trousers and breeches. Women’s fashion did not follow and they continued carrying pouches, suspended, under their skirts. Pockets were often associated with money, status, and wealth, or the lack thereof. In a highly entertaining chapter, Carlson also notes the attitudes associated with men who posed with their hands in their pockets, from Napoleon’s famous portrait to Walt Whitman’s, and W.E.B. DuBois’s.
Pocket sexism continues into the 20th century, and Carlson notes the Women’s Auxiliary Corps of WWII (WACs) had to carry purses. Concerned that masculinized uniforms would exacerbate concerns about WACs as lesbians, prostitutes, or Amazons, the corps chose skirts instead of trousers for their uniforms. The skirts had no pockets. Working breast pockets were judged “unsuitable” because it “upset the delicate balance between correct military appearance and femininity.” Thus the WACs had to carry a bag with a shoulder strap. Otherwise known as a purse. How convenient (!) Into the 21st century, Carlson wonders if the near future is device and accessory free, thus removing the need for pockets entirely. Perhaps the future is full of neoprene body suits, no accoutrements required.
Mark Twain, in his imagination of a knight in the middle ages remarked, “no pockets in the armor. No way to manage certain requirements of nature. Can’t scratch. Cold in the head –can’t blow –can’t get at handkerchief, can’t use iron sleeve.”
I hope to be device free someday, but in the meantime, I’m always going to want useful and useable pockets.
Hannah Carlson, Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close, (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2023).
Mark Twain, Notebooks, quoted in Henry Nash Smith, Mark Twain’s Fable of Progress, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1964), 41.
Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash
Fun read about something to which I had never given a thought! Thanks!
This guy loves a sport coat yet for church and academic office, mostly for the pockets provided. I hate having all the stuff in pants or shirt pockets, especially with both being of tighter cut & fit (“slim,” “athletic,” v “classic”), and many shirts lack a chest pocket anyway, unless an Orvis fishing-shirt, classic-fit. Jacket provides the easy self-frisking “keys/wallet/phone” answer, leaving pants pockets free for hands.
I feel the same, Jeff, though high temps and humidity discourage jackets.
I need a pocket for my iPhone, which goes with me everywhere!
I have often noted that women discovering the usefulness of clothing with good pockets, and men discovering how handy a handbag can be, is a sign that neither men nor women are completely stupid. It is a demonstration that we can, sometimes, learn from each other. For which we give thanks. Amen.
Blessings,
Steve
My wife refuses to buy clothes without pockets. Kenneth Grahame, in his immortal Wind in the Willows describes the sad state of pocketlessness well: Toad is wearing the dress of an old washer-woman and trying desperately to find his wallet inside his waistcoat pocket: “At last—somehow—he never rightly understood how—he burst the barriers, attained the goal, arrived at where all waistcoat pockets are eternally situated, and found—not only no money, but no pocket to hold it, and no waistcoat to hold the pocket! To his horror he recollected that he had left both coat and waistcoat behind him in his cell, and with them his pocket-book, money, keys, watch, matches, pencil-case—all that makes life worth living, all that distinguishes the many-pocketed animal, the lord of creation, from the inferior one-pocketed or no-pocketed productions that hop or trip about permissively, unequipped for the real contest.”
My daughter’s wedding dress had pockets. I think that is why she chose it!