I was the first of my friends to jump on the man-bag fashion-wagon. Despite the constant “murse-wearing” ribbing I took, and the defensive protests that it’s not a “European carryall“; there’s no denying the practicality of not having to load all your modern man-gear into your pockets.
That is to say, I’m quite open to the concept of a man with a purse-like device. Being “practical” is manly, even in heels and a dress. But upon moving to China, I noticed that the men of the Middle Kingdom take things to a whole new level. There were some ground-rules to murse-wearing in the West: it shouldn’t be fancy; if it wasn’t on your back, most of it should rest below your hips; think more Indy than Cindy; and the width of its strap was inversely proportional to its level of femininity.
Chinese men seemed, by comparison, to have quite literally “clutched” on to metrosexualism in a more drastic way. Seeing men walking around with designer purses that looked perfectly suited to carry a tampon and a compact just seemed bizarre.
