Is writing about iPads making men stupid?
If you’re reading this, your AWOOGA alarm has probably already gone off, and if you’ve the latest model its vibrant 30-inch display will be flashing ‘Betteridge’s Law of Headlines!‘ in luminous green text. That’s fair enough, because the title of this article—Is writing about iPads making men stupid?—is clearly a load of old bollocks. And yet Chris Matyszczyk over at CNET has just penned Is the iPad making men effeminate?
Purses are a sensitive subject. Murses even more so.
I have no idea what a ‘murse’ is. I assume it’s some hilarious combination of ‘man’ and ‘purse’ supposed to elicit yucks at a rate of knots. As opposed to, say, vomit.
The other week, I was in a restaurant when my friend Ariane ballistically assaulted a man because he had placed his clutch on the bar.
Thereby annoying mechanics everywhere!
It was a very expensive clutch. “Men,” she huffed at him, “shouldn’t carry clutches.” She spent the rest of the evening bemoaning: “A clutch? A clutch?” She’s Belgian. She therefore has strong opinions, especially about men.
Oh, that type of clutch—a small bag for carrying things in. OHO! And sigh.
Still, there seems to be evidence of a sort that men are carrying more purses and that technology is to blame.
THE IPAD HAS MADE MEN INTO WOMEN! AIEEEEE! [Insert favoured deity] forbid that men can, like women, cart their shit about in bags without fear of idiots (men and women alike) bringing to the fore entirely arbitrary bullshit based on gender stereotypes! And [insert favoured deity] forbid that men in relationships with women might actually learn to carry their own shit once in a while, rather than sneakily offloading it on to women who carry bags without a hint of shame! SOCIETY WOULD CRUMBLE AND IT WOULD ALL BE DOWN TO STEVE JOBS!
Today’s Daily Mail, for example, reveals that sales of manbags are up 2,700 percent, a rise attributed to iPads and other slightly larger gadgets that men need to carry around. The Mail goes on to emote that as manbags have proliferated — and become heavier than women’s — the size of women’s bags has decreased by 61 percent. This it puts down (in so many ways) to women’s gadgets becoming smaller.
Probably true. After all, the 1980s was a terrible time for women, having to carry CRT monitors and telephone boxes in their bags. Wait, what?
Anyway, blah bags blah effeminate men blah prejudice blah stereotype. And the zinging finale:
Some will be feel that men with large leather bags tossed around their shoulders offers a fetching fashion statement. Others will recoil at the thought.
But with a little luck, time travel will be invented, enabling them to be propelled back to the 1950s when real men were real men, real women were real women, and real bags were real bags, only touched by the hands of real women and avoided like deadly fire covered with angry snakes by real men.
My wife wants to buy me a leather bag but I won’t let her. Why? Because I already have a (rarely used) crappy canvas bag which does everything I need. And what do I need it for? That’s right, just to carry my crap around which normally consists of sandwiches, hard drives, iPod docks, pens and other such crap. My so-called “man bag” doesn’t need to look good, just to carry all the above listed crap around.
Oh and I agree with Ariane – men should never, ever carry clutch bags – it’s just too girly.
“Still, there seems to be evidence of a sort that men are carrying more purses and that technology is to blame.”
To blame? Why, are people dying because men are carrying purses? The whole premise of Matyszczyk’s article, that men are debasing themselves because they’re doing something that usually only women do, is just pathetic.
Tech journalists in particular often have issues with gender that make me wonder whether they were frozen for the last fifty years.
bigbluewolf wrote: “Oh and I agree with Ariane – men should never, ever carry clutch bags – it’s just too girly.”
You do realize how sexist (and stupid, and insulting, for that matter) it is to use “girly” (“like a girl”) as a negative attribute?
The first time I heard the term “murse” was when I caught an episode of some reality show starring Pauly Shore. He was given, or convinced to buy, a murse, and had to keep explaining to people what it was. At the end of the episode he gave it away to a homeless guy.
Oh those Belgians! Every time I meet a Belgian I’m like: you must have strong opinions… especially about men!
It’s weird how when people from other countries find out I’m a man, they’re like, oh… no big whoop. But those Belgians! Wow.
Must be the waffles, amiright?
I love my leather bag. Strappy type, iPad pocket, carries all my meeting crap (note cards, pens, laptop if need be, swiss army knife).
I feel no shame. In fact, it now feels weird when I walk without it, like when you habitually wear a watch, but forget to put it on.
I thought a murse was a male nurse, another fine stereotype in action.
But I digress. Nothing wrong with a bag to carry around things you need. For most of the last century men carried briefcases.