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Men's Fashion: Bags and Clutches
Men’s Fashion: Bags and Clutches
Clutches, Foldover Clutches and Wallets
Men’s fashion is changing with the 21st century and men across America should get with the program. I’m talking about what to use when carrying ‘just the basics’.
My basics are two smartphones, a thin wallet, my keys and carmex. Guys have choices these days (maybe not in conservative rural areas, but prove me wrong). I don’t know about you, but when I tried…
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So I’m thinking of a story about belonging. I worked at this organization in New York City that was for girls and women. It was a leadership camp. And we had a three week intensive training. It was a radical feminist space. On the third day of training, it was our third day of meeting each other, they were like, ‘okay, we’re going to do this activity called life maps.’ In the life maps activity, we had to do some journaling about things like risk or identity or boundaries or something like that and then we had to come together and share stories, kind of similar to this kind of thing, sharing stories in a circle. And people shared their entire life story pretty much. And it was beautiful. We sat there for five hours. We cried.
That was the first time I came out as queer to a group of people, and that really set the tone for me knowing that I needed to… I couldn’t fold myself for other people. I had to bring my full self to spaces, and, because in that space I got to do that, when I went to other spaces I was like I can’t just make myself really small. I need to keep opening up. And after that third day of training, we kind of just like bonded together. We’re still all really good friends today I think, and I kind of still look to them as my mentors and my sisters and just really dope folks. Then we did a six week summer program and I did it with my class that I was teaching. At that point I wasn’t really ready for it, it was with some high school age girls, but the ways that they bonded together after that experience of sharing their stories, share their life maps, sharing the things that they had been through, I don’t think any other…the ability to give people a space to really be themselves I think was really powerful.
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My story is about how my neighbor tried to bar me entry to my apartment. In September, I had just moved into this neighborhood actually, a few blocks away and I had just come from a work event. I work with youth and I was wearing…it doesn’t matter what I was wearing actually. I came up to the doorway, and I tried to wave to my neighbor as they were coming through the door. I live in an apartment building, and the way that our house is set up is that there are two doors to actually enter and there’s like a small little area. So she saw me through the window of the door as I was coming up the porch stairs and I saw her and I smiled. And she locked the door behind her and I had my keys in my hand so I was like, ‘Okay, that’s weird. Why would she lock it if she saw me coming up? But whatever, I have my keys.’ So then she like stood in the second doorway and would not move and would not let me in. She’s like “What’s your name?” And I’m like “hi, I’m Kris, and I reach out my hand to say hi and give a handshake and she just looked at it and she’s like “No, what’s your last name?” So I said “Why do you need my last name?” And she’s like “I have to make sure that you live here.” And on the doorbells, it has our last names. And I was like, “I don’t need you to make sure that I live here. I live here. I have my keys. I can get in. I can let myself into my own apartment. You’re barring me entry to my residence.” And then I asked her, “What’s your name?” because you know, why are you questioning me? And she just kind of said “Whatever” and walked away. And I was just like what the heck is happening? It was really unsettling. I had just moved into this neighborhood.
Un-neighborly
My story is about how my neighbor tried to bar me entry to my apartment. In September, I had just moved into this neighborhood actually, a few blocks away and I had just come from a work event. I work with youth and I was wearing…it doesn’t matter what I was wearing actually. I came up to the doorway, and I tried to wave to my neighbor as they were coming through the door. I live in an apartment building, and the way that our house is set up is that there are two doors to actually enter and there’s like a small little area. So she saw me through the window of the door as I was coming up the porch stairs and I saw her and I smiled. And she locked the door behind her and I had my keys in my hand so I was like, ‘Okay, that’s weird. Why would she lock it if she saw me coming up? But whatever, I have my keys.’
So then she like stood in the second doorway and would not move and would not let me in. She’s like “What’s your name?” And I’m like “hi, I’m Kris, and I reach out my hand to say hi and give a handshake and she just looked at it and she’s like “No, what’s your last name?” So I said “Why do you need my last name?” And she’s like “I have to make sure that you live here.” And on the doorbells, it has our last names. And I was like, “I don’t need you to make sure that I live here. I live here. I have my keys. I can get in. I can let myself into my own apartment. You’re barring me entry to my residence.” And then I asked her, “What’s your name?” because you know, why are you questioning me? And she just kind of said “Whatever” and walked away.
And I was just like what the heck is happening? It was really unsettling. I had just moved into this neighborhood. I’m like this young woman of color. Young black person. And there’s like this middle aged white woman that was trying to like bar me access to my house and I just couldn’t wrap my mind around it at all. I knew that if I had acted in a different way, if I had said anything, I could’ve done nothing actually, I knew I couldn’t escalate the situation. I was afraid to do anything that would make her feel like she was threatened because if she called the police then what would happen? But I was just trying to get into my house and it was really unsettling and scary and I was really angry and I went and wrote a really angry post and I yelled at people who would listen to my story and hold space for me. It was scary.
Mother
Yesterday was the anniversary…this is going to be sad… of my mother’s death so that’s been resonating with me, so I think I’m going to tell a story about that. She was diagnosed with non-smoking lung cancer, and, less than a year later, she got pneumonia and it took a turn for the worst. I was living here in Philadelphia doing an AmeriCorps program and I went home to Connecticut to see her and I was shocked when I got home to see the state she was in, how sick she was, and how my dad and brother almost were in total denial. I couldn’t believe that they had her in the house. She needed to be in a hospital.
And what scares me about that, and a short few days later she did pass away and it was very difficult, but the reason that I’m telling this story is that what is so alarming to me about this is that we’re so smart, we have so much technology and so many resources in this country, but I still think death is something that we don’t know how to deal with and we don’t act like it is part of life but it is for all of us. No matter who you are, no matter what kind of person you are. It is something that worries me, how we’re so focused on advancing I guess the human race but we’re not taking care of ourselves and so that is something that concerns me about the state of the union and I know it’s made me stronger and allowed me to help others in my life because I’ve had that experience of death but I really think it’s something we need to work on as a country.
I’m addressing the issue of belonging to the state of the union but of course it gets very personal because the union is a big place and I am thinking about how I am a mother and how I am a daughter and I am a woman in this country and the importance of those roles because I feel that I am seeing more and more women being harmed and how much that harms everybody in the state of this union. We all came from a woman, we all have a mother.
My mother also died a year ago and I moved in with her, she lived on a small island in Maine, and I moved in with her and took care of her, ushered her right through to death, and then moved back here to Philadelphia, a very different community, from a tiny island to the city that I lived in. And my daughter, who is 25, moved to Brooklyn and she called me a couple weeks ago because she had been out at an event and was taking the train home, and she was in the train car with one other person, a man, and he started to touch her and harass her on the car. And she said, “Stop touching me” and he wouldn’t and she was on this train car by herself, and he started to speak to her, saying things like, “Don’t you want to sit on my face?” It was very terrifying for me to hear my daughter tell me this. She did get off the train three stops early and then walk home. It as 2:30/3:00 in the morning but it made me aware of how easy it is for us as women to be put in harm’s way and how I want to do something about that.
Something I want to speak about is about a time I felt a sense of belonging actually as a woman in this nation. This was recently during the Women’s March in Philadelphia. Since the election there’s been I think a pretty palpable sense of grief that I’ve felt and confusion and vulnerability, and so I went to the Women’s March here.
I was going to meet a friend. I came completely unprepared. I didn’t have the right clothing. It was cold. We couldn’t find each other in this massive crowd of people. Somehow someone gave me a sign, a Planned Parenthood sign “I support Planned Parenthood,” which I absolutely do. I remember we started marching from Logan Square down to the Art Museum and I’m waiting for my friend and she’s texting me and she’s late and I decide to get out of this giant river of people that are just flowing down to the Art Museum. So I wait right by one of those poles with the flag. I think it was like Cambodia or something. So I’m under Cambodia with this sign up because I figure if I have this sign up she can see me hopefully over here . Somehow this is a statement and I’m not realizing it’s a statement. But I’m against all of these people. I’m flowing against the traffic coming down and I have my big sign up and everyone’s saying “Yea, I am too! I’m with Planned Parenthood, too!” and they’re hugging me and giving me high fives, and it was a coincidence, it was something, but it was such a beautiful experience for me to be with all of these strangers and we were all together in this experience. Actually I think it was the most hopeful I’ve felt in a long time. That’s my story.
