It’s amusing when Gen Z discover a truth the rest of us already know.
For example: pocket sexism. Men are sold clothes that have lots of pockets. I’m sitting here in jeans and a button-down. I have seven pockets at the ready. If a fire erupted in my office, I could flee with a kangaroo pouch for my sunglasses, wallet, keys, AirPods and still have free carrying slots for a bandana or BLT.
Women do not have this luxury. Women long for pockets.
In a science experiment this week that will not enter the taxonomy of Newton or Galileo, a young fellow on TikTok tried on “women pants” because, “I hear a lot of women say how bad the pockets are.”
(Just wait until he gets an earful about leaving the toilet seat up.)
In the video, Nick Wilkins slips on “women jeans.” His first impression? They really accentuate his derriere. “Ka-chow!” he exclaims, smacking his backside.
“I’ve got a few things that I always have in my pocket,” he explains, holding a bunch of gadgets that would clutter a Best Buy stockroom.
He begins by attempting to shove his phone into the left front pocket.
“Are you serious?” he asks in disbelief, after the phone only goes in halfway and looks like a toddler riding in a shopping cart. “That’s all it does?”
Expecting more depth, he tries the right pocket.
“Oh my gosh!” he yells, not finding more depth.
“Now I know why you guys wear purses,” he observes, before offering a clarion call to the industry: “Um, people who make women pants. Let’s start putting some depth in there.”
This push for pocket equality is noble. Alas, it’s too late. For generations now, women have been conditioned to pocket discrimination. They don’t expect pocket depth from a shallow industry riven with ridiculous beauty imperatives and gender double standards. But sexism has secondary effects.
It’s why so many purses now qualify as black holes.
What happens when you deprive women of pockets? They fill their purses with everything they may need in the event of an apocalypse.
The other day, my wife asked me to grab her car keys from her purse. She was running late. Now, from the outside, this purse has the rough dimensions of a two-slice toaster. It doesn’t look like it could carry more than a few credit cards.
I unzipped it and gasped.
It was a bazaar in there. There were little bags in the main bag like nesting dolls. There were random cosmetics and receipts from 2004. There was some kind of transformer hairbrush. Band-Aids Scrunchies. Snacks I could not identify.
I spotted a bird cage under a sandblaster. My God, is that a ukulele?
I felt like an archeologist exploring the Giza Necropolis.
I don’t know how she ever finds her keys. It’s not her fault. She has been deprived of pockets. This is what happens. She’s walking around town with enough stuff to jam a sleeping bag. Now I know why I was occasionally asked to slip a lipstick into one of my free 27 pockets when we were young and dating. Her purse was about to explode like a Saint Laurent supernova and she had no pockets of her own. She was suffering from storage injustice.
I wish this dude who went viral on TikTok — the “women jeans” video is closing in on one million likes — had done a bit of research. I fold the laundry. The pockets on my daughters’ jeans are basically ornamental.
There’s not enough room to transport a sick bumblebee.
Behold the rich catalogue of cultural dispatches from yesteryear: “The History of Women’s Terrible Pockets.” “The Bewildering and Sexist History of Women’s Pockets.” “Why Most Women’s Clothes Don’t Have Real Pockets.” “Pocket Patriarchy.” “Study Confirms Women’s Pockets Are Too Small for Smartphones.”
“You guys don’t have pockets for dresses too,” Wilkins realizes in his video.
Nope. And you know what happens when women are robbed of pockets? Some wonder if the dress itself is optional. The “naked dress” trend has caught exhibitionist fire.
The Cannes Film Festival this week banned nudity on the red carpet. This wouldn’t be an issue if those glam flashers had grown up with pockets as little girls. Bella Hadid has never known the functional joy of a breast pocket or hidden zipper flap. “Free the nip” is an extreme reaction to a life without pockets. If I was never given socks, I’d be barefoot.
With the exception of cargo pants, women have endured pocket denial.
Sorry, TikTok dude. Fashion will never end this travesty.
The purse makers would revolt.
