Many moons ago, in the old South Africa, the specification
of plastic bags used by the clothing retailer I was designing packaging
for, was for strong and biodegradable bags. This was the first time I heard the
term ‘third-world briefcases’ so glibly referred to by the then marketing
manager. He was proud of the fact that poor children used ‘his’ strong bags as
school satchels. The biodegradable quality of the bags was a token solution towards
the millions of bags that littered the countryside.
A ‘new South African’ solution to reduce plastic bag littering
was to start charging for them, an incentive that is also employed in Hong Kong
to reduce its mountains of waste. Lunchtimes, plastic bags abound in Hong Kong,
tightly holding a variety of polystyrene and plastic containers filled with steaming
hot noodle soups, barbequed meats and rice and paper cups of tea.
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| Shopper and tourists underneath the Mid-level escalator |
The range of handbags on the Mid-level escalator in Hong
Kong is noticeable. Practical, nondescript, small, flashy, large…the full gamut
can be seen here. My interest in handbags was piqued by being repeatedly
shoved about on the underground by the ever-larger ladies’ bags, almost as
dangerous as backpackers unexpectedly swingeing around with their hard
rucksacks into soft flesh, not taking account of the lack of space. The forlorn
look of a discarded bag on a ledge below the Mid-level escalator also sparked
my interest – what exchange or incident resulted in a bag and its spilt
contents landing up amongst a piece of hosepipe and some metal bars? I returned
to this site a week later and the bag had been removed. However, the rest of
the debris had been left. So, what make a section of hosepipe and metal rods acceptable
waste and a handbag not?
Is it because handbags are ‘intensely personal objects’ and
‘intensely social ones’ as described by Janet Hoskins in her article on the
Kodi betel bag in Sumba, Indonesia (1998: 24) and that handbags can stand for a
‘kind of alter ego, a metaphor for the own self’ (1998:26)? There is no doubt that
the sight of the discarded handbag was disturbing, suggesting physical abuse, robbery or some
encounter that went out of control. All the ‘secrets’ or ‘hidden knowledge’
held within this bag was almost revealed, and touched upon the taboo or
sanctity that guards the contents of women’s bags.
Bags are also social indicators, and express the ‘wealth and
social prestige of the owner’ (Geirnaert 1992: 56). This was no more explicit
than at a recent wine tasting. A petite, well-presented Hong Kong lady wore a
bag almost half her size, obscuring her body most of the time. The colour of
her bag matched her tight-fitting pencil skirt perfectly. It crossed my mind
that between her bag and her towering high-heeled shoes, she had some pretty
lethal weapons at hand. This is one lady whose bag will not easily land up on a
ledge below the Mid-level travelator.
