Bulging Bags

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.

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.