Rand a hundred hours of playing time, not counting the trappings with pre- and post-reporting, every football fan has already gained time in boycott mode at this World Cup. Time in which one could have learned the basics of a new foreign language, sorted tax documents from the previous year, read Musil’s “The Man Without Qualities”, bought all the Christmas presents or played sports.
But instead of doing something useful, people tend to be digitally distracted. After all, jumping down the endless rabbit hole of online entertainment nonsense is more beneficial than “doomscrolling”, the constant clicking through doomsday news until not only the smartphone battery is empty. Clear the stage for the video series “In The Bag” produced by “Vogue”.
What’s in the designer bag?
In clips lasting around five minutes, prominent women – and a few men – unpack designer handbags on YouTube, the equivalent value of which is usually at least two months’ rent in Frankfurt’s Westend: Pure product placement. The impulse to click this must have something to do with the fact that even children like to clear out bags, most men are enigmatic about women’s handbags and women know that they can carry around a lifetime as a status symbol on their shoulder, even without Mary Poppins to be.
So it seems too tempting to infer personality, style and private life from what the stars have in their pockets. Only the owners know to what extent the content was curated for the camera. So what does a diva like Joan Collins carry with her? A saint of Saint Anthony, who helped her locate the enormous diamond ring on her left hand, the actress says, before pulling out her cell phone, face mask, sanitizing gel, hand cream, tissues, lipstick and powder, keys, reading glasses, sunglasses (“Valentino, of course ’), nail file and sweets. What does her bag say about her? Dame Joan says that she is practical.
Not as practical as Anke Engelke, however, whose Hermès bag (second-hand!) contains healthy snacks packed in screw-top jars in an ecologically correct way – and no smartphone, because she doesn’t own one. Meanwhile, the influencer Jeanne Damas nonchalantly dumps the contents of her basket bag, which corresponds to the Parisian cliché: drinking bottle, book, camera, cosmetics, tampons, receipts, small change, rubbish. Tres chic! Emma Watson would have us believe she even carries a hot water bottle with her.
The banality of it all was beautifully speared by Guardian cartoonist Edith Pritchett recently: “My Dior sunglasses, super useful when it’s light outside,” “Keys! I’ll use it to unlock the front door,” a blonde exults on her smartphone, while a brunette smiles at the screen in a slightly stupid way. So maybe time to change the rabbit hole. Pritchett’s cartoon series “On Millenial Life” is really, really funny.