Member-only story
My Fanny Pack Fetish
The nonbinary bag that’s no passing fad
My six-year-old self stans the chunky white Fila sneakers, titty-high mom jeans, and corduroy train conductor hats all you fashion-forward Gen Zers are sporting these days. But I’m not six anymore. I’m a grown-ass human, and this isn’t fashion-forward — it’s #FallbackFriday.
Your community-theater-level Salt-N-Pepa impersonation triggers my PTSD, related to a time when gays were dying of AIDS, the Bush dynasty began waging war in the Middle East, and accessing internet required use of a landline. The United States in the ’90s wasn’t great; I don’t want it again. If the get-off-my-lawn grandpa within me could, he’d rip all the clothing from your closet and throw it into a trash fire with 2016’s MAGA hats as kindling.
Well, not all of it.
Keep the fanny pack. I fucking love the fanny pack. Your multicolored belt bag is my Lisa Frank fantasy; your iridescent pouch is my dollar store dream. I love when its Gucci leather costs an entire month of rent almost as much as I love finding it in my mother’s cobwebbed closet of retro paraphernalia. Most importantly, I love you for reminding a fashion lemming like me why this androgynous sack is a sociopolitical gift from the gods. And so, I beg of you, don’t cancel this pouch like a bad ’90s habit — wear it like a liberal badge…
