Tote Bags Make No Sense

There’s a hard truth I’ve come to appreciate as summer gives way to fall: tote bags are the worst bags. Yes, they’re hallmarks of the performative male starter pack, liable to get you clowned if you carry yours with a dog-eared copy of Wuthering Heights and a to-go cup of matcha. That’s not why they’re bad. My real beef with tote bags is that, for all their promises of pared-down utility, they’re somehow both too much and not enough.

Allow me to explain. For most people, tote bags are way too big. Think about what you actually schlep around on a daily basis: keys, wallet, prescription meds, a few small auxiliary items? All of those can easily fit in a much smaller bag. (A male colleague of mine routinely packs his tote with nothing but a water bottle, chapstick, and gum, and I know for a fact he’s miserable about it.)

Worse still, in my experience, that unused storage capacity inexplicably goads you into cramming your bag with stuff you’ll never use. Maybe I’ll need my laptop to get some work done, you might find yourself thinking. Maybe you’ll need your laptop to trick yourself into feeling productive, bro. Get your work-life balance in order and leave the MacBook at home.

It doesn’t help that most tote bags are designed like portable landfills, burying the stuff you need easy access to beneath a detritus of old receipts, tangled chargers, and that “packable” jacket you bought last June. But mess is just part of the problem. Because once you factor in all that dead weight, carrying it around becomes a very real nightmare. You’re either forced to shift the weight from shoulder to shoulder every 15 minutes, or reckon with serious back issues down the line.

I’m well aware that there are tote bags with attachable crossbody straps, but I wish there weren’t. Whatever carefree elegance the tote bag offers is immediately negated by adding anything as modular as a strap, and who wants a heavy-ass bag tugging at your thoughtfully-assembled outfits, anyway?

The objectively better solution is a small, compact shoulder bag—what you might call “a purse”. Purses are everything tote bags aren’t: relatively lightweight, easy to carry, and the ideal size for daily use. What they lack in storage capacity, they make up for, in well, lack of storage capacity; the very fact that they’re smaller than your cheekily-branded gift-with-purchase freebie means less time spent scrounging their depths for your hand sanitizer. They’re also more interesting, more stylish, and more practical.

I’ll concede this: tote bags usually look good. L.L. Bean’s Boat and Tote is an undisputed classic partly for this reason. It’s also well-built, functional, affordable, and famously, able to hold up to 500 pounds of stuff. I’m not coming for your Boat and Tote, or, for that matter, any of its sturdy canvas alternatives. All I’m suggesting is that you reserve those bags for the beach, the grocery store, impromptu picnics, or days you actually need to carry, if not 500 pounds of stuff, than more than on a typical coffee run.

If you’re a bona fide book-reading, matcha-sipping, tote bag-carrying guy, the haters will come for you regardless. Side-step their memes—and save your spine—by considering a purse instead.

Boat and Tote These, Buddy

In lieu of explaining how cool it looks to rock a purse, I’m just going to drop this picture of Jacob Elordi here and let him make the case on my behalf. I also took the liberty of cherry-picking six options I’m eyeing immediately below, each one far more intriguing than whatever anodyne carry-all you use on your commute. Think of them as exposure therapy if you must, but really, they’re an important step away from a life of frantic disorganization (and possible scoliosis), and towards a less stressed, more stylish you.