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Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Are you a pristine pillow or an unmade bed?

Esmerelda asks:

[D]o... very rich women clear and change their bags every day to match their outfit, and don’t then stuff them with the accoutrements of everyday life?....Perhaps they only carry an iphone and a platinum MasterCard. Everything else they have delivered to Claridges or carried by the PA.

Shane Watson has the answer: people with small bags are Pristine Pillows, and people with large bags are Unmade Beds. From The Times, where she comes down on one side of Robert Benchley's divide, by dividing the world into two kinds of people:

It’s about the Unmade Beds versus the Pristine Pillows — two different types of women with two very different styles. Tilda Swinton is an Unmade Bed, but she scrubs up pretty good for an awards ceremony. So are Helen Mirren and Stella McCartney and Kristen Stewart. The Pillows you already know: they are everywhere.

Unmade Beds have hairdryers, but rarely get around to using them. They sleep with their make-up on. They drink red wine. They eat cake. They get dirty when they go for a walk. (I once interviewed Stella and the soles of her bare feet were green from walking across the park.) They like dogs. They like clothes. They like sex. And sometimes they don’t make the bed, especially at weekends. They would never have hair extensions or nail extensions or any bodily extensions, or refuse a ride in an open-top car because they were worried about twister hair. And they are still carrying handbags, crammed full of stuff, that weigh the equivalent of a small toddler....the overloaded bag is something the UBs will never shake off. 

[...]

According to Debenhams, the weight of the average bag has plummeted from 7lb 11oz to 3lb 5oz, thanks to super-slim technology such as iPhones and BlackBerrys. But while the PPs are packing an iPhone, a purse and a capsule collection of make-up, the rest of us are carrying more than ever, including technology. Now that we can wear them strapped across the body (the Mulberry Alexa is a godsend) and double up with a cool cloth book bag, there’s no limit to how much we can haul around.

You don’t think about this until you get your handbag(s) snatched and have to itemise the contents for the insurers. UBs will not be surprised to discover that my list of contents included two pairs of sunglasses, a large pot of moisturiser, a pair of flip-flops, a dress, two paperbacks, three lighters, and that was just the cheap stuff. It turns out I was lugging round £1,000 worth of goods, and I didn’t even know it.

 So which are you? Unmade Bed or Pristine Pillow? I'm a sleeping bag.

Posted on 01/27/2010 6:24 AM by Mary Jackson
Comments
27 Jan 2010
Xanthippe

Hmm... err... and if you're the kind of girl who gets dirty on walks and can't alphebatize your own name, but you carry a small purse, where does the pillow-bed dichotomy leave you?

The biggest purse I ever owned was nearly the size of a Gideon bible, and I was worried (with good reason) that it was too big for me. I'm so disorganized I need a small purse -- even in a small purse, I routinely manage to lose my keys.  I don't know how I'd manage to find anything in a larger purse. If I've got to carry around more than will fit into the purse, being bookish, I use a bookbag.

I've got a grand total of two purses (I use the same purse over and over again until it falls apart) and only one of the purses is a real purse. I only got the other one (a ridiculous pearly affair) to meet the dress-code at a formal function, since my real purse was deemed too disreputable to be allowed and I had no pockets in which to put the necessities of ID and rescue medication. (Looking back, I suppose I could've stuffed the necessities in the bodice of my dress and done without a purse altogether, only it'd be a bit awkward to go fishing around to retrieve them.)

I reject the pillow-bed dichotomy. I don't care if my pursal lifestyle-choice is trans rather than cis. I will be a "sleeping bag", too.



 
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