A woman indicating to the males of her species that she’s not interested in intercourse.

When I told my husband I was contemplating buying and wearing a fanny pack, i.e. ‘belt bag’ he threatened to stop having sex with me. Which now that I think about it wasn’t exactly a threat, so it didn’t really deter me.  Wearing a fanny pack pretty much says you’re not interested in having sex, plus I have three kids and am in a committed relationship so he can hold out all he wants but  I know he’ll eventually fold. What he doesn’t realize is that fanny packs are cool again. In an ironic kind of way. Even though Donald Trump built a wall around irony and sent in ICE to keep it from coming back into our country, irony still exists in the fashion world. Fanny packs aren’t sexy, but then again they kind of are, they accentuate your waist, and they also indicate that you don’t give a fuck, which is kind of an attractive trait in a louche, socks-with- Birkenstocks kind of way.  Also, Fanny packs are convenient. Have you ever been in line at the grocery store, digging through your purse looking for your wallet only to come up with a single sock, a moldy orange, and some hairy cheetohs? One time in Costco I went to take my wallet and the whole thing was dripping in purple ooze because an entire fucking bottle of children’s liquid Tylenol had spilled inside. The fanny pack requires minimalism even if every part of you is screaming to shove a regular size bag of Funyuns in there because you don’t want to waste a ziplock bag.

Once you’ve decided your ready to commit to the item you mercilessly mocked your parents over, you’ll find that these days there’s a lot of options. You can all-in and spend $3,000 on the Hermes Cityslide which tries to pretend it’s not a fanny pack since you can also sling it over your shoulder, but they’re not fooling anyone and neither are you if you think dropping 3K on a fanny pack somehow makes it any better. Mid-range, there’s lot’s of attractive options, just go to Nordstrom’s and search fanny packs and you’ll find options from a $400 MCM ‘Belt Bag’ to a $100 Kate Spade fanny pack that looks more like a purse, even the obnoxiously omnipresent yoga brand Lululemon has one. But, who are you kidding? You’re wearing a fanny pack, you probably didn’t even brush your hair or change your underwear. Plus, you don’t want to dive head first into the world of fanny packs, you want to dip your toes in, see if you have have the ‘don’t give a fuck’ attitude it takes to wear your purse around your waist. I settled on a basic, black $20 Jansport model that was on sale for $12.

Before it arrived, I made sure I told as many people as I could that I had ordered a fanny pack. I didn’t want to upset anyone, or have someone call me in as a 5150. I awaited it with a mix of anxiety and anticipation. When it arrived I didn’t wear it for a few days, I’ll admit: I was a little embarrassed. When I went to empty out my purse and transfer it’s contents into my purse, I poured about a cup of sand out of the bottom that had been in there for about two months. There was straw wrappers, old receipts, a opened nail polish that had leaked everywhere and other pieces of miscellaneous garbage. Getting rid of my purse forced me to use the fanny pack, and once I did, I started liking it. I now proudly sport my fanny pack at Costco and the grocery store and, ummm….uhhhhh… I guess I don’t really go too many other places that that. I haven’t had a date night since the fanny pack came, but I bet you when we do, I’m totally going to get some.

Image: By Plot Spoiler [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)%5D, from Wikimedia Commons