Handbag Related Quotes

Relations among women on the Upper East Side are charged as they are perhaps nowhere else in the country or the world, and handbags, like cars, just might serve a lot of different functions all at once. A communication about where one stands in the inevitable hierarchy of Manhattan, a barometer of your wealth and connectedness and clout in a city where money and connections and clout are everything. A fashion statement. A security blanket, a way of self-soothing in a uniquely stressful town.

A display cake read JUNETEENTH! in red frosting, surrounded by red, white, and blue stars and fireworks. A flyer taped to the counter above it encouraged patrons to consider ordering a Juneteenth cake early: We all know about the Fourth of July! the flyer said. But why not start celebrating freedom a few weeks early and observe the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation! Say it with cake! One of the two young women behind the bakery counter was Black, but I could guess the bakery's owner wasn't. The neighborhood, the prices, the twee acoustic music drifting out of sleek speakers: I knew all of the song's words, but everything about the space said who it was for. My memories of celebrating Juneteenth in DC were my parents taking me to someone's backyard BBQ, eating banana pudding and peach cobbler and strawberry cake made with Jell-O mix; at not one of them had I seen a seventy-five-dollar bakery cake that could be carved into the shape of a designer handbag for an additional fee. The flyer's sales pitch--so much hanging on that We all know--was targeted not to the people who'd celebrated Juneteenth all along but to office managers who'd feel hectored into not missing a Black holiday or who just wanted an excuse for miscellaneous dessert.

When you’re from a small country like the Netherlands, you easily learn to speak other languages,” she’d said considerately. To this day, I do resort to English unless I’m really sure of the Greek words I’m using. I remember one early morning waiting on the Flying Dolphin to Athens, I’d closed my eyes briefly and opened them to see a Greek lady waiting to sit in the seat next to me. I quickly moved my handbag out of her seat and told her “Signome, eimai horismeni.” The lady looked at me with a very strange expression, sat in the seat and didn’t look my way or speak again. Well no wonder she doesn’t bother with me after I said that—what a dumb thing to say: “Excuse me, I’m tired.” Yet again I was embarrassed again at my lack of ability to communicate easily. “What exactly did you say?” Mia asked when I related the incident at our next Ladies’ Night. As soon as I repeated the words, everyone burst out laughing. “Pamela, kourasmini is the word for ‘tired’. What you told the woman was, “Excuse me, I’m divorced!

No you’re not,” I said, standing up and putting on my coat. “You’re trying to frighten me. This isn’t about empowerment, this is about shame. I can’t believe you think it’s okay to speak to me like this.” I picked up my handbag. “It seems you already know everything, but is there anything else you’d like to ask?” she said icily. “No thank you,” I said, leaving her office. I didn’t want to know all these words, charged with urgency and crisis. I didn’t feel like they related to me. Hadn’t I just turned twenty-one? Hadn’t I just left university? Hadn’t my life only just begun? I couldn’t fathom how I had got here so quickly and how I could be expected to make such enormous decisions while I still felt so young. How had this happened?