Melissa's Place

Purse-onal Boundaries

I went shopping the other day with a very good friend and her roommate. The roommate has wonderful fashion sense and became our unofficial personal shopper, recommending to us which cuts would best flatter our body types…not unlike a Stacy-and-Clinton-What-Not-to-Wear-type role. This roommate also has an affinity for handbags. An enormous addiction actually. Not yet crippling, but which might later in life require therapy. She was also on a red leather kick and so every shoe store we entered, she would immediately eye up the red leather handbags.

In one particular store, this roommate chose a rather odd-looking purse. She held it up, much to my chagrin and began to unzip it and to plunge her hand into it. She was considering purchasing it. I am certain of this. If I had not been, I would not have intervened. And I hardly know this roommate, and one must mind her own business, however one must also take responsibility not just for people we care about but for all of humankind.

“Kristen,” I whispered when I’d finally decided it was my duty as a fellow woman to step up and take one for the team, “that purse looks like a vagina.”