My rants about the fashion industry are legendary. One reoccurring theme is the absence of pockets in women’s clothing. Then there’s the ire that fake decorative pockets on women’s clothing causes me. Whereas men’s clothing has pockets on damn near everything, including their pajamas.
With this raging argument always brewing inside me, I went to the bank to rollover my 401k into an IRA. The banker who helped me had her cellphone lying on the desk. I noticed that the phone case included a double pocket where she kept her credit cards, driver’s license and perhaps her medical card. Seeing that phone case was all it took to wind me up.
As she typed up my application, we both confessed about how it was a pain in the ass to carry a purse in some situations and the general lack of pockets in women’s clothing. She even admitted that one of the reasons she’d bought the dress she happened to be wearing was because it had pockets stylishly sewn into its gentle folds.
Then she asked, “Why do men need so many pockets?”
“For porn!” I answered. We both burst out laughing. I’d never questioned why men needed lots of pockets, always focusing my rant on why we women often were shortchanged.
About a week later, I retold that male pockets/porn joke to a male friend and a woman before a filmmakers roundtable event began. She laughed. He didn’t. Instead he fast tracked that joke to its grave by asking me to explain why it was funny. I indirectly explained that the joke may only be funny to women. The other woman said, “Men are always watching porn.” He still didn’t see any humor in that.
Another guy joined us at the table. After we all introduced ourselves, in no time flat, that guy explained that his filmmaking genre was some niche porn I cannot recall because, as the other woman and I said, men are always watching porn. Here was this guy who was producing it. I didn’t bother to count how many pockets he had.
During the 15-minute intermission in the middle of the roundtable event, the other woman and I made haste to the bathroom and were the first two in the two-stalled women’s bathroom. We both finished up around the same time and saw a line of women waiting–of course. I seized the moment to test out my hypothesis and told the men’s pockets/porn joke to the women in line. They all laughed.
Some weeks later, I female friend and I got together to catch up. I couldn’t resist. Even she laughed, agreeing that men view a lot of porn. At least that’s what we women think.