Frenchmen in Fannypacks

In the world of fashion, what goes around comes around. The style of any past era, no matter how horrifying, will no doubt once again have its day. Peasant blouses, bell-bottoms, platform shoes, shirt-waist dresses, polyester blends — each has had its renaissance. Today, walk into any H&M and you'll think Flashdance had a little too much to drink and vomited everywhere.

But in the sea of neon striped shirts, Lycra miniskirts, acid green tights and leg-warmers, one archetypal symbol of '80s fashion is blatantly missing from the American scene: the fannypack. Outside of certain family-themed amusement parks and retirement communities, the bumbag, as the British call it, has been left in the dust, condemned to languish in the vast wasteland of fashion mistakes too horrendous to be resurrected.

Walk down the street in any city in France, though, and you'll find the palpable void left stateside by the vanquished fannypack filled to bursting with varieties of all sizes and brand names. From emo LaCoste to frat-boy Kappa, worn straight or cheekily cocked to one side, used as a true waist-pack or a de facto purse, the fannypack lives on in splendor never achieved, even in its heyday, in America.

The French fannypack bears little resemblance, aside from shape and function, to its antiquated American brethren. As befits the land of understated elegance, the fannypack français appears in muted tones and neutral shades, leaving hot pink and electric yellow to the German tourists who descend upon the country each summer. Still more dissimilar is the typical owner of a fannypack. Found neither on excitable 10-year-old girls named Tiffani nor globe-trotting 70-year-old ladies named Agnes, the fannypack is favored by the sort of men who make it their business to inspire passersby to cross the street, for fear of confrontation. Favored for their utility in transporting bricks of hashish and packets of rolling paper, fannypacks, along with capri sweatpants and knee-high athletic socks, are de riguer for any French thug worth his sneer.

See a man wearing a fannypack and cat-calling at any passing woman, and you know that you are not dealing with the sort of Frenchman who spends his evenings squinting artfully through a cloud of cigarette smoke in a dimly lit cafe, intently debating the relative merits of Duras and Ionesco. Leering from within his puffy parka, the owner of the fannypack confidently clutches his prized accessory as a testament to his manhood. And in France, manhood is everything.

French culture is a peculiar melange of Latin, Nordic and Arab cultures. Gleaned from each of these is a staunch belief in the supremacy of man as philosopher king above other creatures. Men here regard women who drink lagers and ales with suspicion, as if their choice of drink belies secret hormone therapy sessions or a private life involving eye of newt and Satan. Rare is the evening when your average female can sip her drink unaccompanied, in peace, let alone engage in the raucous bar culture of freewheeling twenty-somethings the world over.

In the banlieues, the seedy outskirts of French cities, representations of women are so firmly rooted in the virgin-whore duality that the numerous cases of gang-rape reported there in recent years have gone largely ignored. These premeditated tournantes, as the gang rapes are called, are usually orchestrated against a woman by her own boyfriend or lover after she has consented to have sex with him. Disgusted at her perceived impurity, the paramour in turn reduces the woman to the social status of a joint of cannabis to be passed around among his friends as an object to be used for physical pleasure. With each year since 1999 seeing a 15-20 percent rise in the number of tournantes perpetrated, the women of the banlieues have been left unable to walk outside alone at night, or trust even the closest male acquaintance, for fear of a soiled reputation.

Even in the heyday of the Age de Lumière, the French boys' club raged on, creating cultural movements and revolutions in the cafes of Paris, while their girlfriends baked quiche and sat at home, stepping out only as accessories on the brightest nights. Baudelaire himself portrayed woman, in her natural state, as evil, needing makeup to disguise herself and attract men. Today, men pass their drunken nights hitting on starry-eyed 19-year-old foreign study students while their wives and girlfriends wait patiently at home. The land of de Beauvoir and Kristeva keeps its gaze firmly directed at the past in its celebration of manhood and those carefree times when carousing young men drank, fought and philosophized.

The fannypack embodies this culture, serving as a physical manifestation of the fear and subservience women are still supposed to feel. Strutting down the street, baseball cap tipped to the side, capri sweats meticulously tucked into his socks, joint hanging out from between his lips, fannypack proudly jutting out from his groin, the French thug casts his gaze at any woman daring enough to walk the streets unencumbered by a male companion. His look, as he confidently strokes his fannypack, says it all. He wears the fannypack. He owns the street. But the question remains: How can anyone take a person who wears a fannypack seriously?

— Madhu Krishnan (moutarde_mechante@hotmail.com)

— graphic by Charles Fincher (charles.fincher@thadeusandweez.com)