mastige

New word. I was listening to NPR on the way to work and found the discussion of designer purse rentals troubling. I have had the same, or nearly the same, purse for decades. I always think that I need a different one, or better one, to make my life complete, but the advent of mail order designer bag rental, like netflix, is too much. Pay 50 bucks a month to subscribe and (oops, published the post...)

Anyway, back to the topic: Mastige -- prestige for the masses. A disgusting, albeit well-timed, word. Likely to make it into the Oxford Dictionary.

So these purse-happy people--women, more than likely--can order designer handbags to haul around for a month at a time, then, when after three weeks it becomes passe, return it; but only after the replacement arrives.

Truth is, I have been looking for a new purse. I've been everywhere, looking for just the right thing, but they are all so shiny, so sparkly, so dressy. I want something like a backpack with a pocket for my cell phone. Lots of pockets. I know what I'm looking for. I'll know it when I see it: the perfect combination of hipster nonchalance and organizational promise. Like nail polish, I always buy the same color. When I'm at the store, I think it is different, but I get it home and it is the same pinkish beige. The same black leather purse. The last time I bought one it was just pre-new job, and I was a little too professionally minded and got something too slick and now need to replace it. What really sucked me in was the light. It has a light on the latch so you can find stuff inside it.

But here's what I end up doing: I buy the purse and bring it home. I dump my old one out on the table. I sort through the crumbs and receipts, pocketknives, candy wrappers and broken ibuprofen tablets; and the change--The change I dug in the sofa for for twenty years, thrilled to find a quarter. Piles of change from money I don't need anymore. Not in that same sense of need that I will never forget. So, I sort the change, dump some into my honey's change jar, and unpack the new purse. Then I set up the new one, I plan it out, I fit everything into its own little space. At that point, I even know how much money I have. Then, it begins: the unravelling. By week's end, everything is in a pile, crammed into one pocket, slung like a hobo's bandana over my shoulder, cell phone ringing in the darkness, calling the last number dialed as it bounces among the rubble. One time I re-text messaged my boss: "I'll be your huckleberry" or something, that I had text'd my soon to be husband. He called right away. "Okay," he said. It was pretty embarrassing.

Anyway, after the unravelling, it is time once again, for a new bag.

Its not that I object to mastige as derived from something so abstract as prestige, something that by its nature does not keep. It is just so much worse to rent it than to attempt to buy it. Or is it? Is it the appropriate nod to the passing fancy?
Who cares?