Lust in the bag

Advertising observer Angela Natividad hints she wants this duffel. We responded with this:

Yes, entire libraries have been written about the psychology of consumer desire, but it's still amazing how some objects incite such lust. You can keep the bag; for me it's leather jackets or the sheet metal of certain cars. My first such memory is from about age 17, when I worked at a country inn in Vermont and saw a red Porsche in a cottage driveway. The car had fenders jutting over the wheels, glowing cherry paint, and say your Freudian-cigar-or-mother's-milk whatever I admit being struck with a sharp pain in my chest. I had a crush on a piece of steel. I have no answer as to why some objects make us want them so badly (with the irony being it is the longing we cherish, because once we buy leather coats they end up in the closet cause they're rather heavy and uncomfortable). Evolutionary psychology blames it on our need for shelter; Geoffrey Miller says we do it to signal to others. Dunno. Maybe we don't desire objects; we instead desire *desire,* because longing for that which we can't have validates the truth of the emptiness inside us.

Or, it could just be a damn fine bag.