I was at a department store a few days ago, when a prominent display of handbags caught my eye. They were little vinyl purses and wallets in a variety of bubble gum colors, but the thing that was most inexplicable was the large patch that was sewn onto each one. The one I saw first said simply: "Mrs. Bloom." I was perplexed. The words were in a strange, loopy, curlicued writing, and I was reminded of the penmanship exhibited by the sort of little girls who dot their i's and j's with little hearts. My first thought was, "oh, they must be referring to that character from Ulysses." That's how far removed I am from the real world. In fact, Leopold Bloom was probably the furthest thing from the true explanation that I could have ever come up with. The famous Bloom whose name was emblazoned across the handbag was, of course, the lovely (and oddly feminine) Orlando Bloom. I deduced this by scanning the names on the other bags—Mrs. Depp; Mrs. Timberlake; Mrs. Pitt; and Mrs. Kutcher. I noticed there was no Ms. anything.

This really is too depressing to speculate about, but I'm going to do it anyway.

What I want to know is, why do we have to socially engineer our girls to be so . . . well . . . girlie? I'm tired of the aisles of pink vomit in every toy store, showcasing everything from Bulimia Barbie to Baby's First Rhinoplasty Kit. I'm tired of seeing middle school girls wearing t-shirts with bizarre self-descriptors like "Justin's Ex" and "Sexier than Britney." (With regard to the latter, why would an already emotionally fragile 13-year-old girl want to set up a comparison like this? You're just begging to be contradicted. I suppose a generous interpretation would be that the girl wearing this shirt is declaring her rejection of societal expectations of beauty—but I seriously doubt it. And anyway, it's a little much to expect the hormone-charged brains of 13-year-old boys to pick up on this kind of nuance. The boys are simply going to say, "Look, that girl isn't airbrushed and stuffed with packets of silicone. She can't be as sexy as Britney.")

And then I see weirdness like that "Outback Jack" show where a bunch of women preen and pose like trained monkeys, sniping and flinging excrement at one another while a beta male struts among them and tries to pick which one from the harem he wants to take home. He even refers to them as "my girls." What's happening here? Are these women just a bunch of fish who really do need that bicycle?

I want to bring back the age of Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hamilton in the Terminator 2 era. These are smart, strong, powerful women who seem like reincarnations of Amazon warriors. Another good one is Demi Moore in G.I. Jane. She's tough, incredibly muscular (you see a couple shots of her where her calves are like Redwood tree trunks), and she's not playing stupid seduction games trying to get a guy. This is very different from the Lara Croft/Charlie's Angels brand of "girl power," where the point is clearly to entice male viewers with the promise of spandex. G.I. Jane is just about Demi Moore's character being a bad-ass, and I love it.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. The nightmare handbags.

When I was prepubescent, I had crushes on some pretty embarrassing people—most notably, Neil Diamond, Corey Feldman, and that floppy-haired blond kid from "Charles in Charge" who went on to become Bible Man. For obvious reasons, it never occurred to me to advertise my quirky infatuations to the world. But even if I had gone for the Donnie Wahlbergs or the Scott Baios or the other Corey, I don't think I would have been proclaiming that my greatest aspiration in the world was to be married to one of them. Ick. Hey, I've just had an idea, just this very second—what if I create my own version of these handbags? The brand will be "Dead Monkey" and instead of bearing the names of movie stars, the merchandise would say stuff like "Future Two-Time Nobel Prize Winner in Physics" and "MENSA Punk." That'd be totally cool, and it might let the little girls know that there are more choices available to them than which brand of make-up to pledge lifelong allegiance to.

That's what I'll do. I'll be the queen of feminist marketing! Then again, I don't know anything about marketing. I'll probably just sit here and complain a little more. Maybe try to make it through Ulysses again.

Tags: popculture