Walking up the stairs at work today, carrying my large shoulder-bag, a friend was telling me he thought of me yesterday as he dressed his baby son in dungarees with *7 functional pockets*. This baby can just about master getting it’s hand in it’s own mouth. Peter thought to tell me this, because he knows pockets make me cross.

He’s been exploring a wonderful world of children’s clothing and has noticed that girls and boys are pretty equally provided for in the pocket stakes until somewhere around 4 or 5. Essentially he wanted to let me know that it’s not that women don’t get pockets, it’s that we get them taken away from us. Thanks for that mate.

Women’s pockets were private spaces they carried into the public with increasing freedom, and during a revolutionary time, this freedom was very, very frightening. The less women could carry, the less freedom they had. Take away pockets happily hidden under garments, and you limit women’s ability to navigate public spaces, to carry seditious (or merely amorous) writing, or to travel unaccompanied. (The Politics of Pockets)