If you’ve spent any time on Youtube lately, then you’re probably aware of the massive community of online beauty gurus. One of the more popular types of videos that these gurus regularly post are “What’s in My Bag” videos.

Often sold as “girly” guilty pleasures, these videos are shockingly formulaic. They all start with a demonstration of the designer purse and the accompanying wallet. Next, they take apart the cosmetics bag, describing each item in detail. While doing so, the guru will crack jokes about how she is so girly and probably doesn’t need to be carrying around all of this makeup. There will often be a furtive and almost guilty joke about tampons or pads, sometimes including allusions to deodorizers. And the videos will conclude with a display of the guru’s smart phone, completed with adorable cover, earbuds, designer sunglasses, and her keys.

As a historian, I find myself fascinated by the performances of white feminine gender norms that are inherent to these videos. What do I mean by performance? Performance theory argues that ideas like gender and race are abstract concepts that serve as “scripts,” each particular to a time and place. In order to be recognized as belonging to a particular gender, race, class, etc, individuals try to follow these scripts as closely as possible. For example, think about how some girls are really smart but pretend not to be in order to be more socially acceptable or attractive to boys.

Expert Tip: Judith Butler is most famously associated with performance theory in history.

While watching these videos, I kept finding myself thinking about historical handbags, and what they would say about the lives of people who carried them. When most people think about historical sources, their minds go immediately to written documents. Material objects are another kind of source that historians can use. In many ways, these objects are the ultimate embodiment of Unwritten Histories, since not only do historians not often consider them but they also tell important stories about people who might not have left written documents. What’s more is that many of these material objects were personal items, things that were used on a daily basis, and so much a part of the landscape that they were seldom described in historical sources.

So in this new series on material history, “What’s in My ____?,” I will select a bag, container, or room, and use the material objects that would have appeared in these receptacles to provide an intimate look into the hidden lives of people in the past.

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