Take Your Hands Out Your Pockets!

You're basically a human bowling pin

Last semester I was walking down Market Street, killing time before an appointment with the optometrist, where I would undoubtedly be told I was due to become the third blind mouse. It was May, warm enough that I didn’t need a coat and could hold an iced coffee without my fingers going blue. Then, suddenly, a group of golfing men crossed Market Street — Americans, aglow with globe-trotting freshness, and (I assume) anticipation of an afternoon passed with flatirons and tiny white balls. Upon further inspection, they struck me as a group of creatures bound by instinct to appear similar: they all had on the same shirt and trousers, with only slight colour variations, and they all had their hands in their pockets. All of them. And if one of them was holding something in one hand, he placed the other in his pocket. And if one of them saw something interesting, he’d remove one hand to point it out before putting it away again, like it was something vulgar. 

Now that it’s getting colder, it’s only right that we should be using our pockets. I use mine sometimes. But men always seem to be using their pockets — in particular, men who feel compelled to participate in a certain performance of gender. I’m not going to make the mistake of drawing an equivalency between gendered performance and sexuality, but hopefully you all can guess who I’d be talking about if I did.  

First of all, health and safety hazard! I was always told that putting both hands in your pockets is a one way ticket to a broken nose; you’re basically a human bowling pin. Next time I’m on Market Street, I’m gonna take a bowling ball and see if I can earn me a strike. Second of all, is holding things considered gay now? I get that your average BillBradTom probably doesn’t want to look like me when I’m prancing to my lecture with an iced latte, but they don’t have to go to that extreme. 

No matter the weather, these men are using their pockets. If they’re walking their dog, one hand is holding the leash and the other is in their pocket. If they’re standing by the bus stop, their hands are in their pockets, sometimes excused from duty by the need to hold a phone. If they’re walking with their girlfriends, both hands are in their pockets, and she’s being tugged along with her arm looped in his. I’m surprised they don’t play football with their hands in their pockets. 

Such is the gendered rulebook for behaviour, the guidelines with which we’re meant to make sense of other people. I don’t see what I’ve observed as disconnected from it. What does it say about me that I’ve noticed that the men with their hands in their pockets are different from me? What does it say that I could never see myself trailing behind them as they cross Market Street? That my hands are rarely found in my pockets? Who they learned to be is not who I learned to be. It might take a lifetime to know exactly how, but the fact that we decide to do different things with our hands isn’t inconsequential. For them, the aim is to accentuate the shoulders, restrict movement in the upper body, and altogether look right. For me? Who knows! That’s for somebody else to notice, somebody who can see outside of me in a way I just can’t. That’s for somebody who looks at me in the way I looked at those men crossing Market Street. If somebody looked at you the way I looked at those men, what patterns do you think they’d notice? What’s your hands-in-pockets? 

Which is what I would’ve said if I were still profound. As it stands, I’ve decided to distribute warm gloves to every man with a history of chronic pocket usage. With my help, I know we can protect millions of men’s noses across the country. And, who knows, maybe beforehand we can get in a little game of Market Street Man-Bowling. 

Illustration by Sandra Palazuelos Garcia