(Note: This is in Cafe Society because it seems to be basically a fashion thread.)
It’s pretty clear that, nowadays, fanny packs are considered about the dorkiest thing it is possible to accouter oneself with. This was the basis of a minor plot element of the fairly recent movie The Inlaws, and the unacceptability of fanny packs has been mentioned here a number of times as well.
But when I began working out regularly in 1990, I’d see them all the time at the gym. They were almost a necessity, because I was working out at UCLA, where the locker room was in a separate building from the gym, and you needed your ID to enter the gym. You had to have someplace to carry your wallet if you didn’t want to pay a quarter every workout for a wallet locker. And this was when shorts were still short, so they didn’t have pockets or anything like that.
So what’s the deal? Sometimes you gotta have a place to keep stuff, but I hear so much dissing of fanny packs, that I wouldn’t even wear one to the gym.
Where I work out now, I don’t have the wallet problem, because the locker room is right there, and I can lock it in my locker before working out. But sometimes I need to keep a blackberry with me, and I’m always leaving it someplace. It’d be great to have a place to carry it. Is there an acceptable alternative to the fanny pack?
Fanny packs are not lame in the gym. They are lame outside the gym but inside, it’s okay, just as it’s okay to wear shorts and white socks and weight belts in the gym but you’d look like a retard if you wore them strolling down Fifth Avenue.
They are lame, but I’ve never found anything more useful when hiking, except perhaps a Camelback (I know there’s some funky spelling of that, but I can’t remember what.)
You were close, it’s CamelBak (I actually got up and went to the closet to check). I was so happy when the Camel people started making packs that held more than just the water bladder, because I could stop wearing the stupid fanny pack.
What do people in the UK call fannypacks? Bumpacks? I don’t know what’s worse.
They became lame when only elderly people started wearing them.
But actually, in high school, some of the “sporty” girls (soccer, lacrosse, volleyball players) started wearing them. Expensive ones (does North Face make them?) but they wore them sort of like a sling backpack over the shoulder, not around the waist.
I still think they look lame. I carry a purse or a messenger bag. When I go to the gym, I only need my ID, keys, iPod and water bottle. The zip pockets in my Adidas pants are wonderful, if I wear my men’s bball shorts, I stick my ID in my iPod case (one of those rubbery iSkin ones) and stick my keys in the holder of whatever machine I am using.
Because they were a product of the 90s, I’d say 99.99999% of them came in bright neon colours. And well, would you wear any clothing item that was neon?!?!
They’re kind of like track suits. They’re not lame if they’re used for actually doing an athletic activity, but when they’re made of fabric that makes them not functional for sports and are worn for reasons other than athletics (e.g. old ladies at the mall or my mother when she travels), they look lame.
I would think that the first person to wear one with his Zubaz singlehandedly ruined the utility of the fanny pack, and doomed it to being the butt of jokes. Get it? FANNY pack…BUTT of jokes? HA!! Feel free to steal that and use it around the water cooler Monday.
Fanny packs are really just purses on a belt, which were worn by both men and women for centuries. If you think they’re “lame”, please explain exactly what that means to you. And do it without using the word “lame”. In fact, don’t use any slang.
If it makes you feel any better, I was going to open a pit thread against the perceived lameness of fanny packs due to my needing a place to keep my blackberry. But then I thought it would better serve us to have it in this forum, since it is more or less a fashion question, and it wouldn’t have been a very good rant. I don’t do rants very well anyway.
Because they’re CALLED “fanny packs.” “Fanny” is a lame name. I reject tons of things for my own use if they have lame names, regardless of their actual stylishness, usefulness, or practicality. I never owned a pocket protector. I’d never buy a Pooper Scooper. I’ve never worn a codpiece or a jock strap. If I’d have known the durn thing was called a “Lazy Susan” I never would have bought one. To me, it’s my spinning spice rack and occassionally my Scrabble Turntable.
The only thing worse than any given item with a lame name is a unisex clothing item with a lame name. Sun hats? Flip-flops? Clogs? Footies? My ego won’t let me buy 'em, let alone wear 'em. I haven’t worn briefs since I heard them called “tighty whiteys.”
Until fanny packs are marketed as ‘urban utility belts’ I’ll never wear one.*
*(Honesty compels me to admit I wore a fanny pack as part of my Olympic volunteer uniform for a few months during Atlanta’s Team for The Games in 1996. Never before, and not even once since.)
Er, I think you mean “product of the '80s”, right? Because they did first appear in the 1980s, right about the same time that neon clothing was in. And my first fanny pack was neon green. I don’t know what became of it, actually - it was one of those synthetic materials that should have survived a nuclear holocaust - but it vanished somewhere along the line.
However, you can find them in almost every color but neon-whatever these days, including basic black. I have a few, all in quite subdued colors. Yeah, they’re not exactly fashionable, but for long flights and visits to places like amusement parks, they’re extremely practical. And really, on a transatlantic flight with two kids, my last concern is that I might look like a dork.
I suspect they became considered lame when they fell out of fashion, but were still embraced as practical by 1) moms and 2) old ladies. 'Cause those people are just, like, totally the opposite of fashion, y’know? Like, mondo uncool.
I have a suede fannypack and matching Boda(botta?) bag from when I used to go skiing all the time in the 70’s and 80’s. I keep forgetting to use it anymore cause I don’t go that much anymore. I’d imagine they’d throw your ass in jail for public drinking and endangerment if you carried the boda anymore.
The thing that made me see a fanny pack and mentally go laaaaame was a friend wearing one in the front. Every time he went to get something out, it just looked like he was totally reaching into his codpiece for some money.
So two rules: Don’t wear a fanny pack over your crotch. And if you do, definitely don’t use both hands everytime you get something out!
