“For too long, the fanny pack’s cultural baggage has prevented potential adoptees from embracing its sheer practicality”

For too long, the fanny pack’s cultural baggage has prevented potential adoptees from embracing its sheer practicality. To the unenlightened, fanny packs are synony­mous with the ugly American: the perfect accessory for extra-large, convenience-obsessed people. But to me they promote the greatest of our nation’s ideals: freedom.

What other accessory ensures the safety of your essentials, with easy access, while also liberating your hands? The fanny pack, when used properly, enables a whole host of activities that other bags render awkward: a deep embrace, a dance party, the ability to quickly find and swipe and secure your MetroCard. Through its rare combination of aesthetic contrarianism and functionality, it enables a life of wild abandon.

Jaime Lowe, “Fanny Packs”, The New York Times Magazine (6 September 2015), 19.