“A good bag can carry a lot. A book. A laptop. Children’s messy things. A meeting. A weekend away. An unpredictable rainy day. But maybe that’s not the point. Maybe the point is that we really don’t have to carry everything. Especially not all at once.”

Featured bag: Vera in Navy. Available here.

I don’t usually reach for the biggest BookTok hits, but Yesteryear caught my attention for practically all the right reasons. From the intriguing premise of a successful tradwife influencer whose seemingly perfect life is, quite literally, “hijacked” when she wakes up one morning in a far less romantic version of her idyllic rural existence, to its highly photogenic cover and the promise of an upcoming film adaptation with Anne Hathaway as both producer and lead actress, playing Natalie.

After reading the book, I wondered about it A LOT. And after that, I wondered what I should highlight for this blog. I could have focused on influencer culture and the art of pretending. Or on the dangers of the renewed popularity of traditional values. But once you read this breathtaking book — a reading experience that at times feels a little like watching a car crash (you can’t look away, yet at the same time, you’re afraid of what you’re about to see and discover) — you realise that all of this was, in fact, just the backdrop.

Because underneath it is yet another story about the role of women. Modern, yet lost. Surrounded by the wrong people and an environment that offers little support, no real guidance, or even toxic suggestions for solutions. Another story about choices that aren’t really choices at all. Or, to quote the book: “The way some women so willingly compromised every ounce of themselves in the name of building a life for themselves that they didn’t enjoy.”

Natalie is an illustration of a phenomenon that can happen when an intelligent, ambitious, powerful woman is constrained by patriarchy into a limited role that doesn’t allow her to question, grow, or achieve except by performing that role in the most extreme possible way.

She has built her perfection like a brand: the perfect family, the perfect home, the perfect way of life. But before long, a much more complicated reality begins to emerge from behind the stage. The novel is therefore a witty and dark satire of tradition, motherhood, and fame — but above all, it is a reflection on the idea of femininity that we so often perform, even for ourselves.

Until this more or less successful lie becomes like the forgotten bill at the bottom of your bag — one you haven’t paid for far too long, while the interest keeps building up every day.

Expectations. Roles. Ideas about what it means to be a good mother, a good partner, a successful woman. And that quiet expectation that somehow, we should carry it all with a smile.

At what cost?

What if tomorrow we dared to be wrong? Do we even allow ourselves this word? To be a slightly less perfect version of the woman others — and we ourselves — expect us to be. A little messier. A little less ambitious. A little gentler. More real?

And perhaps that is where a good bag comes in.

Not as another thing we need to get right. Not as another symbol of the perfect woman. But as something that simply goes with us — through the beautiful days, the messy ones, the meetings, the weekends, the rain, the unexpected turns.

Your chosen VIVA’S bag, made of leather in Slovenia, is built to carry what matters. But perhaps the real luxury is knowing what we can leave behind.

The expectations. The performance. The pressure to have it all figured out.

Because maybe the best thing we can carry into tomorrow is a little less. And a little more of ourselves.

- Ana Kompara (@mamainljubljana).