Maybe it’s just me, and years of living on the sexual margins have made me all to ready to see hints and innuendo every where I look, but even from my warped perspective, I have to ask what exact message is this woman trying to send with her canvas tote with the shackles and noose on the side?

She was coolly reading the New Yorker from when she got on at Seventh Avenue til when she got off at 34th Street, in an outfit that had no other hints of kinkiness. Is the image an invitation to bondage or an expression of freedom from it? Some random importation of violent motifs onto the side of canvas totes as part of a fashion statement? I’ll never know.