Ladies, in the deep recesses of your handbag lies the glue of the world -- or at least, a

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lot of junk that could probably make the glue of the world, had you a roll of duct tape or some flour and water in there.

And we bet some of you do. It's not clear how, but our bags have ballooned from a hand-held pouch to a purse that can moonlight as a duffle bag. It's time to set down your 10-pound monster (gently, we don't want that baby going through the floor) and examine what the heck you're lugging around. A recent survey of women around town found that an average stash includes lipstick (always No. 1), wallet, checkbook, sunglasses, gum or mints, nail file and hair accessories. But that's just a start. The typical mom, like 43-year- old Joanie Bianci of Falcon, carries slightly more, including diapers, candy, a change of clothes for the kids, a small Swiss army knife and a pocket flashlight. "It just feels like a sense of security to me," Bianci says. "I can't go anywhere without it -- I feel naked without my purse." Her purse, however, weighed in at only about a pound, but that's atypical for a lot of women. (Bianci admits she just cleaned out her purse.) Many clients of Tara Finkstein, a chiropractor at Sanders Chiropractic in Colorado Springs, carry 15- to 20-pound purses, in addition to laptop bags and gym bags. Lugging around that much weight can cause problems over the long haul, especially because women tend to favor one side when carrying a purse. That puts pressure on the brachial plexus, a bundle of nerves running from the spine down the arm. In the worst cases, damage to this area can be irreversible, causing a loss of feeling in the arm. "What we're seeing is overdeveloped muscles on just one side," Finkstein said. "It also tends to alter the bone structure." So why do we put ourselves through all of this pain? Well, that's what women do. "Traditionally, women -- as being in charge of the household and child raising -- have carried stuff not only for them, but the household and children," said Patti Adler, sociology professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. But even before motherhood, women tend to carry more than they need. Hersha Steinbock, instructor in the School of Fashion at the Academy of Art University in led light bulbs San Francisco, offers this explanation: "There have been people who have suggested that there is a Freudian interpretation of why we are connected to our bags as women -- that somehow it represents the womb, the inner most recesses," she said. "We carry (our purses) like we carry children. We carry our bag with our things from our inside, so to speak."

So there's that creepy way of looking at it. But she also offers this explanation: history.

Up until the 20th century, American and European women owned little more than their jewels, which they carried in a small pouch under their dresses to use as currency in case of an emergency, Steinbock said. Men also carried bags, filled with paperwork or religious relics. Along the line, the genders split -- men got briefcases and women took the purse.

"There's this whole history to this that makes the bag -- this thing that holds stuff -- significant," Steinbock said. "What is this thing that is causing women to collect these items, to covet them? What gives them so much meaning?"

Then we have a more contemporary explanation: the celebrity culture (oh, Hollywood, how we love to hate you). With celebrities toting $10,000 "arm candy," and the market following whatever Britney or Paris do, designers are clamoring to unveil the next hottest thing or at least rip off the latest trend, and lately, that's meant going
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