Take a look, if you dare, at the ads in the hoity fashion magazines.

What we women have always considered a third arm or a container for stuff that you don't leave home without has become a sex symbol.

The purse/pocketbook/handbag/tote/satchel is using sex as a tool to sell what we always thought of as a mere accessory, like shoes, and never considered an item to be carried when naked.

No, our purse was always meant to "blend" with an existing outfit and, at one time, to match our shoes. Now it matches flesh.

What happened?

Are such ads meant to lure men to pick up that handbag as a gift for a girlfriend (doubtful if a wife is the recipient), or are they meant to suggest to a woman that if she buys and carries that purse that she will take on the sexuality and the trim body of the model hired for this fashion statement?

Yes, sex sells. I just never equated it with my pocketbook, purse, handbag or whatever you happen to call it.

I recently went through several fashion magazines and was struck by the pages of advertising, sometimes double pages, in which the object of desire, the handbag, was offered to us in sexy ways -- from between the legs of a totally naked Kate Moss for Longchamp Paris, or in an ad for Dior, in which Moss' body parts are partially exposed.

Prada, Kate Spade, Anne Klein, Fendi, Tignanello, Chanel, Marc Jacobs, Juicy Couture, Dooney & Bourke are just a few labels luring us to look and lust after their products.

Cesare Paciotti ads show a model stretched out on the floor, naked except for black panties and shoes, a small evening-style handbag on her arm held above her head. The other arm is across her bare bosom, with the image twice as nice because it is reflected in a mirror.

Models who do wear clothing in handbag ads usually wear black so as not to detract from the star of the photo shoot -- the powerful purse.

The message of power if you buy my purse is said without words. The seduction is often in the eyes of the model, not in the nudity.

Forgetting the sex, if you can for just a moment, what about the prices?

When you see a Fendi at more than $5,000 (granted, it's lambskin) or a Bottega Veneta clutch at more than $1,000 (granted, it's sterling silver), or Prada at more than $2,000 (granted, it's waterproof), a mere $400 sounds like a bargain. I'm still at $39.95.

Let's throw in a little violence. Dolce & Gabbana is showing ads in which a model fully clothed in 17th-century style, including a powdered wig, has a meat knife at the neck of another similarly attired model who looks as if she might have eaten tainted meat. Of course this is to advertise a large handbag embroidered with a crown and D&G initials, which she is clutching to her (I assume) dying bosom.

The New York Times reports:

"The models in the new Marc Jacobs ads are practically having sex."

Yet another tease: "Seriously, these Balenciaga shoes are better than sex."

And: "With typical fashion-world perversity, designers are pimping both nondenominational monastic androgyny and overtly sexual posturing."

What?

Our pocketbooks are perverse?

Could be. Or so the advertising world is telling us with overtly sexual posturing. Who knew?