The Encyclopedia of Contemporary British Culture defines handbag house as having "prominent female vocals, breakdowns, and a proliferation of piano 'stabs'.
Such samples come from soul, disco, gospel recordings and even show tunes performed by singers like Bette Midler, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, and other gay icons.
According to music historians Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, by the mid-1990s handbag house had helped to make clubbing into a "mainstream leisure activity.
Music critic Simon Reynolds asserts that handbag house was "initially a disparaging term, coined by condescending cognoscenti vis-à-vis the anthemic, chart-penetrating house tunes that allegedly appealed to women, and above all to the folk-mythic construct of Sharon and Tracy.
"[7] Brill maintains that bias against handbag house "is expressed most clearly in a femininisation of the denigrated 'mainstream' of pop culture against which subcultures define themselves.