This may well sound heretical to most of the members of my sex, but I’m going to say it and risk reproach anyway: Enough with the shoes.
I know. I know. I’m a woman. An adult, human, American woman. I am supposed to love shoes. Not just love them; lerve them. Flove them. Adore them. Kneel before their beauty, tremble in their glow. Stop dead at store windows displaying a perfect Prada pump; shiver with delight at the flash of a red Louboutin sole. But lately: well, the whole shoe mania thing is leaving me cold. And a little (dare I say it?) pissed off.
Now, I’m not going to lie. I have definitely experienced unbridled shoe lust. Indeed, I’ve spent some serious money on shoes. There is in fact, one pair of shoes in my closet that remain in their box, cosseted within like special jewels in their own silken bag. The label faces out, emblazoned with the name of the shoe (they have their own name! like pets!), the designer and the price. The price. I caught sight of it the other day and a mirthless laugh burst out of me like a trapped bird.
I once spent $450 on a pair of shoes.
I wasn’t much richer then, a few years ago. I hadn’t yet faced more than a year of unemployment, so maybe I felt safer somehow. (Idiot!) But I still worked in a highly speculative field, where you’re always singing for your supper, and all but the lucky few are one bad spell away from desperation. And I wasn’t making that much money. I had no business spending $250 on a pair of shoes, much less $450. At least I didn’t do it on a whim, I suppose–I tried them on with one friend, brought another to “visit” them with me, talked about the pluses and minuses endlessly before finally plopping down my credit card. Even so, now, it seems the height of folly.
Admittedly, the shoes are gorgeous; a pair of Robert Clegerie platform sandals in a rich, brown crocodile embossed leather–very 40’s via 70’s in style and shape. A pair of shoes you’d imagine a neo-Barbara Stanwyck wearing in a particularly stylish remake of Double Indemnity. They make my feet look lovely. I was coming off a bad break-up and obviously wanted lovely feet. But $450 (nearly five hundred with tax!) for lovely feet? What kind of madness is this?
These shoes also make me—just a touch shy of five foot eight barefoot—nearly six feet tall. What the hell do I need that for? According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the average height for an adult male in the United States is 5’ 9”; do I really need to tower over nearly half the guys in the room? (The answer: no.) And though the shoes are not uncomfortable, well; they’re not comfortable either. They’re basically just a block of…something…covered in leather and attached with a bunch of pretty straps and buckles. It’s not like I can walk easily in them. These are shoes you have to think about walking in. Silly moi; I’ve come to prefer my walking fairly effortless. Like breathing.
Not to mention, the most horrifying thing of all, the thing I finally realized when I was wearing these gorgeous things one night, towering over half the people in the room: No one looks at my feet. This is what I’ve come to realize, the older I get. Here’s the hard, cold truth of it: if your face isn’t doing it? If your body doesn’t do it after that? Your goddamned feet aren’t going to seal the deal. Brooklyn Decker could walk into a party wearing rainbow-striped toe-socks shoved into ratty Tivas and every guy in the room would angle to be near her. I could walk into the same party in the most expensive, dazzling pair of Pradas and no one will look at me one way or another. (Maybe some other woman will squeal, “I love your shoes!” Who cares, really.) It’s just a fact. For me, spending money on shoes is a fruitless endeavor; if my shoes are the sexiest thing about me, I’ve already lost. Those Clegeries weren’t going to repair my broken heart, or get my boyfriend back. And if he ran into me when I was wearing them, they wouldn’t make him burn with regret or give me a smug swell of “fuck you, I’m fabulous without you” satisfaction. They’d just make me an inch taller than him. And probably feel a bit more pinchy than him around the footal area.
I get that other people love shoes. And surely, they can contribute to the “whole package” as they say. The perfect shoes with the perfect dress and so on. If you’re going on a talk show, yes; a nice pair of shoes crossed right in front of camera one is probably a good thing. I understand that high heels make a woman’s legs look “more beautiful” (according to contemporary beauty standards, anyway). A friend of mine told me that the right pair of shoes can make her feel incredibly powerful—and goodness knows power isn’t something to sneeze it. And I still occasionally see a pair that I can’t help jonesing for and have, admittedly, put in my time trying to replace a beloved pair with something similar on Zappos.
But the Sex in the City, hysterical fetishization of shoes—particularly the womanly high heels I’m supposed to hunger for–is just…gone. (Interestingly, my friend’s fantasy “power shoes” were kick ass boots with a low heel.) I don’t want to struggle to walk. I don’t want to be in pain while engaged in that most taxing of physical endeavors otherwise known as “standing”. And I’m not willing to completely sacrifice those basic human desires—mobility, comfort—for the whims of fashion. (Pro Tip: when a woman tells you that a pair of high-heeled shoes “are really comfortable!” she is, at the very least, equivocating. Her shoes are, possibly, “really comfortable!” in comparison to another pair of shoes. Or walking over alcohol soaked metal spikes. They are not “really comfortable!” objectively or, for you men, compared to any pair of shoes you have ever worn or will ever wear in your entire life.)
I’m sure my churlishness is a function of age: there’s a lot I just don’t give a fuck about anymore. But I can’t help but wonder—and be both a little fascinated and a little appalled—by the amount of time and energy and ardor we woman expend on this…obsession. They go on your feet, after all. All the way down there, near the floor. I actually understand plastic surgery and hair dye and pretty earrings to sparkle near your face and well cut clothes to enhance your figure but…our shoes? Are they really worth all this hysteria, this multimillion dollar industry, the $25,000 lifetime outlay (according to a 2010 study) that women apparently plunk down for them? Is there some possibility here that…we’ve all been hoodwinked?
Even the best of us; Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel have to do the work of nations wearing high heels, while their male counterparts get to stride around in sturdy Oxfords. (And then get mocked for their “cankles” in the process.) And that, well, kind of pisses me off. I know, they’re “fun”, they’re harmless!, they’re Just Shoes. But are they? When we spend this much money on them, this much time on them, and get mis-shapen, aching feet for our trouble? When there is an actual, entire industry in cosmetic foot surgery that exists almost entirely to make our naturally well designed, they-come-in-might-handy-down-there-bub feet fit better into “cute” “strappy” sandals? (The procedures include: toe lengthening, straightening, slimming and straightening; foot narrowing; foot padding—which consists of excess body fat being injected into the balls of the foot—and hyperhidrosis—botox for your awful, smelly, sweating feet, you disgusting wretch, you.) The shoe industrial complex, I think, may have gone too far—and we may have bought too much of what they’re selling. As heels get higher and odder, as the shapes get further away from anything resembling our actual feet, as they get more and more challenging to walk in (the Leaning Tower of Pisa totter that I so often see women attempting just pains me), I wonder if a beauty ideal for our most practical of body parts should actually be physically painful and maybe even permanently disfiguring to reach. Isn’t there something just a smidge wrong with that?
Christian Louboutin, the crown prince of shoe designers, he of the trademarked red sole, said in The New Yorker, “…I hate the whole concept of comfort! It’s like when people say, ‘Well, we’re not really in love, but we’re in a comfortable relationship.’ You’re abandoning a lot of ideas when you are too into comfort. ‘Comfy’—that’s one of the worst words! I just picture a woman feeling bad, with a big bottle of alcohol, really puffy. It’s really depressing, but she likes her life because she has comfortable clogs.”
Well, isn’t he a hateful little man! He hates comfort! Does he hate cool breezes, dappled sunlight and oxygen too? And why is he trying to make us hate comfort? Does he wear his own four-inch heels? I bet not. And that, frankly, makes me mad. It pushes my rage-meter up to eleven and unleashes my inner radical feminist. It makes me wonder if we women aren’t undermining ourselves. We’re still storming the fortresses of business and law of government and entertainment—we haven’t gotten anywhere close to parity yet. Can we fight the good fight with aching, pinched, blistered feet? (Should we have to?) Faltering on heels that can barely support us, unable to walk easily or—god forbid it’s necessary—break into a good run? Why is this a good thing again? I know: we’re supposed to suffer for fashion. And I will—but only a little. I’m going to do everything I can to find shoes that I like, that don’t hate me.
Image: Flickr
