Women's Shoes

I thought I might not have to write this rant. It was one I had planned, but then I read a really encouraging newspaper article about a trend among younger women. It said a lot of younger women were refusing to wear uncomfortable shoes. If it wasn't comfortable, they wouldn't wear it. Now I can't find the article, and I'm wondering if I just dreamed it. Since then I've read disturbing articles like this one in the New York Times. Now, I had planned to write a rant about how stupid women are for wearing high heels, but I guess some women are even stupider than I thought. Toe cleavage? What twisted soul came up with the concept of toe cleavage? This is supposed to be a sexy thing? There are women willingly having parts of their feet surgically removed in order to wear designer shoes? Did they not realize that Cinderella's stepsisters were models of how not to behave?

I just don't get high heels. Women who wear them say they like the way their feet look in them and the way their legs look when they're wearing them. They think they're sexy. I understand that they're icons of sexiness, but I just don't think they're sexy. To me, a woman wearing stiletto heels is wearing the "sexy" icon. She therefore looks like a prostitute. She doesn't look sexy though. The women in the REI catalogs with their Teva sandals and hiking boots, on the other hand -- they're hot young things. I guess the difference is a woman in stiletto heels looks like she wouldn't be able to run (e.g., run away from an attacker) or walk or do much of anything in such impractical shoes. The women in the REI catalogs look healthy and active. You could go hiking with them or for a walk in the woods. You couldn't go for a walk in the woods with a woman in stiletto heels. But I guess a woman in stiletto heels wouldn't want to go for a walk in the woods.

Another thing women say they like about their high heels is they look "professional." What, the shoes have a job? I guess they really mean the shoes look like the wearer makes a whole lot of money (though I already mentioned what profession I associated the shoes with). Well, obviously anyone buying designer shoes that cost several hundreds of dollars and spending thousands of dollars to have cosmetic surgery on their feet has more money than they know what to do with. Of course not everyone who wears high heels buys shoes that cost more than a nice bicycle or has surgery. But I don't really understand this reasoning either. I see plenty of women wearing nice clothes with nice flat shoes, so I don't understand the ones who feel only high heels are acceptable.

I don't actually see a lot of high heels in Ann Arbor. It's a pretty casual town. Sometimes I see thick clunky (and ugly) heels, but hardly ever narrow heels. When I do, I find myself wondering, "Are you from out of town?"

I went through a brief period in high school when I wore heels, when I wanted to look older, I guess. Then I went through my punk phase and wore boots or shoes with flat soles. Ever since then, I've refused to wear anything uncomfortable on principle. Even some flat shoes I've tried on have been uncomfortable. I don't quite understand how someone who designs shoes for a living can not understand how feet are shaped. And even more, I don't understand why women are willing to wear shoes that are physically painful. When I was in high school I had an excuse: I was a stupid kid. Adults should know better.

Men's shoes are shaped like men's feet. Women's shoes are often not shaped like feet at all.

I remember many times trying to find a pair of shoes in a shoe store. I looked around. So many of the shoes were so...girly. They weren't anything that I wanted to wear. Everything I picked up that looked comfortable ended up being a man's shoe. Well, I wasn't picky. Did they have it in a small enough size to fit my foot? No.

It's possible both trends are happening concurrently. There probably are a sizeable number of women smart enough to refuse to wear anything uncomfortable. Someone must be buying the Teva sandals and hiking boots! And like I said, I don't see a lot of high heels in Ann Arbor. It's hard to know how much is a trend and how much is regional. People from elsewhere have remarked that we dress more casually here. But I have seen high heels for sale in department stores. Someone must be buying those too.

I think a lot of the women who buy them don't wear high heels all the time, but only in certain circumstances. They dress up for special occasions, and that entails wearing high heels. I don't really understand why high heels are necessary to dress up. But then I don't understand why it's necessary to have so many different pairs of shoes for different occasions. Granted, I don't really have a lifestyle of cocktail parties and soirees, and I haven't been to a wedding in years (for my own wedding, I bought a new pair of hiking boots. They went well with the wedding dress I made from the $40 floral print cotton bedspread I bought at Pier One. But that was 13 years ago). But I wouldn't even have more than two pairs of shoes if I didn't need to wear different thicknesses of socks in different seasons (one pair is just for gardening so they can get full of mud). As it is, I have so few pairs of shoes, I'm in danger of having my "girl license" revoked. Other women commonly have dozens of pairs. This is completely ridiculous.

I hear women say they're going to go shopping for shoes, and I can hear this glee, like they're saying "Oh boy! Shoes!" I think to myself then, "You already have way more shoes than you need, don't you? Why are you buying more?" They're shoe collectors. Shoe collecting seems to be a common hobby among American women. A rather expensive hobby. And a physically painful one for many of them.

The most disturbing reason women give for liking their high heels is that they make them "feel more feminine." So...if they take off their high heels and put on flats, they don't feel like women? That's pretty sick. In other words, they're not girly enough.

Our culture's obsession with women being girly girls is physically and mentally damaging. Look at the extremes women are going to -- having parts of themselves hacked off to fit into shoes that aren't shaped anything like feet in order to feel "feminine." Talk about mentally ill. What is "feminine" anyway? I don't dress like a girly girl and I don't wear anything uncomfortable; still anyone looking at me will have no doubt that I'm a woman, except maybe when I'm wearing my jacket and several layers underneath it, and they're looking at me from a distance. I don't really see what it matters though. I still know I'm a woman. Don't these women know they're women? Do they need to wear physically painful shoes to remind them?