Shoes and You.

What is it with girls and shoes?

If there's one thing that drives me crazy, it's the stereotypes about girls. Don't get me wrong, I love stereotypes. They help us view the wide expanse of the world and break it down in neat little negative categories. For example, we all understand celebrities are a little douchebaggy. Music guys wear sideways baseball hats. 80s kids still skateboard. Stoners are lazy and like crappy internet videos. Suddenly the world is so much more graspable.

What I take issue with are the actual stereotypes about girls: That diamonds are our best friends. That we're emotional to the point of irrationality. That we'd all get married tomorrow if only someone, anyone would ask. But the one that is just perplexing to me is the thing about girls and shoes.

Girls Love Shoes. There's no denying it. Some even have entire sections of their closets roped off for their shoe collections. This manifests itself in pop culture in horrible ways, like the episode of Sex and the City I watched (to my detriment) last week. One of the girls - the less slutty one with reasonable hair - had a shoe fetish so out of control that she allowed a skeezy shoe salesman (who had a foot fetish - this is clever writing here, folks) to massage her feet in exchange for free shoes that looked like instruments of medieval torture. And, horrifyingly enough, none of her friends seemed to think this was out of the ordinary. Even more horrifyingly, I admit that I got so caught up in this particular plotline that I watched the entire episode...and then the two that followed. Yikes.

But the weird thing is, like every stereotype (you know, celebrities wear white ties, music guys spell things with z's, 80s kids have terrible hairstyles, stoners are lazy and watch terrible internet videos,) there is a nugget of absolute truth to this thing about girls and shoes. I've never owned a pair of high heels, but I do own scores of pairs of Chuck Taylors in varying shades. And I don't just mean radically different colors. I mean various shades and styles within this spectrum of radically different colors. I have an olive green pair, a forest green pair, a kelly green pair... black hitops, black lotops, black slipons, black with Sharpie designs on the toes, black with pink laces....

And though I hate the idea that girls can find happiness in this shallow, materialistic compulsion, I constantly find myself adding to my increasingly inexplicable collection without an ounce of self-awareness. Like the sea turtle migrates, like the moon waxes and wanes, like the stoner continues to plunge the darkest depths of youtube, I find myself in thrift stores, in shoe stores, in sports stores, online, offline, broke, rich, in a hurry, or spending the whole day compulsively buying shoes. Because I am a girl. And I guess the sooner I embrace it, the sooner I can start soothing my irrational emotions, find a nice fella, and settle down with a gigantic rock on my finger. Finally.

Femme Fatality
Boom Chicago