Shoe-In

I ran some errands last night on my way home - the car needed a Jiffy Lube (and boy was it Jiffy yesterday! Very impressed.), my watch needed a new battery, that kind of thing. Well, my watch, being the snotty little thing that it is, can't just get a battery from anywhere. Ok, the battery could probably come from anywhere, but you have to have this special tool to open the back and places like WalMart and so forth don't have it. You have to go to the Fossil store. *sigh*

So there's a Fossil store in the mall near my house, so on my way from getting a new battery (which they gave me for free since the last one I had lasted less than a year - yay 1 year Guarantees!) I noticed a shoe store. Mmm...shoes.

Well, I decided to nip in and look around since I really DO need a new pair of simple black heels (dare I say, Pumps? Does anyone refer to heeled shoes as pumps anymore? Anyway, that's the idea of what I need, a nice black shoe that will go with anything because my patent leather black shoes died on my business trip - the heel of one broke off, thankfully I had tennies with me to wear the last day - so I just left them there in the trash. They were old, it's true, but I really liked them.) So I walked up and down the aisles and found a few things I liked but...on my feet, they all look like clown shoes.

Fashion and I have never been good friends. I’m proportioned wrong for just about anything that qualifies as fashionable. I’m short and short waisted to start with. Never a good combination. The only really good fashion for that is an empire waist and that hasn’t been fashionable since…oh before I was born, honestly. It tried for a little in the 80s, but didn’t last. So I have watched with chagrin as shoes have gotten pointier and pointier over the last couple of years. I will say with certainty that they have now passed the point of absurdity. All they need to do is start curling up at the ends and we’ll all be walking around in jester shoes thinking we’re so fashionable.

As it is now, women’s shoes either bring to mind a clown shoe – where the shoe sticks out literally 2 and a half inches past your toe (I measured…I wear an 8 shoe, the shoe was the length of a size 11 sneaker), encouraging you to trip and just making your feet look enormous (what must ladies with big feet be feeling right now!?) or a witch. Because they all taper to a sharp point and you can feel the cackle building at the back of your throat as you walk around. Gak.

There is another option. The snub-toe. It seems we have only two extremes – the clown/witch shoe and then the MaryJane-esq shoe with such a supremely snubbed toe that it looks as if you have undergone the ancient practice of Chinese foot binding and your feet end unnaturally sooner than they should. Neither is flattering. Seriously, what are shoe designers thinking?

The only other option is the therapeutic loafer look. You know the shoe. The one that nurses and waitresses wear because they’re good for their feet. But they’re ugly and not really a good match with a business suit. Even slacks. I’m not quite old enough to shop at SAS.

Beyond that, there’s the heels. I like a high heel – 2 or 3 inches is great – but seriously folks, the heel has to be at the back of the shoe, not stuck like an ice pick in the middle of where your heel is, leaving heel unsupported all around it. What a way to turn your ankle! And (thankfully) clunky heels seem to have gone away, so that’s something, I suppose.

So now I’m stuck. Do I keep looking at my usual haunts (the discount shoe warehouse type place) or do I try department stores to see if they have better selections of what I would consider a “normal” shoe? Or am I just stuck? Do I just need to suck it up and find myself a broom, pointy hat and walk around in my oh-so-fashionable shoes hoping a house doesn’t fall on me?