Agony of De Feet

The Agony of De Feet

by Karen Williams - Oviedo Voice - May 13, 2004

I’m no podiatrist. (That’s “foot doctor” for you lay persons.) But, speaking on behalf of aching dogs everywhere, I hereby demand that my fellow-women stop wearing those torture instruments they regard as high-fashion shoes.

The human foot was never designed for the shoes that it’s being forced, not only to put on, but to actually WALK AROUND THE MALL IN these days. Toes were not meant to be crammed into a needle-sharp isosceles triangle formation. Heels were not intended to be pushed up in the air and balanced

on a tiny spike that could double as a toothpick. Wearing this type of shoes can lead to bunions, calluses, ankle injuries, and hammer toes (valuable only if you intend to use your feet to remodel the house). This footwear can also lead to bankruptcy.

Yes, these shoes are diabolically expensive. Women are actually footing a big bill in order to torment their tootsies. At this very moment, at fancy shoppes around the country, you can pay $600 for a pair of high-fallutin’ shoes. No, that isn’t $6 or $60. That’s SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS, as in let’s-go-way-over-our-credit-card-limit. For many of us, that’s more than we spend in a YEAR on necessities like fast food. Have women gone mad? (Men, that’s a rhetorical question, meaning DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT ANSWERING.)

And it’s not that this costly footwear is in some hidden way versatile, practical, or beneficial in the overall scheme of things. Many of today’s sought-after glamour shoes are high-heeled sandals boasting little more than a skinny strap or two. A person could find more leather stuck in their teeth after a steak dinner. And don’t even CONSIDER wearing these foot bikinis on anything more rugged than a tiptoe through the tulips.

What is behind this irrational shoe craze? Well, it came in with the Barbie doll and her dainty footwear and will probably be around till somebody develops Geriatric Barbie wearing sturdy shoes and coming with her own nail fungus ointment. But a popular HBO TV series (we’ll call it Sox and the City) also bears responsibility. In this show, one character named Carrie is obsessed with trendy footwear. Podiatrists reportedly begged the show’s writers to change Carrie’s preference to Birkenstocks and Dr. Scholl’s. Nothing doing. Meanwhile, women everywhere are flirting with heel pain and fallen arches as they teeter around on shoes like Carrie’s.

I, for one, learned my own harsh lesson about fancy shoes and dutifully share my trauma so that others can benefit. In a moment of weakness, I took out a second mortgage and bought several pairs of glamour shoes. As if training for the Olympics, I diligently practiced walking in the high heels and did well as long as I plodded in a quasi-stomping fashion in which my heel and toe met the floor at the same time. Then, one Sunday, I was ready to do a test run on them at a church service.

When I went to the front of the church to sing with the choir, one of my stiletto heels slipped down an opening in the furnace register and became stuck. I yanked. I tugged. I nearly fell. I turned red. Yet I couldn’t get my shoe loose. Finally, I was forced to abandon my footwear to its fate and hobble to the choir loft wearing one high heel and one bare foot. People stared and grinned.

The minister’s sermon that day was “Falling on Your Face before Christ.” I took that as a warning and traded my Jimmy Choo’s for Earth Shoes and my Manolo’s for man boots. And I never looked back. Yes, I’m now much shorter. I’m dowdier. But my feet haven’t been this happy since my first pair of Keds.