The Shoe Fits

Recently I found a journal that my mother kept when I was a baby. At eighteen months my mother writes, “Karen is inordinately fond of shoes. Whenever she’s behaving like a miniature Fidel Castro, I give her a pair of my shoes to play with and she transforms into a baby angel.”

I was not at all surprised to read this. In fact, I wouldn’t have even noted the entry at all, except for the fact that I happened to read it just minutes after discovering I seemed to have lost the ability to operate my right foot. My uneducated diagnosis is that the five-inch platform heels I was wearing all day somehow caused a pinched nerve, rendering me a female Dudley Moore ala Arthur, dragging one useless foot around and disguising it as mere drunkenness.

Will this keep me from wearing high heels, or even these particular high heels? Of course not. Don’t be silly. These shoes cost $150, and Jessica Simpson was seen wearing them two weeks ago to a premiere, and they are on Oprah’s “must have” list, and they are so totally cute and make my legs look unbelievably sexy, so long as I’m standing still and leaning on something, and not trying to actually walk.

“Huh,” I said, sitting on the couch and staring at my right foot, which refused to move when I told it to and instead hung limply but beautifully adorned. “Look at that. I can’t move my foot.”

My husband was alarmed, but I was pretty sure it was temporary, and it was. When he tried to insist I stop wearing the shoes, due to the fact that mobility is an extremely handy trait to have as a human being, an argument ensued that very nearly resulted in a trial separation. You don’t get between a woman and her shoes. But men simply don’t understand the shoe thing. Men don’t understand anything having to do with fashion but I think shoes are particularly baffling, because they are the most likely to cause severe crippling. “If the shoe fits, who cares if it causes musculature damage?” is my motto.

“What’s so great about shoes?” my exasperated husband wanted to know as he vigorously rubbed my comatose foot.

So I’ll let you fellas in on the secret, which isn’t really a secret at all but just plain common sense: The great thing about shoes is that no matter how fat we get, no matter how bloated we are, no matter how many babies we’ve had we always wear the same shoe size.

Shopping for any other type of attire almost always ends in a week-long depression and crash-diet. Bathing suit shopping makes us suicidal and, incidentally, would be a very effective form of torture on female prisoners of war. (“Tell us where the plans are hidden or I will make you try on this thong in a size 6!” Shrieking: “NOT THE THONG! PLEASE NOT THE THONG!”).

But shoes always fit. There is no greater high than a pair of heels. I could be having the worst day, but if I slip on a pair of strappy silver stilettos, all is right with the world.

Also, shoes have the power to make a bland outfit fabulous. For example, if your skirt is too long for your short legs, slip on a pair of heels and oila! You are a 5’9” fashion goddess. If your jeans are outdated, throw on some jazzy suede boots and ta-da! New fashion statement.

Shoes are, quite simply, magic. Dorothy’s got her home from Oz. Cinderella would still be scrubbing stone floors if it weren’t for her glass slipper. And there’s that old lady who lives in her shoe, something I can only dream of, particularly if it was a giant Manolo Blahnik d’orsay pump.

I know what you guys are thinking. You’re thinking, “Karen, your arguments make very sound sense. But what about that movie The Red Shoes? Didn’t the ballerina shoes kill that woman?” To which I respond: “Some women just can’t handle their shoes.” A real woman would have sucked it up, told her shoes who’s boss, and gone to the chiropractor six times a week to have her spine realigned like everybody else. There’s never any reason your shoes should be the cause of your demise. If they are, then it’s because of something you did wrong.

Many years ago, before there was the Fashion Police or Joan Rivers (we’re talking centuries here), men invented high heels and they liked them so much they kept them for themselves. And they wore satin bows on them, because men have no fashion sense, and they wore them with white tights and shiny shorty pants for the same reason. And then one day they looked at each other, and they realized they looked like complete idiots. And so they gave the heels to women, who did cry in joy, and who did paireth them with gorgeous dresses and sparkly things, and everybody lived happily ever after.

You can’t argue with historical fact, and history shows us clearly that you guys only try to dissuade us women from our beautiful shoes because you’re bitter that you couldn’t handle them. But I think understanding the origins of this issue, not to mention the shiny shorty pants embarrassment, should help you get in better touch with your latent shoe insecurities.

So, ladies, go forth and prosper, but slowly so you don’t break an ankle, and men, now that you understand the logical necessity of a pair of $200 embroidered five-inch pointed-toe stilettos, you can release your own selfish issues and there should be fewer domestic arguments everywhere. My work here is done, and now I must sign off, because the air’s getting a bit thin up here and I feel like I might just fai…..