Letters to the Editor
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the new low...
is Katharine dismissing this article. The average woman ownes 19 pairs of shoes. That's absurd. Please spend money in more socially productive areas. Please. Err, don't let me shoehorn you into feeling uncomfortable about excessive female consumption.
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19 pairs of shoes
That actually does have a name: "mindless greed."
(Full disclosure: I have three pairs - New Balance for running, Keens for three seasons, All-Weather Mocs for the fourth. I should probably have a pair of winter boots, which will bring me to four pairs. I am uncomfortable with even that number, but I'm guessing most American men have about that many too.)
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It's not so hard
Hmm. let's see basic middle class female shoe needs broken up roughly into 3 seasons.
1 - pair of summer sandles dressy
1 - pair of flip flops
1 - pair of casual sandles
2 - pairs of dress/work shoes summer (1 dark, 1 light)
2 - pairs of dress/work shoes fall (1 dark, 1 light)
2 - pairs of fall loafers (1 dark, 1 light)
1 - pair of sneakers
1 - pair of wet weather/duck boots
1 - pair of snow boots
2 - pair of dress boots (1 ankle, 1 knee)
1 - pair of slippers
That's 15 pairs of shoes.
It's easy to see how it gets out of control. I alloted only a 2 pair of type max, but we all know dark and light aren't enough designations, it's really , white, beige, brown, black and blue.
I have three pairs of slippers, not because I am out of control but 1 pair are dead and I keep them for when I can't find the pair i like. There's the pair I like. and then there's the pair I was given as a gift, tried to wear for a month, don't like and feel guilty throwing away.
There's the new sneakers and the cruddy pair for painting. and so on and so forth. and I don't consider myself a shoe person.
How about the fact that I went up a shoe size after my second child. It took 8 years to finally admit my feet weren't going to shrink and to purge all of the wrong size shoes.
Oh maybe I missed the point, my list and closet have zero stilettos.
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As the previous poster has pointed out, 19 is not that many
I wonder how someone like Melthough goes to a wedding, a nice restaurant, the opera, a dinner party, a cocktail party, etc. Where does Melthough work, don't you need heels for job interviews or something?
Even my boyfriend had 9 pairs of shoes...
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Please explain
Katharine, I really am curious, what is the point of this post. Is it to lambast women with many shoes? Is it to lambast people to celebrate the fact that women have many shoes? (These seem wrong-headed in the day and age where people should have the freedom to do WHATEVER they want.)
Is it to lambast people who make corny puns? (Why do I care?)
Is it to lambast people who make slightly homophobic corny puns? (A reasonable point, but not one that came across.)
Really, I read your post, and I thought about it, but I have no idea why you wrote it and I'd like to.
Thanks.
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Superior tone here?
I love reading Broadsheet, but it's entries like this that cause me to hang my head in shame for being a feminist or a woman of the ilk that reads feminist blogs, etc. Why? Because the sarcastic tone of this entry smacks of superiority. I suppose women who love shoes can't also be feminists, right? To me, however, I envision a world where many different types of women can come together to advocate for issues important to women. I am so very tired of the separatist, exclusionary attitudes of uppity feminists who use feminism as just another form of intellectual snobbery. Such an attitude not only accomplishes nothing for women as a whole, but it's counter-productive.
The insinuation here is that women should be ashamed of talking about their love for something that has a negative stereotypical connotation (i.e. shoes), as if it proves to the world that women are exactly as shallow, materialistic and unserious as "men" have suspected all along. I say screw that. As women we need to own whoever we are and whatever our likes and dislikes are, no matter how trite or disappointingly common they might be in the context of traditionally femininity. You don't see men apologizing for their obsessions with sport cars, video games and other toys.
The gals on Sex in the City may not be "path breakers"- they were just individual female character fabrications. However, I think that whatever harm was done by the touting of rampant materialism on Sex in the City was nullified by the depiction of a group of friends with realistically varying values (the Samantha to Charlotte spectrum) that presented how women with a lot of differences can not only be friends but be confronted with the same kinds of female-specific issues.
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My Birkenstocks are made from
Recycled tofu tires. And hair. Anything else is contrary to the dielectric or something like that.
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"Stiletto obsession"?
The subtitle of the Salon article is a bit misleading.
While the article mentions injury by shoes, it really doesn't say that most women have 19 pairs of those horrible things. I went into my closet and counted- I have about 25 pairs of shoes- mostly Sketchers and low boots of various sorts. I rotate them by season, although I've been wearing some of my boots year round because I loathe frozen feet in the summertime.
Here's the irony: I have to wonder what someone would say if they discovered that I had 6 computers? Or two dozen maneki neko cats? Or 800 CDs? Or 3,722 books of various sorts? And you do NOT want to see how many various dishes I have... I like dishes like other ladies like shoes. My place settings are very Wabi-Sabi. Fiestaware? I have a rainbow in my cabinet.
I suppose the bottom line is that people tend to collect (and accumulate) things that they like. Happily, computers are a bit more expensive than shoes, otherwise, I'd need another room to keep them in. Dishes, though...
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Puns?
No, see, Katherine apparently hates bad puns. Of course, she writes for a column called Broadsheet. See, 'cause women are called broads. And a broadsheet is a kind of newspaper. So, a column discussing news from a feminist perspective? Broadsheet! Get it? It's clever! and funny! Not like those horrible people who make puns about shoes coming out of the closet.