toes of summer

Before there were marketing campaigns designed to make us feel uncomfortable about our feet so we'd be ripe for buying whatever was being sold providing it came with a promise of "healthier, sexier looking feet!" or something like that, before a pedicure became a regular part of a grooming routine rather than an infrequent and indulgent luxury, before we had to show our toes if we wanted to wear stylish summer clothes, I have disliked my feet.

I used to be able to keep them under wraps, wearing combat boots even into the summer. This doesn't work so well for a job where you have to look presentable according to some standard like say business casual, but it works ok for being out and about otherwise like going to your boyfriend's parents' house for a family birthday. Combat boots go with sun dresses and jeans. Sure, the result is a little less than adorable but then adorable is rarely the look I am going for. Joint problems make the boot option completely impossible now.

Thus I am stuck buying and wearing what I consider to be "little shoes". This could be ok I suppose. I could find some summer shoes which cover up my toes but which do not look like they came from the bottom of the Office Shrew closet. Right? No. I've noticed over the past few years that summer shoes seem to be not just little relative to boots but much more little than is necessary. They are straps, thongs, little bits of leather or pleather meant not so much to protect the feet but to decorate them. I am getting so tired of this style. I keep waiting for the open toe strap shoes to go away, the remaining size 11s and 5s to be banished to a sale bin where they can fade and scuff until they go wherever it is that non-selling shoes go. But each year I am shocked to find that they remain in proud pairs up on the shelves.

Why are they so popular? It's not about what's comfortable (how can going to work in an over airconditioned office with open toe shoes be comfy?) or affordable (now you have the cost of shoe plus pedicure or pedicure product). A secret meeting of fashion designers à la Zoolander comes to mind. These must be the foul, woman hating wretches who have conspired to keep the market flooded with toe baring, foot strangling "shoes" year after year. Fuckers.