With Great Shoes Comes Great Responsibility

Welcome guest blogger Daisy James!

Daisy James is a Californian writer, biotech researcher and shoe enthusiast. Her blog, Half the Fun, is largely concerned with travel, shoes, odd food products, hairstyles and, occasionally, killer robot dinosaurs. Her most recent fiction publication, “The Ghost in the Death Trap” was Episode 224 of Escape Pod.

One time, she stopped shopping for four months and the entire economy collapsed. She still feels kind of bad about that.


I’ll just come right out and say it: I have a ridiculous number of shoes. No one who has seen my closet*, or my credit card statements, could possibly dispute that. I spent an entire month posting pictures of shoes on my blog (Shoetember!), and had enough left over to do the same for every Tuesday since (Shoesday!). And I will say, if I may be immodest for a moment**, that I have amassed a fairly impressive collection.

Why? That’s a good question. The easy answer is that they are fun, but you already knew that and anyway, that isn’t really an answer at all— it’s like saying you climb mountains because they’re there. (I mean, of course they’re there. Where else would they be?) The cynical answer is that it’s all feminine competition, an attempt to claim alpha female status by a show of wealth, and like most cynical answers that’s probably at least partly true. The real answer could probably form the basis of a graduate thesis in the sort of field where it’s impossible to get a job, so I’ll leave that for others to do, and go back to trying to explain the “fun” thing.

My first brush with the power of shoes came in high school, with a pair of green Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star high tops. It was the early nineties, the height of the grunge era, and the All-Star was the shoe of choice for anyone who didn’t have the nerve or the ready cash for Doc Martens. I was (prepare to be shocked) something of a dork and an outsider, but somehow, when I wore those green Converse, in defiance of the laws of physics and nature, I was cool***.

Years passed, and I packed away my plaid shirts and beat-up jeans to the land of teenage trends, but the lesson of the All-Stars endured. Shoes were a way to fit in and, done right, they could be a way to stand out too. The shoes you wear can transform you****, from how your legs look, to how (or if) your outfit works, to what other people think of you. And if they’re thinking bitter thoughts of jealousy because you so clearly have style, class, and a pair of four inch, crocodile skin de la Renta heels, well then, all the better.

Hey, the title just says you have great responsibility. Doesn’t mean you have to use it well.

Please don’t misunderstand me; I by no means am trying to say that you have to spend a third of your disposable income on footwear to be complete as a person. I happen to have a very good friend who owns exactly one pair of dress shoes, and despite that is still able to live a full and happy life. And I hardly need to say that just being expensive does not automatically make something fabulous. (Exhibit A) But if you do happen to enjoy a fine pair of heels, or own sneakers that make your heart sing, or know that you are never hotter than when you’ve got your boots on, well, come sit over by me. And then tell the class about them in the comments, won’t you?


*We recently moved, to a place that is infinitely better in almost every way than our old apartment, but the one thing I really miss is the shoe closet. A whole closet, just for my shoes! (This may not have been its original intended purpose.)

**No? Whoops. Oh well, too late.

***At least in my own mind. Which, as I would come to learn later in life, was actually what mattered.

****For example, if you wear Crocs, they transform you into an escaped mental patient— not the exciting, dangerous kind, the kind that shuffles around and asks people if they’ve seen Jerry.

--Daisy