The Symbolism of Shoes

On a recent shopping excursion to DSW, I spent nearly an hour contemplating a very important decision: to buy or not to buy. That is indeed the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer life without a really cute pair of shoes, or to just suck it up and pay the money.

Decisions aren't normally easy for me anyway, but make that decision about shoes, and it becomes about something more than footwear. Because when I'm thinking about a pair of shoes, I'm thinking about what I'll be doing when I wear them. And recently, my weakness has been for black dress shoes that I could wear to work.

It started with just a few good staples, low heels, cute but sensible, which caused me to buy a pair of bright pink sneakers in retaliation against such "boring" choices.

This trend has expanded to include more fashionable booties, still black, but more interesting (and less comfortable). It went from relatively subdued Franco Sarto...

...to quilted patent pleather...

...and finally, to the decision which took an hour to make.

Why did it take me so long? Well, there's the fact that the shoes I've just shown you are pretty similar, the heels are very high, and that I just hate spending money in general. Those were negative, but they were countered with these: the shoes are all somewhat different in the details, there's a platform which makes the heels less extreme than they seem (plus I used to be able to walk in stilettos in high school, need to retrain my feet), and when it comes down to it, they were $20 because they were 70% off (I heart clearance).

Those things all even out, which normally would make me lean towards not buying, because stinginess will always win. But the all-important factor, me seeing myself in the shoes, is what made the difference. And here's where this becomes relevant to the blog (thanks for sticking with me!). What I see with these shoes is a fabulous, twenty-something me, working and going out dancing and just generally being cool and awesome. When I was in elementary school, we took several field trips to the capital building, and I remember listening to the clicking of heels on the granite floors, and thinking that that was what adulthood sounded like. From the look to the sound, shoes represent so much more to me than footwear. It's about where you're going in them.

So it was the idea of the shoes, rather than the shoes themselves that I bought. And I figure that it's worth investing in the idea of my future self. And in the meantime, I can practice by wearing them around the house.