why do women where painful shoes?

august 12th

i never really thought i would succumb to this problem. i only wear converse, birkies and docs. i can't remember a single pair of shoes that i broke in with pain. preparing for this trip i needed suit shoes. i was very excited when i found some very eighties little shoes that looked like mens' dress shoes. they were comfortable in the store, did not cut into my heals and i thought i had found the perfect shoe. thought. fast forward to tokyo. they bug my feet a little, not enough to complain. i still think i'm pretty shoe savvy. in fact my blister from portland, and random cut on the bottom of my foot, feel better wearing these cute shoes. but no. i am deceived. moving on to hiroshima, i need to look nice but its 90 degrees and 90% humidity. i'm screwed. logic tells me going with out socks is the dumbest thing i could do. my body tells me there's no way in hell i'm wearing stockings. i listen to my body. she usually wins out. so about 10 min into walking around, getting vaguely lost, in downtown hiroshima i know i've made a mistake. band-aides are applied and i push through it. a lot of standing, walking, trudging on stairs is required. i start to limp. now mind you as i am participating in this self inflicted torture, nearly every woman with me is walking the same hobbley dance. after some discussion there was a conclusion that we all had new shoes. this seems reasonable. new shoes hurt (well not mine, but thats what i've heard). but after speaking to one of the guys, also a possessor of new shoes, i've concluded women are trained to hate their feet. his shoes didn't hurt. he in fact claimed they were very comfortable. us women-folk over here cannot seem to buy based on comfort. even i attempted to, but was tricked by vanity (cute shoes rather than birkies--a little more profession in my choice i guess). can i blame society? as i do for most things...yes. society tells women that they will be judged by what they are wearing, how they look. you can see this as a woman takes forever to pick out an outfit; and when she is out and about she judges other women on their attire. she sees herself through the eyes of other women and men. men may think about what they wear but...but it is not the first and dominant way in which we judge them. a guy has ugly shoes, he is easily salvaged by a witty comment. a witty woman with ugly shoes is called frumpy. the man is still called witty. yeah you could argue it's changing with the metrosexual and all that, but no. women's power is in her looks. men's power is in his mind. she is the object. he is the subject.

b-t-w, this one hundred times worse in japan. looking to women's feet i wince at the adorable (or sometime hideous) heals that surround me. there is nigh a flat shoe.