Farewell, Foot Fetish
It's okay to wear ugly shoes??!
Hi! If you know me offline, you know that I have been suffering from pretty much everything bad that can happen to a body below the waistline for the past six years—I crunched my ankle in 2018 and it never healed well, leading to overcompensation from my other joints and a resultant labral hip tear (not helped by the fact that I was one of the last of the generation that didn’t get evaluated for hip dysplasia at birth). This is all really sexy stuff, I know, but it boils down to the fact that I haven’t been able to wear “nice shoes” for the better part of a decade, and every time I tried, I was duly punished with excruciating, radiant pain on my entire left side.
Even in this condition, though, my broke self couldn’t resist a free pair of sneakers, so when a friend gave me a pair of Salomon slip-ons, they immediately became my go-to shoe (I also despise laces, especially since the hip stuff has made bending over so hard for me). I knew they were far from orthopedic, but I didn’t realize just how inadequate they were in terms of padding, stability, and arch support until the other day, when I tried a 40 minute walk to, ironically, my physical therapist’s office, and ended up limping through most of the the two-ish miles, suffocating a little in the humid, 90+ degree air.
Happily, I ended up earning a bit of money in a silly little dating competition, so I made the mincing, dragging trek to the place I knew would give me the most brutal evaluation and least bullshitty, aesthetic-based recommendations: the Brooklyn Running Company. Sure enough, a beleaguered sales associate watched me walk and listened to my tale of woe (I was near tears from the pain and sheer frustration at this point), then walked me through my options: I wanted shoes that would roll forward, propelling me so I didn’t have to use as much hip muscle to lift and haul forward to make each step, plus a wide, stable base and as much cushioning as humanly possible for my plantar fasciitis-prone heels.
I almost cried again looking at how sheerly hideous literally every shoe the company offered was—soles curved like hobby-horses, inescapable and gratuitous ombré—but realized upon consulting with professional fashion disaster diagnose-r
that the real ick factor was the chunkiness of most of the shoes’ soles in relation to their unnervingly slim upper bodies. As per Emily: “I think it’s that the thick sole is so clearly medicinal versus an intentional fashion platform,” a thought that made me realize how fixated we are with flattening the feet as much as possible in our current footwear matrix. The whole Mary Jane flat moment that peaked in 2023, the Samba becoming the new default sneaker over the past few years (usurping 2010s AF1s and “dad shoes” or whatever the normcore adherents called them), those stupid $800+ jelly sandals from The Row that I have literally never heard of *not* breaking within a week of wear—we have been stuck in a protracted rebound from Jeffrey Campbell Litas, platform Doc Martens, Yeezys, and the other clunkers that defined the prior decade.I’m not judging this proclivity as bad—at this point in my life, I tend to see slimmer footwear as more compelling, too—but the fact is that foot scientists have not yet figured out how to make low-profile shoes that aren’t pretty awful for your feet unless you’re blessed with perfect musculature and a flawless skeleton, unmarred by, say, falling down the stairs carrying a bike and then barista-ing at a café for eight hours until you notice your ankle is roughly the same size as your head. Just as frustrating is the fact that brands that *do* make orthopedic or ergonomic shoes seem to be run by sadists hell-bent on creating the most unattractive possible footwear, even given the bounds of a thick, curvy sole.
I ended up with a pair of New Balance Fresh Foam X 1080v13 ($164.99):
The shop only had this colorway in stock. Everything looks wrong: the muscly mesh upper, the sole that almost matches the upper in girth and is streaked with random-seeming, veiny bulges, that absolutely unnecessary smoky streak on the midsole. They are ugly. And yet, as I walked to the train clad in my hideous new kicks, I literally chortled: my pain had decreased by about 70% within 10 minutes. I don’t wanna jinx it, but the last 24 hours have been some of the most comfortable of my past year.
Emily suggested that this was a worthy styling challenge, that I should try to make these crazily comfy behemoths work with my clothes. Below are seven attempts to do just that (with a pimple patch on my forehead, no less!). Doing this also made me realize how limited in color my wardrobe has become—I don’t know how I feel about it, honestly. I will muse another time. For now, I attempt to prioritize my health over my fetishization of perfect-looking feet:
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* indicates an item I was gifted by the brand or designer.
Bandana - vintage, similar here ($14)
COS shirt dress - $135*
COS knit tank - $49*
Nelle Atelier Claire jeans - $258*
Isaboko bolo tie - $75*
Casio calculator watch - $21.92
First, I tried to make one jeans look—with just the jeans and a top, these shoes look horrifically bland, as if I’m trying and failing to capture the essence of a “cool” middle schooler in 2014—something about the voluminous shoes and slim pant legs making me look like a puppy with disproportionate paws. I combatted this by adding the volume of a starchy shirt dress on top, tempering that and emphasizing the blue of the jeans with a similarly-colored knit tank/makeshift vest, then added a matching bandana and finished off with my friend Izzy’s brilliantly crafted bolo tie worn as a sash for a sporty/nerdy flourish that I think drives home the essence of the look, as does my trusty calculator watch.