My Ugly Shoes

Earlier today I tweeted this picture of my ugly new shoes.  I'd just bought them at my favorite charity shop (benefiting the American Cancer Society) across from the local Coffee Bean.  They're from a charity shop so the shoes aren't really new, but new

enough as to make no real difference).  These are, as was confirmed by my dear friends (also on Twitter) Adele, Natty and Casey, ugly shoes.  They are sort of shoes a girl is forced to wear, are purchased for rather than by her (despite my activities to the contrary). 

These particular shoes make my US7 / UK5 sized feet look huge and long -- like a teen forced into little girl mary janes.  Their brown color is drab and boring.  They have flat leather sole which are slippery, noisy, sturdy and the very opposite of high-heeled glamor.  They make me think of shoes purchased for a 15 year-old girl during WWII -- a girl longing for pumps and stockings but forced to wear (and be outwardly thankful for) ugly practical shoes. [Note: Tony Elka added to this fantasy for me by pointing out a girl of that era not grateful for her good fortune is probably due a cold bath and then some.]

I've got a lot of shoes and many of them are quite ugly.  Ugly shoes seem to go with my sense of being oppressed into wearing uniforms and other attributes of childhood / girlhood without being either overly cute or frilly. Most of my ugly shoes are school related -- and I've included a selection of pictures here.  True, I photographed only one of three pairs of my buckle Docs, but you get the idea. 

Chief among the shoes I think of as "ugly" are my black and white saddle shoes.  I think of them as probably the most fetish-y footwear I own and will ever own.  They were purchased on a special outing with a scene friend more than ten years ago (I wrote about it at the time for soc.sexuality.spanking -- the original story is archived on the The Treehouse.  At the time I wrote that I  expected never to wear them enough for them to break in, let alone wear out.  As it's happened, wearing them for scenes and Shadow Lane parties has been enough to run the heels down just a bit.  A great irony however is there was a time first grade when my feet were still too small for black and white saddle shoes and I was forced to wear the all white kind (to much teasing of wearing "baby shoes" sad to say. So when I wear them, I remember my father driving up to Los Angeles from San Diego where the coveted black and whites were carried in my size.

When I was in second grade I was forced to memorize a poem which, as is the way with my brain, has never left (though don't ask me to decline Latin nouns please).  Here it is, as best as I can remember it.

New shoes, new shoes,
Red and pink and blue shoes.
Tell me, what would you choose
If they'd let us buy?

Buckle shoes, bow shoes,
Pretty pointy-toe shoes,
Strappy, cappy low shoes --
Please give me some to try.

Bright shoes, white shoes,
Dandy-dance-by-night shoes,
Perhaps-a-little-tight shoes,
Like some? So would I.

...but

Flat shoes, fat shoes,
Stump-Along-Like-That shoes,
Wipe-Them-on-the-Mat shoes,
That's the sort they'll buy.

The fact is, I do have pretty shoes too. Paul would claim I have lots of those as well, though I would disagree -- I don't have very many compared to most women of my age that I know.  There's a reason for that and he's partly it.  Unlike many of his gender, Paul doesn't like the sight of women in heels (or garter belt and stockings for that matter). The shoes he's bought for me have all either been "school" related or, in the case of last Christmas, an inspired gift of very snug and comfy Ugg boots.  When I wear my "pretty shoes," the ones with straps and heels, I can feel him mentally changing my feet into something lower and more comfortable. 

More sensible.

And uglier.