I made my way back to campus at about 3am. Sorry, correction: I stumbled back to campus at 3am. With a searing pain in the balls of my feet, I sat down to take out the gravel out from in-between my toes; yes, because apparently, this is always a better option that keeping our shoes on. Amidst the efforts to eliminate my Club-I panda eyes and even greater efforts to ignore the cloudy images of me doing the ‘running man’ to ‘Stacey’s mom’ manifesting in my head, I asked myself, why do we do it? The truth is, at one point or another we all do; even those of you who have sworn a life of devotion to your converse. What is it about a shiny new pair of shoes that makes us go weak at the knees? At first it seems that we cannot blame this fact on ‘human nature’ as we can for our mood swings.
A purchase from a branch of Kurt Geiger is far out of our reach as students; the interior comparable with the likes of Aladdin’s Cave. Despite this, we continue to torture ourselves with the admiration of window displays, or even the scrolling of internet pages full of these beautiful creations; I think my record was 7 hours on ASOS (yes, just in the shoe category). For those of you who are fortunate enough to never have had to be susceptible to the charms of Kurt, or indeed, can eliminate yourselves from the excessive-scrolling-addiction, perhaps you instead can apply yourself to one of the following. Out there, all of you have been a victim of a shoe-affair; no matter how shortly lived (yes, Jelly shoes are always a mistake), or how faithful (perhaps it’s time to let go of those 4-year-old Ugg boots). There is the sporty, ‘I-prefer-Nike’ types, the surfer, ‘I-prefer-flipflops’ types, the alternative ‘I-prefer-creepers’ types, and even the mod-revival, ‘I-prefer-Doc Martens’ types. Whether we admit it or not, our shoes reflect our personalities. However, the prospect of ‘high heels’ is ever more frequently called into question. With headlines appearing, warning us of the dilapidating effects of them, (the images of Posh’s trotters should be enough to deter us) why don’t we listen?
The truth is, that the long-term affair with the high heel runs deeper than I ever imagined. My efforts to explore the effects of the high heel on our twinkle toes turned into a subject that is much more serious than aching feet. The world of fashion has an extraordinary power to make the every-day girl feel despondent and become convinced that a gym membership is the only answer (which we will use for an average of 11 times before giving up and reaching for a Twix). More-than-slim and utterly ‘perfect’ women stare out at us relentlessly every day; definitely not in pain despite the adornment of a 6-inch pair of Jimmy Choos on their elegant toes (yes, who knew toes could be elegant?). So many of us wish we could be them, but why? ‘Perfection’ is something all too well-known to us, but what is it? We all have our own perception of perfection and therefore can leave ourselves open to the miserable prospect that we simply cannot achieve it.
None of us should be subject to the pressure to be perfect; we can all agree that the pressures and expectations of women that our Western society seem to create are wrong. How many of you have looked in the mirror and wished for a flatter stomach, longer legs, or thicker hair? Well the truth is that the world contains thousands of different types of women, some of which we see to be ‘perfect’. We can’t necessarily achieve our own perception of perfection and we should be okay with this. However, who is to say that we can’t have a little bit of our own perfection? Whether or not a pair of pretty shoes can do this for you, we all know that achieving a little bit of perfection in one way or another can bring a little sparkle to our daily routines. So girls, when you can have your own little slice of heaven, do, but always remember that we all feel the effects of imperfection, no matter how perfect we may look to others.
In the words of Bridget Jones, “I can’t ski, I can’t ride, I can’t speak Latin, my legs only come up to here, and yes, I will always be just a little bit fat.”