I agree with Peggy about — more than one pair of shoes. Saved my life many times. Standing around in high heels doesn’t work for me anymore. Agree with Marlo (I think it was Marlo) barefoot is the answer. When I get home in the evening two things must go — first the shoes and then the bra —-AH sweet comfort!!!

I was hell-bent on owning a pair of leopard print heels, and after a year’s search I found the right pair…and DAMN if I don’t feel just a tad trendier, and uncharacteristically welcoming attention. If that’s “life-changing” then perhaps it’s true.

The summer of my thirteenth year [1950] I spent 9 weeks with a former neighbor while my parents were moving. I worked out a deal with her. As payment for baby sitting, she would give me her bikini and a pair of red alligator, platform, open toe, sling pumps with a bow on the front. I don’t remember ever being allowed to wear that bikini, but it didn’t matter much since I was built like a boy. But those shoes just sat in my closet as a promise of the future. They were beautiful. Finally at fifteen I went to a function important enough to learn to walk in those shoes. I remember wobbling around the house trying to stay upright. I walked around downtown Portland in those shoes and then went to a big meeting in the evening, while sitting down I took those shoes off to give my feet some relief. I couldn’t get them back on. My feet felt like those shoes had crippled me. So at an incredibly young age I had to decide fashion or comfort. I never really forgot that lesson. I kept those shoes for years they were beautiful. They wouldn’t even be legal today.

Peggy, still waitin with my boot on my head.

I just remembered something which was just too funny. Back when I was a body size 6 or 8, I had this black strappy pair of super high heels. They always made me feel pretty sexy. One night I had drank a couple (or three was more like it) of wine spritzers and was feeling pretty kittenish. Yep I put those pretty little heels on after getting out of my long bubble bath. After those wine spritzers,I didn’t want to put my black filmy negligee on to match the shoes. That’s how kittenish I felt. So I walked into the master bedroom. CRIPES! There stood my father-in-law helping my husband hook his new stereo speakers. Believe me that pair of shoes changed my life. I threw the shoes away and I have since then carried a heavy granny robe into the bathroom!!!!!!!

I wear a size 11 narrow. Munroe and Helles are the brands that work for me. Stores have to special order them. When I was younger I crammed my very flexible feet into cute shoes in size 8 1/2 or 9 M. The bigger my bunions got, the better the width fit my foot. Afeter a few months, I finally realized that being cute was not worth the torture and started wearing flat heeled shoes most of the time (pants suits are a blessing!). Funny—my feet got longer and narrower, and the bunions seemed to heal themselves. Like many of the posters here, I have neuropathy and balance issues, so I often go for comfort rather than style. My husband and I were going to a party last weekend. I was sure I would buy heels to complement the cute dress I had purchased for the occasion. I hadn’t planned ahead, so I was restricted to the options in store. I scoured the shoe department for a funky sandal in white or black. Most were ridiculous (I’m in my late 30s, so I can’t do the cutesy bit, and—lets face it—size 11 cutesy shoes just look…well, less cutesy.) But then the most beauriful pair of white sandals with striking silver accents caught my eye. The heel was barely 1”, but really cute. How could I resist? Of course, they were Munroes, and I had a wonderful time at the party with feet both cute and happy.

It was literally true for me. I had sliced my foot open on a dropped soda bottle at 13, requiring 22 stitches across the middle of my left foot. I severed many of the nerves and for the next 7-8 years, while they regrew and my foot reformed feeing in its upper half, I could not wear heels. Well, gee, between 13 and 20? In my 20s, I gave it a shot, but to hell with that #$%^&*! I’ve always worn flat shoes since. A 1” heel is major. (I see one-hour-wonders as a modern form of foot-binding.) So, yes, Ginger Rogers did indeed do everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels. But not me. As much as I totally adore Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers, both Astaires, etc., I never learned to dance. It was just too difficult, with no feeling in my foot. So yes shoes did change my life. By the way, I virtually always wear Italian loafers now — mostly Sudinis.

Arthritis has necessitated flats for me, and it’s even better if they are rubber soled. Over the last dozen years, I have gotten rid of many pairs of heels, a little at a time. I kept one pair of black suede heels which have taupe colored trim. They are the sexiest shoes I’ve ever had. I bought them in the early 80’s and they were also the most expensive shoes I had bought up to then. They bring back great memorie when I was just like those shoes!

Oh my, shoes are my love and truly how I express myself. I am not artistic, so my shoes speaks volumes for who I am. I have loved shoes as long as I can remember. When I was 3 or 4 my parents had a cocktail party (it was the 60’s) and a woman my father knew from business (advertising) arrived wearing a pair of sandals with lucite heels with a gold fish in the heel. I spent the entire party lying on the floor under her chair staring at her shoes. Next it was orthopedic shoes for me with “cookies” in them for flat feet, red t-straps for day, and clunky black velvet oxfords for dress. No pretty party shoes for me. At 13 I worked all summer as a mothers helper and the 2 things that changed my life was buying a Conair Yellow Bird blow dryer to tame my curls (another story) and platform 4” heels (1970) at Ronnies the hippest store in my universe! My life changed from that moment on, and there has been no turning back, or comfortable shoes in my closet. No flats during 2 pregnancies, and working all day in a showroom, only high heels will do. Many days when I come into work an older woman will stop me and say “I used to wear shoes like that” very wistfully. Until the day I can no longer wear my beautiful shoes (I am 51 now) everyday I will look at a box and decide what I will wear for the day, based on what shoes I am dying to wear! Its a life long love affair, and just like all love affairs, sometimes they make no sense to other people, and hurt us in ways we don’t even know, but until I can’t I will buy at least one new pair of high heel shoes every week and show them off to everyone in my office when they arrive via UPS, because on top of having a love affair, I also wear a size 11 and most of my beautiful shoes come from online vendors. No instant gratification for me! When those shows arrive I can not begin to explain how they make me feel…Shoes definately changed my life

As an actress, I have often found that if you wear the right clothes, it’s a short cut to a character. That’s especially true of choice of shoes, which really dictate how you walk and carry yourself. That’s true in my regular life, too. So I have LOTS of different shoes, too many for a small urban apartment, and it drives my husband mad! But you have to have those golden sandals on hand for that gala occasion, and boots for trips to NYC - I could go on & on…

What timing! I was just thinking about this yesterday … I found a great pair of black counterfeit Crocs while shopping for vitamins - more willing to wear these out of the house than my red ones. When I was younger, with size 4-1/2 feet, I could buy all kinds of designer shoes at a discount off the shoe racks in the discount areas of our Portland department stores. Now, in my fifties, after dropping a sewing machine on my foot ten years ago, Merrells and these crocs are the most comfortable. However, the Crocs make me feel like an elf - not necessarily a bad thing, but I’m far from the fashion conscious young woman I used to be. This elfiness is something which I believe creeps up on many of us at the same time as the comfortable shoes - my body betrayed me a while ago, and I gained quite a lot of hormonal weight - at 4’11”, this was very hard on my self esteem - I used to be tiny! A hysterectomy back in February will remedy my hormonal whimsy, and I’ll get back to normal, but I think so many of us reach this point - a little chubby, and wearing comfortable cotton knit pants, pullover tops, and our crocs - we do get to looking a little elvish. (Since the surgery, I hope to regain at least a little of my former, more fashionable, self). Comfort and happiness are far more important to me these days than when I was younger - my life has changed, so my shoes have changed, and perhaps … vice-versa. My mother has always loved red shoes, and, at times, wore sexy sandals - still does, sometimes, in her seventies - my sister and I have always teased her about her floozie shoes, and she has shaken her head about our sensible shoes - we liked comfortable shoes even as young women. I inherited her funny little squared off feet (mine, like hers, look as if they were cut out of a piece of wood), but not her shoe sense. Go figure, but all of us are happy with our shoe choices, and with our lives.

Shoes make the outfit?? I don’t know…I think the woman makes the outfit. The older I get the less I want. I once worked in a department store in the Women’s Shoe Dept. I thought, how hard can it be to sell beautiful shoes? Well, let me tell you…”My heel is slipping…” “Don’t these come in narrow?” “Is my heel slipping?” You get the idea. Needless to say, I usually spent my paycheck. Even with employee discounts, I was broke. And my sales weren’t very good because I wanted to stay in the stock room to ORGANIZE!! They cut my pay and I left. But, got a pair of Cole Haan loafers for $15, Donald Pliner tres cool, red loafers for $30. Living in the south allows me to be barefoot most of the time. Which is my preference. However when I HAVE to wear shoes, I find my black cowboy boots to be the most comfortable…walked around NYC all day with no complaints from my dogs. My husband wore his cowboy boots all through Europe. Now my problem is my cowboy boots don’t go with everything, but I don’t care. When I wear them I feel powerful, comfortable, and totally cool!

I am so disgusted. Fool that I am I thought here would ensue a pragmatic-if-ruefool discussion by seasoned working women about solutions found and not found concerning the ancient and species-wide problem to do with feet and shoes. Istead y’all go off on arias about prettiness or the sexual, social, tribal symbolic power of varios shoes? Oh please. I can’t toss the statistics off like toast but in the last decade the United Nations published these studies and polls that 87% of the labor of war, the labor of rebuilding after war is forced upon the bodies and hours and lives of women. And I often think of their feet and how they are bloody from the brick-making blood, and how they have to carry children or their fathers hundreds of miles to clinics, and how they get parasites through constantly cracking skin on their feet. Etc. We do truly need to review and reform ourselves. These are bad days. Boys and girls get killed in the USA for their shoes. Parents in the USA are by the day less able to buy even regular shoes for their children— or their clothes, or their food. We’ve got a heartless monstrous government in place that has cause our military to blow hundreds and hundreds of thousands Iraqee civilians out of their shoes. We’ve got some disease of epic proportions among the constituency that has allowed this to go on. Now people need to be awake. Truly, shoes can be beautiful, but the sort of shoes I see descrbed here and in their unnecessary iterations, and shoes of no practical use, well… I just can’t condone it or look the other way. This is obscene. Some one said they broke a bone dancing on inappropriate and very expensive shoes? Three years ago I fell and broke my hand because my foot slipped in my boot because the leather was just so old and weak and it just gave out. I got a new pair right after that someone gave me, but this pair of doc marten’s like the pair when I broke my arm are my only pair of shoes. the time. Now that doesn’t make me better than you but it tells a story of distribution, of poverty and wealth, doesn’t it? And y’all wanted to mix it up, right? Well, here I am. miranda