Beware! This could be a run-on post. Yes, oh yes, oh yes!! Shoes tell me who I am on any given day. A producer I worked for back in the ‘80’s told me once, “…you don’t dress, you costume.” I have playful shoes and serious shoes and rugged shoes and frilly shoes and walking shoes and dancing shoes and poolside shoes…and grandma shoes. I go barefoot around the house most the time, but if anybody’s gonna get a glimpse of me in the outside world, shoes matter. Nevertheless! I think poor posture is at the root of any number of podiatric ailments…though it wouldn’t do much for a gal with eleven toes. (I feel really bad about that, Joan!) And I’m really grateful my “early ballet training” didn’t involve toe-shoes, but it did teach me how to “lift” myself onto the balls of my feet and stay up there for extended periods of time. I don’t think young women should be allowed to wear high-heels without taking a course in posture and carriage. And I suppose the day will come when even my back muscles will let me down, so to speak. But not yet. I didn’t wear high heels at all from the fall of ‘93 to the spring of 2003. I’d gone to a chiropractor because I was losing my grip, manually. I kept thinking I’d picked things up and then suddenly, they were falling to the floor. Anyway, he took an x-ray and came back with “When did you break your neck?” What!?! I thought that killed a person. Well, I was well into the home-therapy phase of my recovery when I remembered the wreck, years before. T-boned in an intersection. It hadn’t killed me, so I’d blundered on…in high heels, most the time. Bad head-aches had followed, but I’d coped. I had to re-learn how to sit, stand, walk, get in and out of the car and in and out of bed. My early ballet training came in handy when challenging myself to hold my head squarely on my neck at all times. I got better. Life had changed drastically by the summer of 2003. I’d moved to a point on the map where I’d been longing to be for some thirty years. I was fifty, feeling 20, walking everywhere, so I took myself in my tennis shoes with my dog on his leash to the campus track, and I told Henry, “We don’t have to beat anybody around this track, we just need to get around it.” And off we went. I was exhuberant! I’d always thought I’d be old and gray at 50, and there I was running. Strong. Me and my dog. And then…just before the third curve…Henry got between my legs, and…I flew through the air! I landed a few yards away, squarely on my right hip. I bounced, I’m sure. But once I’d gathered my wits and stood up and realized nothing was broken and there was no need to call an ambulance, we finished the lap! But the next morning, I was bruised from my knee to my rib cage, and my trunk was listing leeward something fierce. So Henry and I jumped in the car and I bought a pair of high-heeled clogs…just for around the house, I said. I knew it would force me to stand up straight, and it worked. So now, I have several new pair. And all the old ones. All different colors. Basic and business-like. Stylish and silly. I take good care of my feet. Deepak Chopra says if you massage your feet at bedtime, you’ll sleep better and add years to your life. It’s a great bum and thigh work-out to clean house in high-heels. And after sit-ups and push-ups, I like to dance around in my red heels. I still walk most everywhere, so I don’t always go out in anything but flats or sandals. I wake up feeling a little different each day, so I just sorta go with the mood. I don’t think it’s a multiple personality disorder, but no matter how I might trudge and slog around most the time, at least once a week, I scrub up and step out in the perfect pair of heels.

Shoes! The word just brings pure estacy to my mouth. Say it slow — shhhoooesz. My mom was a women that would have the fabric put on her shoes to match her dress. In NY in the 60’s they did this. She had this shocking pair of hot pink and white silk pumps, that she wore with a light pink pillbox half-veiled hat at my brother’s wedding. I look at that picture now and still go WOW! Women O Women. The last time I saw her…another story, but her shoes were cool.. Her rule to me was if it hits your foot, I don’t care how cheap or how expensive, you get slightest oh no, never buy. I got seduced when I hit Rome in my teen years. At lunch years ago, I knew all the back alleys in Philly to a store called Head Start Shoes during lunch. When I would interview, I would immediately look at a person’s shoes. Not as status, just to see if they cared for what they had. A shine, if the laces were old were they tied neat. The heel tip, put back on and if not I took into consideration could j a person afford to have this done. As the shoes of an employee have changed, I also watched their communications with staff. As my bosses’ (men and women) shoes didn’t change I watched and listened to their communication with staff. As, when their shoes also changed — again communication. When my shoes changed, I was always and still am happier. The Dexter Haven is waiting right now. Goodness though can’t they be beautiful? And they can also be ever so ugly, I learned this year. The little contact I have now with the public..Same rules. Here’s a trick try to get a look at the people not trying to look even if they are a cute pair of Keds that match perfectly, or are that simple shade of white. I always compliment. If the man is with a woman, I acknowledge also. Never buy anything I can’t walk in. I always carry a pair of slippers. Can’t drive in heels. If I knew I was going to have a long day or night, I had a lower corresponding pair. My mother owned her own beauty salon. Those are some standing people. Two things, Mr. Reagan (sp) was correct on — Shoes and trust, but verify.

shoes - my passion! i have the 4” purple gator shoes, the ballerina flats, the flip flops, the wedges, the sneaks and the construction boots to walk through the mud with the guys - i take these to work and remain in the dirty ivory beaded clogs that dont hurt the feet - clomp when i walk and feel the best. do shoes make the woman? well they make the dress - the work suit - the easy sweats but non are as comfortable as those damm clogs. people laugh when i pack a suitcase and have a second one full of just shoes - its an addiction, a hopeful moment that the pain wont happen. do i have the menolas? hell no - payless is the way of the budget but i can match every color of the rainbow to the outfit!! at 50+ the strappy dancing sandles are a thing of the past but always hopeful!

I have great looking feet, like a twenty year old, why? I never wore heals, or ill fitting shoes for any long period of time, maybe for a wedding or special day. I mostly ware sneakers. New shoes will change my mood but lately I have to sacrifice buying anything. Maybe if I change my shoes, I will change my life? :)

Just a thought. Saddle shoes. blue suede shoes. red-ball keds. Adidas white tennis shoes. penny loafers. capezios. hush puppies. What year?

I would love to see Manolo or Jimmy Choo or some other woman-hating sadistic shoe designer try to walk around in his own creations.

I like Marlo’s comment that her shoes don’t change her life they change with her life. Shoes have had a lot of symbolizm for me over the years. I grew up with a single mom who waited tables. I almost never got new shoes. I can remember sitting in class as a girl around ten, looking at my shoes feeling ashamed. As I grew up and began making money I was anal about my shoes. Through my twenties and thirties I couldn’t afford a lot of them but the condition they were in was a big deal to me. if they were ratty I felt like that 10 year old ashamed kid. So I bought new ones whether I could afford them or not. Then a funny thing happened about late thirties. I quit feeling ashamed. Of ANYTHING. Of my past, my present my thoughts myself. I think I’ve been wearing the same pair of cowboy boots since that day. Not that I don’t have pretty shoes. I can afford them now. so I buy them and set them in a closet sort of like art work. but I have one pair of ratty boots that I wear 90% of the time. And I’m never ashamed.

PS. i have to admit that I use them to change my “mood”. I tend to dress like a cross between a hippie and a biker. shoes are the first thing I go to when I want to play act. Transform from my normal hippie/biker/tom boy look into glam girl or wanton seductress. However, because most of those shoes suck in terms of comfort. I can only manage either transformation for a few hours. then i’m done. Long enough to get my husband a nice wine buzz and a few “wow you look amazing” out of him. ha ha..

In a great pair of shoes I feel like I can change the world - it’s like Julia said - it’s the full Jesse - that description is as good as it gets. That feeling that I can do anything, go anywhere, unstoppable. It’s not the shoes, it’s the feeling, the attitude. I love it that so many empowered women feel the same! A few years ago I even bought the website domain www.cuteshoescanchangetheworld.com but haven’t done anything with it…just knew it represented a feeling that was out there. Perhaps the time has come!

When I was eight I discovered Shirley Temple. I wanted her entire wardrobe, but especially her all white Mary Janes. My mother believed in black patent leather and that’s what I got. So I bought all white shoes for my daughter as soon as she could walk…but that was the year she only wore red shorts and her mangy Montessori t-shirt….and sneakers…that didn’t tie. Just last week I saw a pair of (very expensive) all-white, patent leather pumps. They’re a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Jean Kerr, and I can’t get them out of my mind— Twenty years will be deleted from my feet, I just know.

A poem by Zea: HIGH HEELS High heels - shoes that slope like Mount Everest. Where can a woman go with shoes on such a slant? She can only go down. The higher the heel, the further down she goes. Her feet, her body squished, pressed, oppressed, as she reaches for sexy billboard images that become overlaid upon her soul. High heels - the booby trap the body map for the decrepit undoing of her sole’s soul: Toes first followed by hyper-extended knees, displaced hips, swayed back, and distended belly - that she must suck in, (and god forbid - never, ever take a deep, expanded belly breath) or she will burst the hourglass mold the body-contorting culture has poured her into.