"Like what?" I asked. They were new, without holes or stains, which was not always the case. I am all about comfort, so I had been (and still am) known to wear stained or torn shoes. In high school, despite being, as all adolescents are, overburdened with crushing worry about what I looked like, for months I wore a favorite pair of fabric shoes that had holes directly over my pronounced bunions. My bunions stuck out through the frayed fabric. Any time someone would point it out to me, I'd say, "They're comfortable like this." I even bleached them, so they'd look cleaner and nicer while the holes got bigger.
But the shoes this friend was talking about were very new. I could not figure out what was sloppy.
"When you wear the laces like that."
"Like what?" This was making less and less sense. The shoes were laced and tied, all very normal and neat.
She sighed. I seemed to have that affect fairly often; my friends would sigh and wonder why I was clueless.
"Here. Let me fix them." She untied my shoe, then grabbed the laces and yanked, hard.
"OW!" My feet were always pretty uncomfortable, which I blamed on the bunions, and anything squeezing them was incredibly painful. While my oldest daughter was always self conscious about her bunions, and wore shoes that hid them, with pumps and ballet flats for dress shoes, I spent years buying only dress sandals, so my bunions could poke out through the straps. Sometimes, a friend would try to talk me into pumps, and I'd say, "Closed, rigid shoes hurt!" Anything tight across the bunions could make my foot scream, and my whole leg ache.
"What?" she wanted to know.
"You're squeezing my foot!"
She reached out and grabbed the sides of my shoe, trying to get the parts where the laces go through the holes to meet.
"OW!! That HURTS!" I yanked my foot away.
"This is as tight as they go?"
"Yes! This is as tight as they go!" I rubbed my foot and retied my shoe.
"You need bigger shoes!"
"These are half a size bigger than I normally wear." I showed her how I had over an inch between the end of my toes and the end of the shoe.
"Then you need wide width!"
"These ARE wide width!"
She looked aghast. "You should be able to close them, like this." She stuck her own foot out. The only part of the tongue that was visible was the tip, sticking out of the top of her shoe. The parts where the laces went through met in the middle and touched.
"I have never in my life been able to pull them that tight."
She looked just horrified. After a few more minutes (and comments like, "That's all your foot?") she sighed and said, "I guess you'll have to wear them like that, then."
"Yes, I will."
Obviously, I still do. That's my current pair of shoes in that photo, snapped on my cell phone.
I mean, isn't the whole point of laces to adjust them to the individual, because not everyone is the same? I think so. I always have. And yes, those current shoes are wide width. Yes, I still have an inch, maybe more, between the end of my toes and the end of the shoe. My toe hits well below the line of the triangle pattern.
Of the many things that have caused me to feel self conscious, this was not one. It was another instance, though, in which I wondered if her thinking was alien, or mine was. Not that it changed anything; I still have to loosen the laces when I buy shoes, but that's why there are laces, and not zippers.
I don't quite understand a lot of conventions on human interaction (that I have been told are just instinctive and built in). That's fine. But, if I may, I will suggest a way to have that conversation that was not alienating.
Example:
Friend: "Why are your laces so wide? Are they really loose?" See, asking questions is a great way to find things out - do not start out assuming that you know everything. This is hard, but necessary.
Me: "No, they're actually pulled pretty tight. I just have really wide feet."
Friend: "Really? That wide?"
Me: "Yeah. I have a hard time even finding shoes that I can wear, even in wide width."
Friend: "I've never had that problem."
Me: "You're lucky." And we'd go on about our day, and I'd have forgotten this conversation, instead of being annoyed by it decades later. I had dozens of conversations like that over my school years, and I can only remember the details of this one.
See?
Occasionally when I tell stories like this, someone will say that this is why we all need to guard against letting other people know our thoughts, because if people know what you're thinking, they won't like you. Respectfully, no, that is not the point here. The point is how you express yourself. I am deeply aware that a significant percentage of people will find my feet to be weird, gross, or just outside of their experience. This is normal. A few others will think that I'm exaggerating, probably for attention or sympathy. This opinion, too, is normal. The fact that both of those assumptions are wrong doesn't make them any less common. Thinking them is not a problem. Saying them is not a problem. Being rude because of what you think is a problem.
Making assumptions without asking is a problem. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that there are things that every person on Earth does not know, does not understand, or has not ever encountered before. Quit assuming that if it's outside your experience, it doesn't exist. Quit assuming that you know everything. Ask, politely - "why do you" instead of announcing, "that's sloppy."
Another problem is acting on your unconfirmed assumptions, especially in a way that leads you to cause someone physical pain. If you don't know what's causing something, your chances of messing things up are pretty high!
Also, let's say that I thought that loose laces were some kind of fashion statement that made me look cool. Telling me that you don't think so is OK. Insisting that I change because you don't think so is NOT OK.
The biggest problem for me, though, is why it still annoys me after decades - the assumption that I should experience shame because someone else didn't like my body parts. This girl's entire demeanor screamed, "Eeww, gross!" - which is, again, not uncommon - but then went on to assume that I ought to be just as horrified. I ought to hide my gross feet. I ought to hope that no one notices how gross they are. I ought to avoid lace up shoes. I ought to be depressed because something about me wasn't pretty.
This is a problem.
In general, people talk about being proud of who you are, ignoring "the haters," realizing that "you're perfect, just the way you are" - until how someone is conflicts with someone's idea of how they should be. Women are told that they have less intrinsic value if they're not pretty. Men are told that they have less intrinsic value if they're not strong. This is garbage.
Women talk about how we don't owe it to anyone to be pretty, but a lot of us are then disgusted by bodies that just aren't pretty, or women who "don't even try" to be pretty; you know, the loose clothes, no makeup, short haired women. Or, we're not disgusted, but we decide that those women are probably lesbians, because men would just never be interested in them.
I just cannot buy into that. It's inaccurate. It's damaging.
That's why I'm still annoyed. Someone thought it was better for me to experience shame than to simply accept that this is how my feet are. I was born this way.
When I had them surgically altered - bunions removed, etc - it was so they would work better, not because of how they looked. They're still wide. They're still hairy. They're not pretty. My laces are still loose.
I am not embarrassed by my feet. At that point, in high school, I was embarrassed by my saddlebags, my rounded tummy, my receeding chin, and probably more, but I grew out of that. Because even though my body is me, it is not what gives me value.
My feet have taken me great places. My shoes are comfortable. That's good enough.
