Buying Shoes for Comfort

several pairs of shoes

There is something ridiculous that happens to females throughout the course of their lives, and it has everything to do with shoes.

We start out as toddlers, fussing and fighting with our parents about the shoes they put on our feet. Our parents visit Stride Rite and seek a pediatrician’s advice to ensure we wear shoes that won’t mess up our feet, only to be met with shrieks and cries followed by shoes flying through the air. Tennis shoes and Mary Janes just don’t feel as good as those warm, fuzzy slippers. So, our parents begin buying shoes for comfort, hoping we’ll wear them.

Phase Two: The Middle School Years

Phase two begins around middle school. Suddenly, girls are buying shoes that fit the latest fashion trends. For those of us who grew up in the 80s, it meant glossy plastic high heels and legwarmers. We would return home from school with sore legs, squished toes, and a backache because the trendy heels, boots, or the latest shoes were anything but comfortable. As trends changed, so did the shoes: flip-flops, cowboy boots, branded tennis shoes, flats—back and forth. Tennis shoes, by far the most comfortable, were only acceptable if they had a brand name like Nike embroidered across the tongue. Even if they didn’t fit or feel good, we wore them because fitting in was of the utmost importance.

Phase Three: The High School Comfort Era

Time goes on, bringing us to phase three. In high school, girls suddenly become addicted to what feels good. Enter the pajama pants and flip-flop phenomenon. Today, you can’t visit a high school or college campus without seeing girls wearing raggedy flip-flops that barely offer any support but are comfortable nonetheless. We return to buying shoes for comfort, abandoning any notions of style or grace. Whether wearing a business suit or a bathing suit, and regardless of the weather, flip-flops are the go-to footwear. Sadly, after years of enduring shoes that hurt our feet in the name of fashion, the flat soles of a rubber flip-flop feel almost as good as the slippers we wore as toddlers.

Phase Four: Entering Adulthood and the High Heel Dilemma

But wait! Phase four is upon us. Thrust into the world of dating, job interviews, and the pretensions of ‘being an adult,’ we trade comfort for fancy high heels—often with brand names, paid for on credit cards in our own names. Our $20,000-a-year job as an intern, receptionist, or car saleswoman seems like a lot of money, so we try to find shoes that match our perceived “status.” If only mom and dad would buy us shoes now! Bar hopping and partying lead us to wear sexy knee-length boots with heels so high that it’s a miracle we can actually climb onto the bar counter to dance. But we do, and we suffer the consequences: the first hints of varicose veins, bunions, corns, and oddly shaped toes that seem to form a heart. All for the sake of our shoes!

Phase Five: The Marriage and Parenthood Shoe Shift

The next phase comes with marriage and childbirth. All that fuss over shoes seems completely unworthy, and we start wearing Dexter’s, athletic shoes, and Clark’s mules—shoes that age us by a decade or so. The jeans that once looked so good with stiletto heels or cowboy boots now have to settle for Reebok tennis shoes. Once pregnancy hits, all the shoes we wore for years become worthless dust collectors, no longer fitting properly. We often realize, for the first time, the havoc fashionable shoes have wreaked on our feet. Now, we’re paying for foot detoxes and saving up to buy shoes solely for comfort, regardless of how unattractive they might be. And this is where it usually ends. From this point forward, women become shoppers of comfort and creatures of habit. The mom jeans and orthopedic-looking shoes become closet staples. Even as our kids grow up and beg us not to wear them, coaxing us to buy something more stylish, we shrug it off, having learned the painful lesson of walking in shoes that hurt our feet at the end of the day.

The Final Phase: Embracing Comfort, No Matter the Style

Soon, we’ll be visiting Easy Spirit stores and paying too much for shoes that look like they should come with a cane. They might be bedazzled or mildly wild in color, with a slight heel or even a touch of flair. Chances are, they’ll still be pretty ugly—but they’re definitely comfortable!

Buying shoes for comfort is one of those rites of passage that indicates we’ve grown up. When we’re old enough to realize that fashion and impressing others aren’t as important as feeling good, we’ve crossed the shoe threshold in our lives. We may secretly admire the youthful shoes of our past and wish we could still find a pair of flip-flops to wear until they fall apart on the beach, but we know what’s important now: comfort.

Sadly, if any of us had started out with the advice from our parents to wear shoes that fit perfectly and actually supported our insteps, heels, and toes, we’d be less likely to suffer from the painful feet that plague many women throughout their lives. If we’d been smart enough to buy shoes for comfort from the start—rather than wait until we had no other choice—we would likely be much better off by the time we hit 30.

Looking back at the shoes we’ve worn—and the consequences we’ve paid for wearing them—it’s easy to see that wearing shoes that don’t fit or that hurt our feet just isn’t worth it. Life is too short to walk around in shoes that cause pain. Every step you take should bring joy, not discomfort, and fashion is never an excuse to make yourself suffer. Truthfully, wearing shoes that hurt only prolongs the inevitable. If each of us had just started with Easy Spirits from the beginning, we would be much better off!

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