Maybe it’s because I’ve never been much of a girly girl. Or because I don’t think buying a pair of shoes should be like paying off the national debt of a small country. Or maybe just because I’m old and cantankerous. Whatever the reason, I don’t like shoe shopping.
There, I said it. Alert the fashion police and I’ll go quietly.
Image courtesy of artur84 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Maybe the real problem is not so much that I don’t like shoe shopping as it is that I just don’t particularly like shoes. So many of them are less than attractive and absolutely uncomfortable. I’d live in sneakers, if it was up to me.
So it was with this frame of reference that I came upon a sponsored post on Facebook. (You know those things, right? They’re the advertisements you see while scrolling through your newsfeed.) Anyway, it was a post for tieks, “luxurious ballet flats”. As the name implies, they were simple, flexible flats, which is definitely my kind of footwear. And, they came in a whole palette of colors, which is handy. If shoes really are comfortable, I’d like to have several pair and maybe minimize the shopping ordeal next time around. So score one for the marketing team: I clicked the link.
I should’ve known I was in trouble when the shopping area of the website was called a “boutiek”, but I kept browsing. The shoes did look mighty comfortable, and the choice of color was astounding. To be so promising this far along in the process, I was starting to get a little bit excited. I’m currently in need of some navy shoes, so I decided to take a look, and this pair seemed perfect. Right up until the $165 price tag.
What? Almost two hundred bucks? For shoes? I don’t spend that much on my sneakers, and as I said, I could live in them. Ridiculous. And, yes, I’m well aware that there are plenty of shoes with much higher price tags than that, but that’s just exponentially more ridiculous. And besides, none of those really high-end options have shown up in my Facebook feed trying to pass themselves off as comfortable footwear for daily wear.
I don’t know how this pricing trend got started, but I’m pretty sure that no matter how luxurious these particular flats are, they can’t be worth that kind of money. Of course, the problem is that you can’t not have shoes, and I think the shoemakers are well aware of that, so they’ve begun a “whatever the market will bear” type of attitude. Again, ridiculous.
Instead of some sort of sticker shock reaction, I’d much rather this post be about successfully finding—and enjoying—a new pair of navy flats. Maybe even a review of a new shoe, and how it compares to others in its category. But the truth is, those tieks were the best ones I’ve run across as yet, so instead, all I can do is tell you that my search continues. And in the meantime, the tieks ad is still showing up in my newsfeed, and my subconscious just keeps trying to come up with reasons a shoe is worth $165. But I don’t think the marketing folks are going to win this one.
Have I mentioned that I really don’t like shoe shopping?
