In which she wonders why shoemakers hate women

[zeborah]

A few months ago I got this great pair of shoes. They're ankle boots, and they zip up quickly, and they were cheap, and most importantly they're practically flat so that wearing them doesn't in and of itself injure me. Problem was, they were cheap, so now they're dying. Really dying: one of these days I'm going to take a step and leave the sole behind.

Today I *wanted* to buy a nice expensive pair of boots from The Last Footwear company, but they appear to have shut down their Christchurch store. They still have stores in Auckland, Nelson, and Motueka. No idea where Motueka is? Yeah, neither have I.

So I went to the mall instead and looked at the shoes in five stores. Six stores. One shop turned out only to have running shoes. Another one only had the kind of fashion shoes where the price is calculated by: number-of-ferraris-the-desired-boyfriend-should-have multiplied by the-fluorescent-it-burns divided by width-of-straps. Two stores were your Walmart-type thing so I wasn't hopeful, and lo, they didn't have any quality shoes. Two stores had a reasonable range of shoes, but all the boots were ankle-breakers.

At one point I turned in desperation to the men's shoes. Men's shoes are actually sane; I bet you can walk in them and everything. The problem is that the stores only had down to size 7, and I think I'd need a size 6 or possibly less.

<glares at feet>

On the bright side, when I went to the supermarket to do my shopping, I found a stainless steel potato masher. I've been looking for one of those for about a year.

Comments

[brooksmoses]

Try the boy's section? They might have some of the sane shoes on the men's section, and they'll definitely be smaller.

[zeborah]

Ooh, good idea. I bet there's some school shoes that fit what I want.

[julesjones]

This is why I don't bother going into any shoe shop other than a Clarks shop or something with a wide range of Clarks. I know there's *one* brand that caters to women who don't want to destroy their feet.

I need to go in and see if they've got Merrymaker in. My current favourite model, a flat ankle boot that looks good and *fits* me. But they only stock it in winter.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I haven't worn women's shoes in years. My feet are wide, size 10.5. In a world where very, very, very few companies MAKE half sizes anymore, so I have an endless supply of shoes that are slightly too large or slightly too small, and rarely anything that fits.

Half the year I wear sandals, and if I find a pair of shoes that fits, and I wear them for a few weeks and they still fit, I buy another.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Clark's are all too wide for me. I wear a 10AAAA with 7A heel. This is why I have four pairs of shoes and one pair of sandals, and only regularly wear two of the shoes (same shoe, different colors). I complained to a podiatrist a few years back that when I got sick and gained all this weight, I figured my feet would get wider and I could buy more shoes, but instead my feet got longer. He laughed and said that's how it works.