If the Shoe fits - BUY IT!

Don't misconstrue this post as a criticism of fashion - or of women - but construe it as the latest salvo in my ongoing struggle with the rampant consumerism in North America. Every once and a while, I do come off as a start raving mad socialist.

I helped a colleague take a load of stuff over to her new house on Friday night. I am good at many things, including lifting boxes. We loaded the truck that so many people covet on moving day, with as many boxes as it could stand filling the back. And then I saw them - the racks of shoes. It was like that scene in the Matrix where Neo says "We need guns, lots and lots of guns."

I am 33 years old. I have 13 pairs of shoes, including my winter boots, and including three pairs of golf shoes. I have two pairs of brown shoes, two pairs of black shoes, a pair of shoes at my second office, and some loafers and a pair of sandals.

My colleague, had, to be blunt more shoes in her one bedroom apartment than I had hundred's of miles on my year old truck. After we filled two giant glad garbage bags full of shoes - with the stiletto heals protruding outwards - puncturing the plastic and sticking directly into my kidney- I don't think we even had half of them. There were pink ones, yellow ones, sharp ones, dancing ones, tennis ones, knee high ones, short ones, tall ones, fat ones, thin ones and of course - pointy ones. There were lots of shoes. If you asked her, she would tell you she worn them all fairly regularly. A centipede couldn't wear them all regularly. That is, of course, notwithstanding the shoes I found with cobwebs between the heel and the toe.

I am not going to pretend that there isn't a catharsis that is developed as a result of shoe shopping - for me it is looking at baseball cards and coins. I am also not going to pretend that there are tremendous social pressures on a lot of young women to get the latest whatever designed by whoever from where ever in Italy - for me it is new suits (I have five suits I haven't worn in five years unless I make a conscious decision to wear them despite the fact they are ugly).

What I am going to say is that I think that shoes are the the most obvious example of need driven opulence in a society where we have box stores that have more inventory than could possibly meet the demand for the product in that area. "Great Selection" for you and I creates product dumping in 18 months in Bolivia.

I am not going to pretend that anyone understands it - hell, even Sex in the City made fun of it - but what is it about shoes that make so many people turn into Imelda Marcos? Even my niece (age 12) is fascinated by shoes - and has more shoes now than I have- and her feet are still growing. My mother has two closets full of shoes. My dad has less than ten pairs. The dog, however, loves shoes and treats them as a dietary supplement. After he ruins a pair, however, you can't even try to force him to gnaw on the other shoe in the pair. Poodles are, of course, quite selective.

In my lifetime I have lived with six women - one of whom was my partner, five of whom were random roommates. Without exception, they all had loads of shoes which dominated the front hall closets. With my former live-in, I didn't ask for half the shoes she had accumulated during the relationship when she left. With all of them - the most daunting part of any morning seemed to be picking the shoes that went with that outfit.

I don't think it is a sexist generalization. I think shoes are a lower priority for men than they are is for women. When you ask a woman what is the first thing she notices about a guy - many of them will say "their shoes." It may come as a surprise that very few men give a hoot about what a women is wearing, let alone on her feet.

But why keep them? I have owned lots of shoes- I wear them, and then I throw them out. I suppose the simple econometrics of shoe purchases suggest that women to which I refer will never "wear out" a pair of shoes - assuming there is some balance in the way they wear them.

Or so you would think. Buried deep in the closet is the boxes of unopened shoes. The shoes that haven't even been worn yet. The shoes that don't break down into the environment. There are more pairs of unworn shoes in the closets of my friends who are women then there are shoes in the closets of my friends who are men.

I don't know why people care so much about shoes. I think that they are literally the things we use to walk comfortably. Ironically, so many of these shoes are dreadfully uncomfortable. And yet people buy them - in the vain hope that a few inches of height will add the confidence required to smash that glass ceiling. Poppycock. The Finance Minister gets new shoes when he releases the budget- and trust me- they don't make him taller.

As I tossed the two bags of shoes into my truck, I started thinking about the math. Far be it for me to judge any one's purchasing decisions - I have spent over $40,000 on alcohol in the last five years and over $20,000 on cigarettes in the past ten - with little to show for it beyond a bloated liver, a raspy voice and a litany of great memories I will never get back - but at a $50.00 a pair, having two hundred pairs of shoes can become an expensive proposition very quickly. And, as if they were only $50.00 a pair. HAH.

The only thing more absurd than owning that many pairs of shoes is trying to justify why you own that many pairs. Except I can do it - no problem

1) Golf One - They are black and match half my outfits
2) Golf Two - They are white with Purple/Yellow and match the other half of my outfits
3) Golf Three- they are heavy duty rain shoes
4) Curling One - They are the only shoes I have designed for curling
5) Nike Sneakers - I wear them for my new found love of running ( as you might imagine, they are still quite new)
6) Bostonian Brown - I wear them with Brown Suits (so to speak)
7) Bostonian Black - I wear them with Black Suits
8) Moores cheapy Brown - I wear them semi-casually with jeans and brown pants
9) Moores cheapy Black - I wear them semi-casually with black pants
10) Brown slip-ons - I wear them when I don't feel like wearing my nice brown shoes
11) My winter boots - I wear them in the snow
12) My white soled, white runners - I wear them for squash and volleyball
13) My sandals- I wear them ALL THE TIME. They smell and should be replaced ASAP.

And that is it. Even I could get rid of at least four or six pairs. Along with a lot of my other clothes, mind you. Maybe we should all have a giant charity collection? With everyone limiting themselves to 20 pairs of shoes?