Dec 20, 2011

The Boots of The Round Table



If there is ever a magical future version of Camelot, where brave knights achieve great feats and go on heroic quests to earn their place at the renowned Round Table and sit beside their sovereign as equals, they will not get in by slaying dragons or finding swords in lakes. NO, all the knights will be ladies, and those ladies will have successfully bought a pair of boots.

Women's boot shopping is the modern-day equivalent of the Hero's Quest: you will face great odds, there will be many trials, you will doubt yourself and your god--it is the most frustrating and often demoralizing experience on Earth.

This is because boots are not created to be worn by any living woman, ever. They are made for martians with very large, very flat feet and teeny-tiny, reed-thin calves! Calves that are so thin (I imagine) they would snap if forced to bear any weight. At any given moment of the day, there are no less than three women sitting in shoe stores with puzzled looks on their faces and boots zipped only as far as their ankles. Seriously WHO are these women zipping up some of these boots? Anyone who has ever worn a heel before has a calf muscle.


And what is this trickery with the half-zipper? Where there's a zipper up four inches in the center of the boot that doesn't go all the way up? Is there a species of women who frequently need to adjust their ankles? Do you need a vent? Or are we storing daggers in boots again because while I'm on board with that, I still think your best bet there is More Room In The Calf Goddammit.  I don't know, the half-zipper might seem like the most logical thing in the world once you have the boot on, but again, calves here.

It's not even a weight issue: I lost 60 pounds one year, and figured, hey, everything fits now, why not boots? NOPE.

So, why even bother? Because, Lo, when The Boots Fit there is much rejoicing. Not just by our brave Lady, who may be so enchanted that she wears them around her house with shorts and a sweatshirt the entire first night because dayum. Strangers on the street ask to take pictures of them. Anonymous men remark that they need to find a similar pair for their ".....uh....SISTER!" Drunken males simply start yelling "Boots! Boooooots!! I like your boots!" across intersections at 2 am.* All of those incidents would actually be in response to these beauties, which are Madden Girl and ironically means they were designed for teenagers:
Even though they are clearly rated R.

The last time I bought boots, I wandered the aisles for over an hour. And I had just gotten an Amex card as a bonus at work AND had a gift card, so money was literally not an object. I could have taken home any boot in the store except that none of them fit, until finally--finally!--out of desperation I decided to just try on a pair on Nine West knee-high suede wedges that did not come in my size. But, surprise! They actually run one-and-a-half sizes too small for no reason. I can't even, with that, it's like I outsmarted a wizard or something. They are dressy and casual enough to wear with anything, and the wedge heel means they make my legs look amazingly long but are so comfortable. And they go to my knee without making my knees look like they're spilling over the top. They zip all the way up my calves like they were made for them.

This is the actual conversation I had with the woman at the counter:

"Oh my god these boots. They're beautiful!"

"Thank you so much...I seriously almost gave up."

"Thank god you didn't. Wow. I am so happy for you! Oh I am so, so happy that you didn't give up! They're just....I'm so happy for you."*

Because if you have ever tried to buy boots, you know: it is exactly like slaying a dragon. Like slaying a dragon and making boots out of its hide. And dragon-boots, well:

Tie down your husbands, because these boots are coming for them.




[Note: I sincerely tried to find out the actual name of those Nine West boots and link to them online. They've passed into urban shoe legend and for that I am sorry. Although if you find them, send me a link and I will gladly update].


*I swear on my copy of Bossypants that all of these incidents actually happened.


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