Women worry more than men about their feet.
If you’ve got big old hairy flat fungus-infected feet and you’re male, that’s okay. In fact, it can even be a good thing. Those feet might keep you out of the infantry.
But women? Most women want small feet, petite pieds, and tiny tootsies. They worry about how big their feet look to others. They buff their feet, they exfoliate their feet, they paint their feet, they tan their feet, they put their feet in shoes that are slimming.
And this men, is not our fault. I say this because everything else these days is our fault. Yes, men like young women with, er, flattering figures. And yes, high-heels were probably a man’s idea along with hair-rollers and girdles. But the small foot thing is all women. The dames have done it to themselves.
Because men don’t care about your feet, ladies.
Never in all my years of professional ogling at various women with my cronies have I ever heard a man say, “Hey look at that babe! What eyes, what hair! She’s gorgeous! Oh, but look at her feet.”
As long as you have feet, most men probably won’t notice them.
This may anger some Southern women out there. Aside from the Italians, Southern women spend more money on shoes than any other group on this planet. Southern women, in fact, can sum up one’s entire family history just by looking at the shoes.
“You know Carolyn Mathis? Well! I saw her getting out of her Cadillac yesterday and she was wearing white ultra-suede pumps with a pink pearlized flower right on top of the toe. I never! Her family always was trash, and no matter how much money you pour over her, she’ll still be g-a-r-b-a-g-e, trash, bless her heart.”
That’s what a shoe can do to a person.
I have a friend, let’s just call her Mrs. X, who was cursed with big feet. She wears an 11B. And if you’ve got big feet in the South you might as well let your hair grow out, move to Yellowstone, and scare tourists into thinking you’re a Sasquatch.
Where can you buy an 11B in Alabama other than the men’s department? So Mrs. X asked me to buy her some shoes here in New York City. She wanted a cream-colored Ferragamo pump with a two-inch heel and a patent-leather black toe. Simple enough, right?
Going into a woman’s shoe department is like vacationing in Iraq. People are snatching shoes, hollering, and eating salespeople alive. It’s gruesome, bloody, and savage. To get service from a member of the staff you’ve got to yell “MEDIC! MEDIC!” and it helps to lay prostrate on the floor with the shoe you want embedded in your forehead.
It was with this grim knowledge that I went to the Ferragamo flagship store. No 11B. Undeterred, I went to fourth floor of Sak’s Fifth Avenue and requested the shoe.
While I was waiting for the salesperson to return from the closet where they apparently only have three shoes that they rotate from customer to customer, I overheard the conversation of three ladies from Washington County, Ohio. One asked, “Do you think Ferragamo has a flagship store?”
“It’s only two blocks from here,” I told the ladies, trying to be friendly. They thanked me, smiled, and one offered a breath-mint. What a nice young man, they might have been thinking.
Then the salesperson came out. “Mr. Murphy, we don’t have that pump you wanted your size. In fact, we don’t have any 11B shoes.”
Simultaneously, all three women from Ohio gasped and I almost hear the “Madge! You wouldn’t believe what we saw at a department store in New York City! This normal looking man was buying lady’s shoes in an 11B! Plain as day! Like there was nothing unusual about it.”
I might have burst their bubble, but then you know Andalusia, everyone needs a good New York story for the bridge club back home.
—Morgan Murphy