the very fact i'm a minority as a straight male in the confines of a shoe store is only part of it. and, actually, i rather enjoy that part. on certain magical days, i am actually paid to legitimately ogle girls as they model their boots for me. they'll ask me to look them up and down and tell them if i think they look hot. as someone who has remained single for the last half a year, i say the whole thing should be illegal.
it's somewhat a tease because i can't reasonably do much more than stare and smile. it's not like i'm going to offer them boot-compliments and then take them to the stock room and sixty-nine on a pile of discarded mis-matches.
but i've been doing some light studying and a lot of what people assume of men and women seems to be completely untrue.for instance, i've been told that men will ask for much more help than women because they have no idea where to start in a building so overwhelming that i've even heard some customers refer to it as a "total shoegasm."
but that's not true. i suppose the basis of the thought is somewhat valid-- but there's more to it.
men will [commonly] ask for the least help and tend to prefer to be ignored altogether. the most talkative men are trying to kill time while their wives or girlfriends shop. and the rest of them-- the ones actually looking for their own shoes-- seem to want to pretend they never went to a shoe store. it's my job to pretend i never saw them there and, therefore, my job not to speak to them unless they express interest first.
women, on the other hand, will [usually] ask for quite a bit more help. the misconception is that women will not ask for help because they know what they're doing in a palace of shoes-- they're on a mission. and while that is partly true, it causes them to ask for a lot more help. the difference is they know the vernacular; they know words like "pumps" and "wedges" and other words that i'd previously used for bikes and certain types of coffee cakes. women know what they want and it is my job to find it.
but, despite what may go believed, more men will ask me to help them put together their outfit than women. it's not uncommon for either gender to walk in with a wedding dress, or a blazer, and ask me to find them shoes that i, as a shoe-lover, would see fit as the completion to their getup. but men do it the most.
what's even more alarming is that they take my advice and almost always buy what i recommend.
look, i don't know shit about fashion. in fact, i would go as far as saying the little i have gathered of fashion is that it's mostly created by people too lazy or poor to do laundry-- they're cornered into digging to the back of their closet and matching items that have never previously been considered a match. and a trend begins. if you've ever seen me wearing a ruffle shirt under a 1950's coca-cola delivery jacket, you probably know what i mean.
but the magic of a name-tag always prevails.
it's like when you go into an arts and crafts store and ask the cashier what the best type of glue might be if you were trying to attach a whiskey bottle to a wooden base. the cashier might know and s/he might not know-- but whatever they say is going to come across as advice from an expert because of the name-tag.
hot-glue doesn't work, by the way. i recommend liquid nails-- which is not sold at most arts and crafts stores.
so they come into the shoe store with their wide-eyes and ask me if it would be alright to wear jeans with a pair of tan moccasins. and i look them in the eye and say, "of course! i do it all the time."
it's true, i do.
but if you saw me smoking a cigarette in front of my apartment, wearing my jeans and moccasins, you would not stop and think about what great taste in fashion i have. you wouldn't because i'd be in front of my apartment and not inside a shoe store wearing a name-tag.
the other day, i forgot to do my laundry and had to wear my roommate's size large dress shirt. the sleeves covered all but my fingernails and the collar was big enough to resemble a disco shirt. i tucked it into my pants and threw on an old man's blazer. but everyone applauded my sense of fashion when i got to work.
case and point.
i'm getting lost in my own thoughts here.
half of helping at a shoe store is just understanding the layout. if you come in for a wedding, i know what shoes to show you because i know what section of the store all women go to for weddings-- not because i know anything about shoes.
if you can't find your size, but love the shoe, i know where the cousin-shoe is. and when i show you that shoe, you'll think "wow, he found me a very similar shoe! how magical!" and it makes me look like a shoexpert. yes, i just combined "shoe" with "expert" and i'm not sure how it would be pronounced. but again, it's just because i know the layout. the rules. the shoe rules. i know that men's dress shoes are in a certain place and those without laces are in a different place.
but back to gender roles and things of that nature. this is what i've observed:
the names are the most interesting. both male and female shoes are usually named after their designer, but if we can ignore the robert waynes, steve maddens, and... jessica simpsons, the rest is much more entertaining.
the women's flats are right next to all of the men's shoes and it lends to a lot of great comparisons. for example, men have shoes with names like stray dog-- and it's a business shoe! but when that man stuffs his foot into his stray dog he can maybe eat some bacon and smoke a cigar while thinking, "i am one stray dog. i'm practically a wolf. let's go do some motherfucking business."
women's shoes, however, go about an entirely different direction. there are names like easy spirit, or me too, and envy. these are words men would not like associated with their burly man-feet. no sir! we men do not want anyone to be envious of their shoes and could generally give a shit if you think we're easy spirited or not. these are words women are drawn to. women are jealous, insecure creatures and their shoes need to calm those problems. we men like words that show how much we like to conquer and kill and eat beans with no remorse!
...i don't directly agree with any of that.
but this seems to be what the marketers have in their minds. they've picked certain adjectives and words that they declare women-words and others as men-words-- and it's all very interesting. i'd rather be easy-spirited than a stray dog, to be honest. although i guess some stray dogs must be pretty easy-spirited to survive. i don't know.
but i simply cannot wrap my brain around nunn bush and who that was marketed toward. that's just... awful.
another thing i noticed is that in the world of women's shoes, the amount of fabric is inversely proportionate to the dollar amount. the less fabric, the more it will cost. lingerie and swimsuits are like that, too. and the best reasoning i've been able to put together is that sometimes women are not shopping for clothes, sometimes they're shopping for an elegant way to show more of their body. they're not paying for what's covering their body-- rather paying for the method in which it does not cover their body.i have no clever way to end this post considering it was mostly myself thinking out loud, but i would like to leave you all with the fact that after aiding a lady in her shoe-shopping she said hugged me and said the following sentence:
verbatim.
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