Walk a Mile in My

Have been experiencing a temporary increase in consciousness concerning shoes, of all things.  I run two avatars in Second Life, one male and one female, and my wardrobe as a girl is just shockingly deficient in appropriate footwear.  But the difficulty of finding the right pair of heels to go with my favorite dress is offset significantly by the utter customizability of what’s available.  As a man in SL, you can buy an OK pair of boots, and if you’re lucky, they’ll have a resize script in them that will adjust them to fit your feet.  As a woman, you can get a pair of bow-tied Marilyns that will replace your feet, plus a heads-up display that allows you to size them as large or as small as you want, custom-match them to your skin tone or panty hose, change every aspect of their color from the leather to the laces, and pick what color you want your toenail polish to be.  Boys are so deprived.

Meanwhile, the mercury in the City of the Mists hit the better part of 100 degrees Fahrenheit earlier this week, and with only 10 minutes left to make it to the bus stop, I discovered that I’d left my sneakers down the street inside Gloria.  So I grabbed my flip-flops instead:  the pair I haven’t worn in the City since that day several years ago, when I tripped up the subway steps wearing them and rammed my big toe into the concrete hard enough to break it.  I didn’t trip this time, but I did walk much more slowly, and since I was taking my time anyway, I spent most of the mile between Central Terminal and where I work observing with great interest what was on everyone else’s feet.  I discovered to my surprise that, by and large, men don’t wear that kind of footwear on the street-  at least not in the City of Mists.  Women, once the temperature becomes warm, switch to thin-strapped open platforms, summery sandals.  Men, even ones who have otherwise stripped themselves down to cut-off t-shirts and shorts, do not.  Their feet remain obdurately encased in thick sneakers, high socks, hard leather boots.

There are exceptions of course, just as there are women who stick to the concrete-stompers.  (The business woman who slips off her pumps at the office door and laces on her sneakers for the duration of her commute is a City of Mists icon.)  But they’re few and far between, and seem to prove the rule rather than disprove it.