Shoes? Two pairs, please!
I have friends who are unable to buy a pair of shoes without buying two. Not one pair, being of course the strict minimum, but batches of several pairs at a time.
In all honestly, I must say I understand them and that — perhaps this explains it — I’ve been known to display the same behaviour myself.
What intrigues me about it, as insignificant as the case may seem, is that it allows us to reflect on what is symbolically at stake in the act of buying shoes.
Hypothesis: the inability-to-make-decisions syndrome?
Or how exclusive disjunction* can cripple the shoe-buying process
I’ll hold back on calling my girlfriends “patients” since a syndrome doesn’t necessarily indicate an illness or state requiring treatment. The essence of this ailment is that they rarely ever make it out of a store with only one pair of shoes, as if a sole pair couldn’t possibly fulfil the expectations that come along with the prospect of new shoes. I’m not talking about a “necessary” purchase, meaning something you could not avoid buying even if you didn’t want them (rain boots, per se), plagued by constraints and near entirely detached from desire.
I do feel it’s useful to underline that, with the abundancy of goods at our fingertips and the consistency of marketing strategies that are appallingly out of balance with our actual needs, necessary purchases, meaning what we need to not be walking around barefoot, reflect no more than the bare bones of our purchases in this part of the world.
The process of buying shoes that are not strictly necessary sheds light on a pulsion whose force and meaning we, as free-acting beings, are unable to grasp. It’s reflected in the impulse to suddenly enter a shoe store and proceed with something that feels like capturing, or at least a discovering an unexpected treasure in a strange land, an object that comes with the surprise of something you’ve never seen before but that nonetheless meets an expectation or fulfils a hidden desire that emerges the moment you lay eyes on it. A necessity roused by the emergence of a secret from within. That is why we must pay close attention to this revelation, this clue to a riddle we just may solve. Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your shoelaces…
My hypothesis, based on the observation that some people impulsively carry away pairs of shoes in twos, is as follows:
Is what we reveal to ourselves, amidst the scattered shoes and shoeboxes boiling over with crumpled tissue paper, that we have trouble deciding in our lives?
Trouble making decisions, picking one over the other when our comparative calculations have failed: black moccasins or teal loafers? The question is all the less meaningless seeing as there is no specific goal to the purchase, not to strut your stuff at any particular event, not to match an outfit, climb a mountain or stroll down the waterfront. Measuring what’s preferable here simply isn’t possible — a constantly recurring situation in our society of plenty. In this context, the shoes are never viewed as comparable, even when their only difference is in a minor trait (dark blue or black). So no choice is possible, unless somehow our preferability computations hand us a perfectly cooked syllogism on a silver platter, the answer. But if what the impulse in our hypothesis is supposed to shed light on is an inability to make decisions in life, it comes as no surprise that the solution of leaving things to chance is entirely unsatisfactory.
*
Deepening hypothesis: shoes and nothing else…
Or the significance of shoes
But in the case we’re examining, the symptom concerns shoes — shoes and not gloves, hats or scarves. Thus, to pursue our investigation, we will need to deepen the hypothesis that looks into what these “foot casings,” that finish us, which I say almost without pun intended, say about our state, practices and engagement in action… Shoes cover the endpoints of our bodies, which is why we remove them for reflexology sessions, and they add a finishing touch, giving us more zip, more resistance, flexibility and stability: they complete our naked humanity. A scarf, a hat or a pair of gloves express something entirely different than pumps, sandals, brogues, derbies, knee-highs, oxfords or dress boots.
More often than not, shoes are objects in themselves. Objects, like hats, that do not droop when you set them down; that do not need an owner to be what they are. They have an identity before you ever meet their gaze. You don’t need to be wearing them to know how they look, like when a salesperson in a clothing store ushers you into the dressing rooms because “it doesn’t look like much on the hanger, but it’s very nice on, you’ll see.” A pair of shoes is something you meet. Its identity is established before you slide your foot in. Whether or not they suit you, whether or not they fit remains to be seen.
Choosing a pair of shoes is choosing a double partner with which to forge ahead, into new and every-changing locations — One can never step in the same river twice, said the philosopher Heraclitus, who wrote about impermanence — we do not know what a time that has yet to take place holds for us.
Shoes carry us along a path of life we hope will bring success and happiness.
More than any other article of clothing or accessory, they play a role both practically (“I haven’t worn heels in ages, she said, because I do a lot of walking now and like the freedom”) and socially (dress shoes are recommended for job interviews). They protect (“He wears closed-toe shoes when he travels to minimize the risk of injury when loading baggage here and there”) and reassure. They say something about us, act as ambassadors, mediators. So the symbolism of their function comes as no surprise: a talisman of what we will become, and thus, a living testimony of what we have become, which may explain some people’s irrational attachment to their shabby, worn out sneakers.
I’ll bypass the sexual dimension documented by Freud, which I believe to be much less meaningful than the angles I’ve laid out thus far. A Freudian psychoanalyst would see in my resistance proof of a symptom, potentially involving my sexual inhibitions: it’s got to be spicy, it’s got to hurt a little. Too bad, I guess. It can be tough to scrape by with people who sometimes find revelations in our statements, and other times in the lack thereof, but want the beef and the power over others too.
Conclusive hypothesis: the future is wide open
Buying by two, you say. Almost by the double, like if the friends in question had four feet. What is their incessant stuttering a sign of? Buying in multiples gives the sense, 1: that these shoes are the ones I need: they make me feel good, I’ve found the right fit (avoid the term “comfortable” that insidiously implies a certain unattractiveness and strips away all desire), 2: that they’re cool (attractive, sharp, fashionable, laid-back, just plain hot), and I identify with them (“Those shoes are so you, so your style.”), and 3: that they will help me reinforce and enhance the identity I identify with, or in an existentialist movement, am jumping into (“Wow! You’ll be lookin’ fine with those new Tigers. You’re going places.”)
Buying double or almost double (I know, I know, we’re circling, but I’m taking things step by step) is not inconsistent with the need to keep your feet on the ground (I didn’t say be tough as old boots), or with something else, being the esthetics of the shoes worn by the friends I am speaking of, those conceptual philosophical characters I use to show off. Buying double has to do with a third need that consists in which path to follow, which destiny to shape for ourselves — knowing where to go.
When we buy two pairs at a time, it is of course because we’re unable to decide, but also to keep our options open.
Becoming a princess or bad girl (I’m shakin’ in my boots!), a successful business woman (dragging your boots is out of the question) or a rebel (don’t want to be a bootlicker or shine anyone else’s shoes), are rough sketches of the fates we do not want to choose between, to not be bound hand and foot with a pre-paved future.
A purchase as commonplace as a pair of shoes, or perhaps two or three, like any other humdrum act of our daily lives, is an open door to figuring out who we are and it would be a mistake not to decode the signals we receive. If you’re looking for a shoe that fits, no matter how many, it’s also to move forward in your life, to walk down the best road and along the pleasant pathway and not sit around waiting for the other shoe to drop. Projecting a future identity requires a great deal of care. It calls for rational calculations before making a decision, weighing what’s best. When that’s not possible, a decision has to be made — cutting clean from the hopeless mathematical exertion.
When really you can’t decide, get both.
An act of rebellion. No more goody two-shoes.
