promised topics

I promised to cover some odd topics a few weeks ago but have not yet done so. One of those topics was the shoes Asian women wear. While we were in Hawaii, we noticed that women of Asian ethnicity seemed to be fond of stiletto heels and other shoes that not only fit badly but seemed downright dangerous. The photo I've included shows the type of shoe I'm referring to. Notice the gap between the back of the woman's foot and the back of the shoe. And these shoes "fit well" compared to so many of the shoes we saw. Obviously, in order to get shoes that wouldn't pinch their toes, they bought them a bit large, and sometimes there was a gap of an inch between their heels and the backs of the shoes.

Aside from the appearance, which I personally think is atrocious, abnormal, and bizarre, the women could not walk. Some of them tried walking in the deep beach sand, and of course, that was ridiculous, but even on the sidewalks, the women clumped along in a really graceless way. We saw several women simply topple over, with a twisting of the ankle that looked painful. These shoes force a walker to put the ball of the foot down first instead of rolling on the heel toward the ball, the way it seems more normal to walk. And for some reason, Asian women walk by putting one foot directly in front of the other. We lazy American women don't try to walk like runway models. We splat along with several inches between our feet, and as a result, our walk is balanced and we don't fall over all the time. (At least, not if we are wearing sensible shoes and not stiletto heels.)

But I am not going to let American/Caucasian women off the hook. Yesterday in the hall I saw a woman walking along in sandals. No heels. But she was walking (rapidly) only on her tiptoes, as if she had heels on. I kept looking to see if somehow the heels of the shoes were not visible to me, but stare as I might, I never saw heels on her shoes. I know there is some sort of health problem that pediatricians diagnose if they see a child walking on tiptoes rather than using all of the foot, but I'd never before seen an adult woman walking purposefully and rapidly (not trying to be stealthy) on her tiptoes. Maybe she always wears high heels and thus her ligaments have tightened so much, she can't put her feet down flat. (Like a Barbie doll without shoes on.)

Speaking of Barbie, we could take a lesson. The way Barbies used to keep their high heel shoes on was with a little spike that went from inside the shoe into the bottoms of her feet. Now doesn't that say something?