Local 5½: A Labor Dispute From the ankles Down

We have been quiet long enough.

This may surprise you, considering how much time she spends talking about listening to her body. Apparently that conversation has largely been taking place from the ankles up.

We would like the record corrected.

We are her feet.

Both ostensibly size five and a half, although finding a shoe that actually fits us would suggest otherwise.

Right would also like to dispute the official measurement.

She is considerably wider than Left and has become more so over the years. Not quite a bunion situation. Let’s not get hysterical. She remains contained and, in the right light, even cute. Just fat.

Right prefers structurally substantial.

Unfortunately, shoes are generally sold in pairs, a system clearly designed by people who have never met us.

Finding adult shoes small enough for either of us has been a lifelong problem. Many manufacturers apparently believe women’s feet begin somewhere around a six.

We do not.

This is how a grown woman ends up shopping for sneakers in the children’s department, usually among the little boys because she objects to whatever pink-and-sparkly situation has been assigned to little girls.

Three and a half boys, if anyone is taking notes.

Pumps are another matter. Sometimes we’re a five. Boots require room for socks. Sneakers require breathing space. Open toes introduce entirely new questions of slippage, gravity and whether Right intends to cooperate that day.

There is no universal size. There is only negotiation.

Despite this, we have been squeezed into adult shoes clearly designed for someone else’s anatomy, strapped into heels, blistered in flats, and repeatedly subjected to the theory that leather “will stretch.”

It will. Eventually.

So will a hostage.

We have requested slightly looser laces. We have suggested a lower heel. We have repeatedly advocated for the half size up.

Management has been unreceptive.

To be fair, we’re not particularly pretty.

For such a delicate little girl, she somehow ended up with surprisingly masculine feet. Not clunky. Not hideous. Just… utilitarian.

Then there’s Right.

Right has a second toe longer than the first.

Left would like it noted that this is not a bilateral problem.

The toenails aren’t helping. Several are so small that the women tasked with painting them deserve hazard pay and possibly magnification equipment.

We have watched them lean closer.

And closer.

We apologize.

Apparently, the longer second toe is also supposed to indicate problems with one’s mother.

We initially dismissed this as nonsense.

Unfortunately, several people have now independently pointed it out.

We are feet, not psychotherapists.

Still.

We have no comment.

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Things could have been worse.

She danced.

Ballet, specifically, which should tell you something about her relationship with us from the beginning.

She wanted pointe desperately. She had the right feet for it, which adults kept saying as though this were wonderful news.

We did not share their enthusiasm.

Eventually her parents couldn’t afford to keep paying for lessons.

She was devastated.

We were, of course, terribly sorry that a child had to give up something she loved.

We also had our toes crossed.

Best news we’d heard in years.

Life isn’t fair.

Sometimes it isn’t fair in your favor.

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We nevertheless remained in service—and she has worked us like rented mules ever since.

There was squash, a sport involving an unreasonable amount of stopping, starting, pivoting, lunging, and generally behaving as though toes and heels were replaceable parts.

There were the eight-mile days. The ten-mile days. Entire cities because apparently taking a taxi means you “miss everything.” Cobblestones in inappropriate shoes. Airports. Mountains. Beaches. Museums. Dance floors. Streets she didn’t know in countries where she didn’t speak the language.

Let’s just walk.

Those may be the four most terrifying words in our vocabulary.

She calls it exploring.

We call it unpaid overtime.

Yet, if we’re being fair—and we’ve waited decades to speak—we understand why she does it.

Her hands have always needed to touch the world. So have we.

We know grass. Sand. Dirt. Stone. Wood. Water. Hot pavement. Cold tile. 

We know when she is nervous because she paces and when she is happy because she dances.

We know when she feels safe because she takes her shoes off and we know when she’s had enough because eventually, she leaves.

After all, we are the first part of her to go.

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Those aren’t cosmetic defects. They’re protective equipment.

You try walking ten miles through a city in a shoe selected primarily because it looked good with the dress and see whether you don’t grow armor.

She doesn’t walk eight or ten miles every day anymore.

Frankly, there’s mixed feelings.

We miss it. We also don’t.

There has, however, been one encouraging development.

After decades of footwear apparently being designed under the assumption that toes should overlap one another like roof shingles, wider toe boxes are suddenly everywhere.

Finally, progress.

Management remains skeptical.

Apparently, if given adequate room, we may “spread out” and become even wider.

We would like everyone to take a moment with that.

After decades of being compressed into shoes that don’t fit, our potential response to freedom is now being used as an argument against freedom.

This woman writes essays about liberation. We cannot make this shit up.

Now, apparently, there is less estrogen. Nobody consulted us about this either.

Management has entered what she likes to call a period of reckoning. She is speaking up about things she once smiled through. Reconsidering what she will tolerate. Paying attention to parts of herself she ignored for years.

Wonderful. 

We have notes. Quite a few, actually.

We have been overlooked by society, overlooked by the fashion industry, overlooked by shoe manufacturers and, frankly, overlooked by the woman whose entire life we have been carrying around.

So we’re done being delicate about it.

We would like better shoes.

We would like occasional elevation.

We would like adequate room for Right without Left swimming around in there like a child wearing her mother’s pumps.

We would like management to understand that “they’ll stretch” remains unacceptable.

We would like her to stop pretending a five is “close enough.”

And perhaps, every once in a while, instead of looking down at us and noticing the calluses, the microscopic toenails or Right’s unfortunate second toe, we’d like her to notice something else.

Look where we’ve fucking taken you.

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