I watched a documentary the other night about Christian Louboutin and it got me thinking. I do quite miss wearing heels although I’ve got to be honest I’ve never worn the kind of towering creations dreamed up by the likes of him…he doesn’t make shoes for fat girls. His perspective on shoes for those of you who didn’t see the documentary, is that the first thing a woman does when she puts on a pair of heels is to look in the mirror, and check out her own ass. The expectation being that the heels make your ass look spectacular.
Now forgive me being sceptical but it’s going to take more than a pair of heels to justify the use of the word ‘spectacular’ in association with my ass. They’re going to do what? Make it look more curvy..? Yeah cos that’s exactly what I need. Make me a pair of shoes that make it look like I dropped 5 dress sizes and I’ll squeeze my pasty feet into them all day long but till then, red soles or not you can just jog on thanks.
I did once order a gorgeous pair of boots from Jimmy Choo. I should explain, I’m all about the bags – shoes have never really been my thing – and I’d been on-line scouring the January sale to see if they had any nice bags up for grabs when these boots caught my eye. They were flatties, beautiful nude colour suede, lined with sheepskin and utterly gorgeous. Highly impractical, one rain shower or puddle would have ruined them but I talked myself through all the possible scenarios where carefully planned climate-controlled outings would allow me to show them off. I had a YOLO moment (you only live once!) and thought sod it, sod the expense, they’ve got my name all over them.
On the day they were delivered the whole experience was awesome…a box in a box in a box, wrapped with tissue paper and sprinkled with fairy dust (ok I’m lying about the fairy dust) and it was all going so well until I tried them on. Tried one of them on…it was at this point I realised that fancy designers didn’t make fancy shoes for fat feet. I thought I’d been really clever ordering one and a half sizes bigger than normal (*taps head*, up here for thinking, down there for dancing) but no sooner had my big toe passed the sheepskin tongue it became very clear that Houston had a problem. Like a bona fide ugly sister, no way was my foot going to fit into that boot. Not even close. With great sadness and not a small amount of attitude I stuffed them back into their perfect box and sent them back.
I can’t wear heels. There comes a point on the scale of fatness where it’s just not possible – if you’re in the fat club you’ll know what I mean – so for now I’m limited to flatties for fatties. I did manage to score a gorgeous pair of Chanel flip flops this summer, and I’d like to think that Coco Chanel in all her tiny perfection would have derived a certain amount of satisfaction from knowing that the shoe people at Chanel had succeeded where others had failed in making at least one pair of fat feet feel fabulous.
They didn’t do much for my ass though, in case you were wondering 🙂
