You know what, shoe companies? Screw you.I've written to every single one of you to point out that there is a non-negligible population of toddlers with wide feet. Those toddlers have parents with credit cards, but we don't relish having to pay the ridiculous prices (two to three times what most parents pay for shoes) for the one and a half specialty brands that cater to all the widths. Every shoe company has written back with a polite, "Why don't you and your kid go eff off, because we don't care."
Even the couple of companies that charge in the $18-$30 range for wide shoes offer two wonderful varieties to choose from: the "ugly white shoe" and the "ugly black shoe". News flash: those shoes suck. Plus, I don't want to buy the same damn shoe in a new size every time her feet get larger. Call me crazy, but part of the fun of having a wonderful, goofy little girl who twirls around in the living room until she gets dizzy is dressing her in fun, unique, quirky stuff you can only really get away with when you're two or three years old.
So yes, there's Stride Rite. And when they have a sale, I can buy those shoes without having to breathe into a paper bag to calm myself down, because the only shoes I've bought for myself that cost that much have been specialty athletic shoes. And Stride Rite makes cute damn shoes, too, and I've never had them sigh at me when I hold up a shoe and ask if they have it in a wide width.
If they can do it, why doesn't anyone else bother at least trying to make a cute little WIDE pink shoe for my poor little girl? What did she do to you shoe manufacturers? Were you all beat up in grammar school by little girls with wide feet? Get over it and realize that not every product you sell has to be made only to cater to the majority. You can make a couple in a wider width without the world crashing down around your shoulders. Just widen the pattern, you idiots.
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. And I'm not buying your shoes for myself, either. I'm waiting for adult Stride Rites, so that the only company that gives a rat's poo about my daughter gets all my money.
3 comments:
The world hates the narrow and the wide. I have very narrow feet (so did my Mom), and Stride Rite was the only shoes I could wear for many years as a child. The most hideous wingtip holepunched brown shoes you can imagine, while all my friends wore Chuck Taylors.
This is a lot like when I bought glasses and they said, "Your lenses are so thick that of our 650 styles, you can pick from these two."
I had narrow feet as a kid. They're still a bit on the narrow side. I, to the best of my recollection, believe that I was given regular width shoes growing up, which either jangled around on my feet a bit, or I wore thicker socks. I tie my laces pretty tight, and I think this might be a side-effect compensation for what I used to do to combat all that extra width.
All that is mainly to point out that a narrow foot can get into a normal width shoe, where a wide one cannot. Not that it will be ideal or even comfortable, but it can be done if the situation demands it.
That is not to say that it isn't a travesty that there aren't sufficient choices open to all portions of the foot width spectrum. And as far as the glasses go, that's utterly ridiculous as well.
Our culture has built itself on not just catering to the majority, but pretending that any minority grouping of it simply doesn't exist because they find it inconvenient. Maybe making a smaller number of narrow or wide shoes is bad for the bottom line, but for heaven's sake, spread the costs out over your product line or charge a small, reasonable premium on the items that are used by fewer people. But for crying in the sink, offer the choices if you consider yourself a real supplier to the marketplace.
We've fixated on streamlining and glossing over details so much to MAXIMIZE MAXIMIZE MAXIMIZE that real, actual needs of human beings are being blown off and swept under the carpet. That's not the world we should be making. Inclusion at every step, on every level. All this ridiculous pretending that only the largest group matters is what's wrong with more than just shoe manufacturing.
I found this page while searching for a place to buy wide width shoes. I'm a pretty small female (5'3", 118 lb). Yet my feet are super wide. They're not just wide around the toe area, they're wide all the way back to the ankle. I still haven't found a single pair of pumps wide enough for my feet. Even the wide width ones don't work because they're wide enough at the toe but not wide enough halfway down the foot.
I have no idea why I have them, but I've had them all my life. When I was a baby going for my first pediatrician appointment, the doctor noticed my feet right away and laughed at how wide they were. My mom said that she had such a hard time finding shoes wide enough for me, so she ended up buying shoes way too big length-wise but okay width-wise. Then she'd put lambswool (the stuff ballet dancers use to pad their shoes) until the shoe was tighter.
Hate to break it to you, but finding shoes is probably going to be a problem for your child her whole life!
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