I have narrow feet. When I was younger (I’m 70), I had no problem finding shoes for narrow feet. In fact, shoe salesmen (none of them were women, and yes, shoe-shoppers had service in those days—you didn’t walk down aisles of shoes, pull a selection off a shelf and try it on while standing on one foot in the middle of the aisle. You actually sat down in a chair, and someone served you. But to get back to my story…) shoe salesmen approached you when you entered the store (you didn’t have to go looking for help back then), you might mention some pair of shoes you’d seen in the window, and he’d ask: what size? You didn’t just say “7”—which referred to length; you also gave a width, a letter, A,B,C—or perhaps AA or DD. So—you didn’t wear just a 7; you wore 7B—or whatever. And some women had an especially narrow heel, perhaps. My aunt wore 7AA with a quad-A heel. If you didn’t give him a width, he’d just bring you medium width. This might sound strange to younger people, but it was the norm for shoe-shopping women in the South (I can’t speak for other parts of the country; I didn’t live there.)
Time passed, as it is wont to do, and narrow shoes were not quite as widely available (intended pun). When I was about 25, I went to live in Germany for five years. Shoe-shopping was difficult! I hadn’t known this piece of American trivia before moving to Heidelberg: Americans were the only people who made and sold shoes in widths. I couldn’t find shoes to fit. The problem was demographics. Back home in Georgia, my feet were pretty normal; in Germany my feet were a minority. German women have wide feet. Eventually, I made friends with another member of the narrow-foot minority, an American woman, and twice a year we took a train to Florence to buy shoes. I could wear a very few French shoes, but otherwise, shoes had to be Italian or Spanish to fit. My problem was a matter of demographics.
Back home, narrow shoes became increasingly harder to find. Eventually, I accepted the fact that I would never be able to spend less than three digits for a pair of shoes, especially those I worked in, those I had to wear in a classroom all day long. There were a few labels I could count on—the most predictably comfortable label was Cole Haan, but they were so expensive. Then, even Cole Haan made fewer and fewer narrow shoes. Now, Cole Haan has been sold to China, and narrow shoes are almost impossible to find. Our global economy makes American-made shoes more scarce, and so now, the European manufacturers have grown tired of American sizes (6,7,etc.); they’ve now just started selling everything in European sizes (37,38,etc.) That’s demographics deeply affected by global economics.
Today, I tried to buy some shoes in the one store in town that carries narrow widths. The selection was very small. In frustration, I cried, “Why?”Another woman stood close by in the aisles of shelves, both of us in our little disposable anklet stockings to try on shoes, and we were checking the conversion sign: “37=7 to 8,” etc.—no mention of widths. She looked at me in sympathy and answered in one word: “Demographics.”
“Yes,” I answered. “I know. The difficulty is bad enough, but the translation that’s required now is almost offensively rude—especially considering they’re all so absurdly expensive—and so ugly. When did good taste become obsolete?”
She answered, “Demographics affected by deference to the EU.”
I sighed.
She said, “It’s time we accepted it: we’re going to have to live barefoot. This is not our country any more. It hasn’t been our country for a long time. We gave it away. I don’t know why we keep trying to find shoes for American feet—Americans don’t have American feet any more. Maybe we should just ask that wide-footed German woman in Berlin what kind of shoes she wants us to buy—and quit trying to think for our own feet any more—or standing on them either. Don’t bother voting. This is not your country.”
I sighed. Shoe-shopping and voting are both futile. Give it up. I went next door to Ruby Tuesday’s and had a Jack Daniels mist with a wedge of lime. The Florida state line is 15 miles south of here; the shriveled lime came from Peru.
There’s a lot of Republican finger-pointing and soul-searching and brow-furrowing going on today, November 7, but if you ask any woman trying to buy shoes what went wrong, she could tell you: Demographics. With a European punch.
That is interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone needing narrow widths. My mother (79) who has problems with her feet (as a result of arthritis) is forced to go to wider widths per her podiatrist. My mother had to go to a shoe store for problem feet, and they offered to stretch her shoes wider if she needed it. I think as we age we tend to need wider widths.
Manny,
Shoe widths are not a consideration just for women. My former husband also had narrow feet. Women, however, used to have slender hands and feet more frequently than men–probably because we did not evolve with a need for broad hands or feet so much. Not any more.
Medical conditions like arthritis could cause one to need wider shoes, I suppose, but not age. Weight gains would cause it, but basically it’s a matter of skeletal structure and a completely genetic matter (rather than medical, lifestyle, etc.), which is why the lack of narrow shoes bespeaks demographic change–exacerbated by the demands of global “programmed” economy. (I.e., the market is not designed to meet our needs now–we are designed to meet the needs of the market, instead.)