What the Buckle

Sometime around spring this year, my guy friends were passing around their phone looking at a shoe design that was about to drop. I took a quick glance and was perturbed. (And of course now I can’t find the image regardless how unique my Google Searches are.) I think they were Jordans? (VIII’s)  But honestly you could show me a whole line up of Jordans and I’d be like “Oh cool, so…basketball shoes?”

Full disclosure men’s shoes are as confusing to me as women’s shoes are confusing to men. Is the playing field leveled now?  To give an examples, when you say “loafer” I simultaneously think of a foot putting on a banana peel and just a cartoon loaf of bread. My mind, it is something else.

Regardless, I was upset by this picture because there was a fat, matte, plastic, black buckle designed into the shoe. Those buckles that no matter how old you are, can pinch your fingers if you’re not looking. Those buckles that are more for utility on a dog’s collar than to hold your two year old in a car seat. Those pieces of shit. (Am I talking about the buckle or the kid?)

I saw the picture and thought of the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Selling garbage at high rates and calling it high fashion, how silly men are when it comes to shoes, I thought. Until…

I was scrolling through Instagram—as I do for five hours every day and then complain that there’s not enough time for me to be productive and apologize to everyone I haven’t texted back promptly—and then I saw it. One of the bikini boutiques I followed posted looks from a fashion show featuring Frankie’s Bikinis. And the atrocity stared in my face and laughed.