That's funny - you don't LOOK like your picture on the Internet

I don't often buy things online. Mostly, this is because I'm cheap, and I simply do not buy things anywhere, ever, unless they are edible.

Time and the cruel streets of New York had other plans, though. My shoes - trusty since freshman year of college - had gotten so hole-y that my students were beginning to think I was a secret hobo who lived under my desk. And goodness knows you can't trust a secret desk hobo to teach proper sonnet explication.


Thus, the time had come when I had to buy new tennis shoes. Buying new tennis shoes is pretty much the only terrible kind of shoe buying because it forces you to spend money on something practical rather than something pretty. It is at this point in writing that I would love to be able to draw you a crazy 3D graph in which x = practicality, y = prettiness and z = enjoyability of shopping experience, thus showing the inverse relationship between x and the other two. Lucky for you, I am one of those naughty English teachers who uses my expertise in English as an excuse for my anti-expertise in math.

But you get the gist, no? I did not want to waste potentially enjoyable shopping time on a search for the purely serviceable. My feet, sad and sore, gave me a very convincing argument in favor of tennis shoes, though, so I came to what I thought would be a good compromise: I went to The Internet. Fast! Easy! Scarily detached from the actual process of handing over money!
  
Here's the thing about Internet shopping: much as you are not giving the store any real money - just a string of numbers that represent a card that represents money - they are not showing you any real products! They're just 2D approximations of products that may or may not be what you get!

This set-up troubles me. Like any good cheapskate, I like to know exactly what I am paying for and whether it is worth my cold, hard cash. I also like to be able to show people exactly why I am NOT paying for things: "See this stitching? Crooked! I'm not paying for that!" It makes me feel better about my reluctance (failure?) to support the economy in These Tough Times.

I took my chances, I went on Zappo's, and I found...PINK. PINK EVERYWHERE. Here's a little secret, fellas: women are incapable of moving in any sort of athletic way unless there is pink somewhere on their body. It's like our power-up color. Mario has his mushrooms, we have pink.

It also makes it much easier for me to understand what I should buy. See, when women are out shopping, they go into a sort of fugue state - like the bloodrage of the badgers in Redwall books - and they are incapable of comprehending anything other than the fact that the economy NEEDS them and that they MUST do their duty AS AMERICANS. When I enter this state, I'm vaguely aware that I like Pumas, but I'm too far gone into my shopping frenzy to know whether I should buy the men's size 14 ones or the ladies' size 7. So my brain just zones in on that there power color. Once I see the pink, I can hand over my credit card knowing that whatever I've bought may be a product of child labor, may be the exact opposite of what I really need, but is, at the very least, gender specific - and that gender is the ME gender. Thank goddess - amiright?

All of the above is untrue.

I have no idea why women's athletic gear is almost always pink. It could be gendered branding at its (least) finest, it could be some horrible subliminal-messaging conspiracy concocted by the makers of Pepto-Bismol. The important thing is that it is entirely unnecessary. Irksome, even. I do not want to show up to work with my feet wrapped in 3 pounds of pink mesh. The job requires me to wear comfortable shoes, but there is nothing in my contract that says I have to look ridiculous.

So I searched, and I sought, and I strove, until, finally - fugue state and all - I found a pair of red and blue shoes. My size. Gender neutral. Pumas (which I really do love). I clicked, purchased, waited, took the train to the UPS station in way-out Brooklyn (a tale for another day), opened the box, and they were PINK. They were also kind of cute.