The Emperor's New Cleats

Women take a lot of flak for their love of expensive shoes. Some of it's justified – every third store on Robson Street in Vancouver is now a shoe store and their products can definitely be a little unusual and expensive. Just look at these crazy double heeled things from Alexander McQueen:


But here’s a little secret ladies....men’s soccer cleats are almost as bad.

Check out these men's offerings from Nike (sometimes favoured by Cristiano Ronaldo) and Adidas (who claim these shoes are worn by Lionel Messi):










I know the stars get free shoes, but how do regular guys decide which ones to get? It would be hard for me to choose between cleats whose colours are described on their website as 'anodized purple and electricity’ and ‘cherry, dark obsidian and metallic’, but it’s mostly because I don’t know what some of those words mean.

What’s worse, the ads for these cleats imply that you will actually play better if you buy them. Apparently the lace cover on the pink ones creates a ‘large inviting strike zone’, while its ‘dual density injected studs allow effortless cutting and instant acceleration’. The purple ones have a ‘new stud configuration that improves your balance at top speeds’. Gosh, why bother training? The shoes can do it all for you. And am I the only one who's giggling at all the dual-injected-stud talk?

The websites for men’s cleats also offer this weird looking thing called a ‘comfort chasis’:What does it do? I can only assume it is meant to go inside the shoe and lift you up so that your body can physically match the size of your ego.

At least the Alexander McQueen shoes ads do not exaggerate their life altering qualities or provide over the top descriptions. Black is black, and not 'obsidian'. A search though the shoe details on his website offers only the basics, saying things like ‘black velvet embellished wedge sandal’ or ‘suede pump with rubber platform’. Should I be proud, as a woman, that do they do not pander to us and say ‘buying this embellished shoe means you will never gain another ounce as long as you live, while it’s rubber platform gives you the oomph to throw spectacular birthday parties for your kids, making you the envy of all the other mothers’? I don’t know.

Because if it did do all those things, I would so totally buy them.

That week with the shoe

Starting Thursday I’ll be on crutches for two weeks. Ever done this? I have and I must tell you, I am not super excited. To put myself in the crutching frame of mind, I googled pictures of people on crutches and found all sorts of crazy stuff:

- I found a picture of a teenage girl on crutches, on her skateboard. She had her bandaged leg on the skateboard, steadied herself with her crutches, and pushed with her good leg.

- I found more than one picture of a stripper, stripping while on crutches.

- I found pictures of Jessica Alba, Baby Spice, and Lady Gaga on crutches.

- And I found tons and tons of pictures of soccer players on crutches. Beckham in particular. Did the guy stay at home at all when he was hurt, or just crutch around for the paparazzi?

Dear god, what am I doing? This is madness. Last time I had ACL surgery on my other knee I was 28. Back then my mom chastised me for recklessly playing soccer and hurting myself by saying “You’re not 18 anymore, you know.” Now I desperately wish I was that young, young, 28 year old again.

Plus I keep remembering this horrible week I had during my last ACL injury that I now think of as that week with the shoe. We were living in Victoria and Steve had just started going to SFU and was gone except for weekends. I worked full time in an office at a hotel with a pretty strict dress code. When I hurt my knee, getting ready for work and even crutching down to the car and driving myself to work was okay, but shoes were a huge issue. My knee hurt too much to bend it. My foot also swelled up to the size of a small football. One week, before he left for the ferry late on a Sunday night, Steve jammed a ballet flat on my foot and I slept with it on that night…..and then I kinda kept it on until he came back on Friday and he took it off.

I know.

I couldn’t take that damn shoe off for five days because I couldn’t reach it. And even if I had managed to pry it off with a crutch, how would I have jammed it back on to my gnarly foot by myself? I was not going to go to work in my office with bare feet. When I showered, I had to sit on a chair in the shower and stick my leg out of the curtain, so it wouldn’t get wet. The toe of the shoe got caught on the blankets all the time when I tried to sleep. At the end of a long day, taking off a suit while unable to bend my leg and wearing a shoe was not the most graceful thing. (No wonder that crutching stripper in the photo looks a little awkward.)

After it had happened and I could laugh about it, I told this story to some friends and co-workers who felt bad I hadn’t asked them for help. They said “Oh my god! I would have come and taken off your shoe for you– why didn’t you call me?” but really, think about this for a minute – you’ve wedged your sweaty swollen bare foot into a leather shoe for several days - would you want your friends to smell-- I mean see you like that? I think not.

It’s not going to be like that this time, right? Everything is going to be fine, right? I may have just the teensiest amount of pre-surgery jitters.