Anna Davis writes:

I was gutted, on unpacking boxes from my last house move, to
discover that one of my wedding shoes had been damaged in transit. A
tiny rip in the silver fabric covering the spike heel of an Escada
sandal with diamante straps. This blemish bothered me more than the
shattered vase, the damaged painting or the missing photograph album.
My perfect shoes were souvenirs of my perfect day. Always there at the
bottom of my wardrobe where I could catch sight of them and be
instantly transported. They should have stayed perfect forever.

It’s
easy to see why so many women are obsessed with shoes. They’re cheaper
than jewels – even if they are Manolo Blahniks or Christian Louboutins
– but they have about them the same magical power to transform your
appearance or your mood. No matter how fat or dowdy you may be feeling,
a great pair of shoes endows instant glamour. Even though it is now
almost a century since hemlines started rising up the leg, allowing
glimpses of the ankle and the calf, there is still something sexy and
illicit about a pair of black stilettos or a red-velvet slipper with a
Louis heel. No wonder we hoard them. I walked into a baker’s the other
day, just as a woman was collecting a huge pair of birthday cakes in
the shape of her favourite Jimmy Choos.

But shoes are more than
just the best accessories. They are highly evocative items – little
parcels of memories. I wore my pink, purple and red strappy Karen
Millens with the blocky heels for the launch of my first novel. When my
husband proposed to me in Venice, I had on the black suede 1940s-style
shoes with impossibly high-heels and swirly rosettes. They were
damaged, that night, as I picked my way through the Venetian "high
water", but the very stains take me back there.

And it’s not only
the pretty shoes with their pretty memories that I value. The tatty
pink flip-flops that I wore during the birth of my first baby still
languish in the dust under my bed. Beside them lie some curious
clownish shoes from Red or Dead with big round toes, laces and
jutting-out heels, dating back to 1991 when I was a student. These were
on my feet the day my mother died.

Yes, it continues in exactly the same vein.

You go Girl! Fight the patriarchy and the sexist stereotypes!