FRINGE 1.3 | Page 10

These Shoes Rule, These Shoes Suck We all have to wear shoes, unless we’ve got no feet. Or get carried around everywhere we go. Or are perfectly content contracting tetanus. Even then, you may still fancy shoes for aesthetic purposes. Let’s be real, feet are kind of gross. I won’t speak for you, but I prefer to cover mine up any time I’m out where someone may see them. Not only do I hate how feet look; I also like how shoes look. So when I wear them, it’s a double win. And no one gets to see my morton’s toe. Yay, more winning. Hooray, everyone wins. Well, not everyone actually... Because some shoes are evil. Not in the sense that they are sentient beings with the ability to personally commit wrongdoing. (Although that would make a great B-grade horror film). I guess I should say the companies that make certain shoes are evil. Or at least not as virtuous as they could be. You know, all that typical corporate and industrial bullshit that you’ve skimmed over in pamphlets handed to you by fervent, young street activists. Or saw in a documentary once. Maybe you even signed a change.org petition. About the sweatshops and child labor. Unethically-sourced materials and greenhouse emissions. No one wants to think that their choice of footwear can have such large negative implications, but we mustn’t avoid the truth. So what do we do, exactly? If we’ve gotta wear shoes (most of us), and we don’t want to contribute to environmental degradation, or animal abuse, or human abuse? TIER 1 Black: Cult Shoes, White: Good Guys The first step is to make more conscious Red: Melissa, Blue: Bourgeois Boheme choices the next time around. Easier said than done, right? Sure, there are plenty of ecoconscious, vegan, fair-trade, I’ll give ten free pairs of shoes to a child in Africa companies out there these days. But not all are what they seem. If you’ve done your research and you’ve found a company that’s truly “ethical”- not just from a business perspective but on a holistic level, then that’s great. F