Walk a Mile These Jelly Shoes
Allison Elizabeth
Hearts2Hearts on music core for the lemon tang era, Sabrina Carpenter I’m sure at one point¹, and maybe even Hillary Clinton² have worn the coveted jelly shoes.
Graphic by Nicole Nguyen
Jelly shoes were invented by the elves that were overqualified to bake cookies in trees, but underqualified to work in Santa’s toy shop. These shoes are made the exact same way I imagine American Girl Doll shoes are, which could either be a testament to AG, or an incredibly offensive to the elf’s craftsmanship. Shoes are so precarious. Looking cute and being graceful are simply not the same thing. Unless you’re Sabrina Carpenter. Ugh.
I broke my fifth metatarsal back in October, requiring no weight on my right foot for three months and forever having, unlike Sabrina to my knowledge, a metal plate in my foot. “Walk a mile,” girl, I couldn’t walk at all. I am a jellyous person. Not in the traditional term of intense feelings of love and passion coined by ILLIT, but jellyous as in the hair ripping, voodoo doll, etsy witch spell for one's downfall way. Everyday I wake up and wish upon the morning star that Sabrina Carpenter would break her foot too. She already has everything. She can walk in stilettos! As Iggy says, “I’m not hating, I'm just telling you.” I think it’s only fair if she had to relearn how to walk too. I would like us all to be on a level playing field. My jelly shoes are $10 from Nordstrom Rack. Sabrina’s are $1,450 from some name that I can’t remember or pronounce. Hearts2Hearts’ are all about $200. Not fair. Not fair. Not fair. Everyone from the moment they’re born should be placed in $10 jelly shoes on a busy train with a metal plate in their foot. Then we could all not be famous. We can all step forward with too much gusto and tumble to the floor crying for our mothers just to be told you’re being too loud! You’re not on a stage! Nobody is asking you to perform!
When I first described this piece to my friends I said I was going to walk 18.5 miles on the Chicago Lakefront trail to document how my feet feel in jelly shoes over a long distance. I didn’t even need to walk down the block to say it’s uncomfortable to walk with plastic rubbing up and down your incision scar, but, my god, it looks so cute.
When I get elected as the first female president on my stance for equality for all footwear my inaugural address will be as follows,
“You can hate it or love it, we’re all sixteen in the middle of some toes like the straps on some jelly flipflops.”
¹ She was spotted wearing Manolo Blahnik jelly heels last fall in Manhattan while she was there to host SNL. They were butter yellow.
² This isn’t true. Too bad her glambassador didn’t think to put her in them.
