fashion victim

I'm a sucker for a trend. If it's cute and stylish, I will adapt the look and love it. That's just the way I am. Fabulous flats and high high heels are just a couple of the trends I happily embrace, though I often have to apply the "no pain, no gain" motto. Breaking in a new pair of flats can be extremely painful owing to the necessity of building up callouses where the tops of the shoes rub. This normally entails one or two slightly painful days, complete with moderate limping and use of band-aids. I learned last week, however, that level of pain required to break in flats is almost directly proportional to the level of shoe fabulous-ness.

Exhibit A: The flats I have been dreaming of my whole life.


I have been yearning for yellow flats for a while now, and this pair found me at TJMaxx the week before I came out to Provo. Something about them speaks to my heart. Maybe it's the perfect yellow color, the patten-leather-like shine, or the cream and gold buckle, but I. Love. These. Flats.

Upon wearing them for the first time last Tuesday, I quickly learned that they were going to test my true devotion to style. After wearing them for a day on campus, I was sporting purple, painful blisters. Throughout the next day, the state of my feet only worsened, so that by the time I woke up on Thursday, my feet were stiff and extremely sore. I could barely walk, a fact to which Charlotte can expertly testify. (She kept trying to get me to trade her my flats for her flip flops, but the flip flops didn't go with my ensemble at all.) I had her meet me early to walk up to campus for our 9:00 class because my movement was reduced to a slow and painful hobble, which takes significantly more time than pain-free striding. By the time we were up on campus, I was full-out limping. My feet throbbed so much that I had to take three ibuprofen so that I could be mobile for the remainder of the day. I was pathetic, though not because I was hobbling and wincing around campus, but because my devotion to my yellow flats was not deterred in the slightest.

(the blisters were way worse a few days ago, but this pic still gives the size and general painful quality of my battle wounds. Note the culprit shoes in the background.)

With the help of my roommate (who's training for a marathon and knows a fair bit about blister care) and the wearing of sandals all day Saturday, I can happily report that my blisters are healing and that I wore my yellow flats today with no limping or throbbing. I passed the test, and now I look forward to a very rewarding relationship with my yellow flats. You comfort-shoe-supporters can keep your Crocs, because I will let nothing come between me and the perfect accessory. No pain, no fabulous gain.