Lori Duff Writes

If you were to run into me on the street, or in the grocery store, or any of the places it is possible to run into me when we are not in a pandemic and I refuse to leave my house, one of the last things you would think is, “Dang, gurl, you are one fashionable chica.”  Clothes are generally something I wear to cover my bits, not something to make a statement with.  I like comfortable shoes.

I wear dresses a lot, not to be fancy, but because I figured out a long time ago that wearing dresses means that you don’t have to wear pants.  No pants equals no waistbands that bind, and there is that much less to make me hot for the inevitable hot flash. 

My feet are shaped like slabs of meatloaf[1].  They are long and wide and fat.  They are the same size as my husband’s, and he is six feet tall, if that gives you any perspective as to how disproportionately large they are.  To make it worse, my left foot has had surgery and been broken twice, so it has a propensity to swell by the end of the day.  This means that even if I wanted to wear chic shoes, I couldn’t really, since most aren’t manufactured in my size, and even when they are, I end up limping by the end of the day.

That said, I know that there is power in certain clothes, and definitely in certain shoes.

I had a very important meeting a few weeks ago.  It was a socially distant meeting, conducted over the computer.  Really, I only had to be dressed from the shoulders up.  But I wore red power shoes with my fancy blue suit and pearls, because I knew they would give me their energy even if they couldn’t be seen.  Check them out:

Those are don’t-mess-with-me shoes.  Those are the shoes of someone who is in charge of any room she is in.  You would think twice before contradicting someone wearing those shoes.

I didn’t wear them all day because I wanted to be able to stand on my own two feet while brushing my teeth at night without crying.  But for the moment I needed them: they fed me energy.

A few blursdays later[2]  I was doing a deep dive through the interwebs to avoid doing useful things and I found a frivolous yet attractive pair of boots.  They were the kind of thing an eight-year old would wear to play dress up, except they were made for adults and – YES – in my size.  I posted a screenshot of these boots to my Facebook page, sort of as a joke, and asked who dared me to wear them to Court.

The response was overwhelming.   And so, despite the fact that I could have taken my family of four out for a very nice dinner for the price of these boots[3], I bought them.

Friends, they did not disappoint.  They were complicated to put on, being in several pieces that needed to snap together.  I’ll be honest, I couldn’t do it by myself and needed to enlist the help of my friend Diane.  We got it done, though, and I rose out of the chair.

There was power in those shoes.   I felt it flow from the soles, through the shin coverings, over the knee plates, and up and out through my giant grin.  Because of the rounded toe, they weren’t even uncomfortable.  I felt strong, Amazonian, righteous.

Look at me:

I was, in fact, Wonder Woman. Which I might very well be without the shoes. 

But sometimes I need a reminder.

[1] There is an argument to be made that my body as a whole is shaped like an entire meatloaf – solid, meaty, ruddy-colored, rounded corners, a little bit of flavorful spice, probably more garlic than most people like: but that’s a metaphor for another day.

[2] Seriously, who can tell how time passes during coronapocalypse?

[3] Or, if I were being virally responsible, ordered a very nice dinner from a local business via Door Dash for my family of four and given a generous tip.

Lori Duff

Lori B. Duff is an award-winning author who practices law on the side.  Her latest book, “If You Did What I Asked in the First Place” was awarded the Gold Medal for humor in the Foreword INDIES awards in 2019. You can follow her on Twitter at @LoriBDuff and on Facebook. For more blogs written by Lori, click here. For more information about Lori in general, click here. If you want Lori to do your writing for you, click here. If you want Lori to help you market your book, click here.