The Marketing of Ugly Men's Shoes

Or Where Can I Find a Low-Slung Pointy-Toed Shoe with a Cuban Heel that Laces Up the Side?

As a result, my feet kind of naturally rise to a point. I guess you could say I’ve got an arrow-shaped foot. More information than you needed to know, I’m sure, but stick with me. I am going somewhere with this. So you can see how I have nothing but disdain for the recent trend toward shoe design in which every men’s shoe, no matter what the style, looks like it was designed for someone who has had their toes amputated. It’s almost frightening. Even cowboy boots, the last vestige of the pointy toed shoewear, have introduced the flat toe look. (Sorry, I just can’t bring myself to wear cowboy boots.) You can buy that flat, broad shoe whether you are looking for something to wear while jogging or something to go dancing in. There are three things that get me about this. One, they are so incredibly ugly. Two, they are so omnipresent that there’s no room for a pointy toed alternative. And three, why do the flat toed shoes even exist?

I like to think I’m relatively well-informed. I keep up with what’s going on in the world, even when the actual subject of the news isn’t necessarily of interest to me in particular. I like to know what’s happening so I can examine it’s importance from a broader cultural perspective. But I’ll admit this: I never heard the outcry from men across this country that they desperately wanted no shoe option but the flat toed option. Yep, I missed that Million Man March.

With good reason. It never happened. If I had trouble finding my low-slung, pointy-toe shoes with a Cuban heel that lace up the side back when they actually made pointy toed shoes, imagine my problem now. And it got me to thinking about why flat toed shoes for men are not just dominating the shoe market but saturating and overwhelming it. They are ugly, let’s face it. I mean compare any of today’s flat toed shoes to any even relatively pointy toed shoe—even just a natural curved toed shoe—and I think it’s safe to say nine out of ten men would say the flat one is the ugliest. So why are they so popular then?

You know that phrase that gets thrown around a lot whenever a piece of junk becomes incredibly popular? About whoever made the junk is “just giving the public what it wants?” Well, it’s time to call that particular bit of wisdom junk. A company doesn’t invest millions of dollars conducting market tests to see what the public wants. All that test marketing and polling and opinion taking is designed rather to find out what it takes to sell whatever product the company is committed to making. Consider this scenario: