Every time I stand in front of my boyfriend in two completely different heels asking, “Which shoe do you like more?” I get a blank stare. And anytime we walk past the shoe department at Nordstrom, he grabs my hand, quickens his pace to a near run, and doesn’t stop until we’re safely out of the store. It doesn’t take a genius to see that he has absolutely zero interest in women’s shoes.
I thought this shoe aversion applied to all men, but a study done by “The Houston Chronicle” changed my mind. They had a woman stand behind a curtain with only her feet showing, and asked a random man to guess her age, job, and personality based solely (no pun intended) on her shoes. Here’s what happened:
He guessed: She’s 50, divorced, “persnickety,” and works in finance.
The truth: She’s 27, single, adventurous, and works in public relations.
What shoes was she wearing? A pair of vintage Ferragamo flats.
I guess some guys are paying attention to shoes, even if they’re way off base about the women wearing them. To see how other men would fare at this challenge, I decided to do my own experiment. I put together a list of the most popular women’s shoes, and asked 40 guys to say the first thing that popped into their heads when they saw a pic of each one. I also asked them to rank the shoes on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being the worst, 10 being the best).
What they said was pretty shocking, and definitely made me look at my shoe collection in a new light. There’s no way I’m going to stop wearing my favorite pair of Mary Janes just because some guy says they look like “librarian” shoes, but I may invest in a couple more pairs of the no. 1 rated shoe for dates. Couldn’t hurt, right?
To see what guys think about your shoes, in order from least liked to most liked, keep clicking through the gallery.
