I bought badminton shoes recently because I’ve decided I need to expand my boundaries and learn to do things I suck at so I can grow as a person. Apparently, this involves swinging around a racket and hoping (and hopping) to hit balls but who said that personal growth only involves meditation?
I dislike shopping for “sports stuff” for two reasons:
Men seem to have the monopoly on buying and selling this kind of stuff so inevitably, you’ll encounter a sales rep who is convinced you have fluff for brains and that they should address all their comments to the man accompanying you because he has more knowledge of your athletic ambitions than you do
Athletic wear and equipment for women is usually in pink or purple. Athletic wear is also unbelievably sexualized, prioritizes form over function (I do not understand why all men’s workout wear comes with pockets but you have to specifically buy women’s running pants to get one/two measly pockets - no wonder, Bliss Club made a splash in the market by literally making pants with pockets that can fit essentials like your phone, keys and card wallet) and is only made for skinny people but maybe that’s a topic for another rant post.
A few months ago, literally the week before I injured my knee and my running ambitions evaporated, I decided to plop down a lot of money for a good running shoe. Egged on by my partner, I went to all the big shoe brand stores in my neighbourhood to try on shoes. My first discovery was that good shoes are really expensive and the second was that it was straight up impossible to get shoes in all black or grey. Except at Nike, I only found shoes that featured black alongside pink or purple or teal.
When I looked on the Internet to find out if this is a global phenomenon or casual sexism by the people who stocked shoes in one of India’s largest cities, I found that the problem extended beyond color to also shape and size. There was even a popular term for changing footwear that was modeled for adult men to suit…every other category: shrink it or pink it.
I went to Decathlon to buy my beginner badminton shoes because that’s what one does and I was unsurprised but still outraged to discover that there did exist women’s badminton shoes but it extended to just two versions (both only for the beginner) - in pink and white. If you wanted “intermediate’ shoes or shoes in any other color, you had to buy men’s shoes.
This would not be as big a deal if women’s feet were just scaled down, pink-preferring, versions of men’s feet which is not the case whatsoever. As The Verge outlined concisely, “evidence suggests female feet tend to have a higher instep and narrower heel relative to the ball of their foot, while male feet are longer and broader overall. Forcing women into shoes designed for male feet can have serious side effects including dropped arches, bunions, ankle bone soreness (typically when a shoe collar is too high), and blistering.”
While I’m thrilled to have a full list of injuries to look forward to because I decided to buy a shoe made for men, I’m stupendously stymied that more people don’t think of this as a real problem. I’ve spent most of my life wearing uncomfortable footwear and might have gone on as such, if I hadn’t decided to stop living in pain and look for a solution for my feet. Rejecting what society deems acceptable for women to wear - ridiculously pointy and tall heels, narrow toe boxes so your feet look “dainty”, slippers with thin soles that are designed for form and not function - in favour of footwear that supports my low arch and relieves the pressure on the damage already done aka my bunions should not be a revolutionary idea but it turns out to be such. They are deemed “orthopedic” shoes and come in a range of such clunkiness that even my 86 year old grandmother rejects them.
It feels so demeaning that despite the amount of ₨₨₨ I’m willing to drop on this, I am not taken seriously enough to merit comfortable, good looking and supportive footwear. I feel very discouraged to do any kind of activity when I know that these are the kind of side effects I can expect from it despite paying the same, if not more, for a make-shift, ill-fitting solution.
When the Decathlon sales person showed me the “women’s badminton shoes” section, I was about to start grumbling when my partner grabbed my arm to tell me that I’m forgetting why we were there. Growth involves not just learning to play a new sport but also recognizing when it makes sense to take a stand and when it does not. Maybe it even involves knowing where to target my feelings and deploy persuasion so that my end goal could be achieved. The sales rep at Decathlon cannot make this happen, not by himself. But we all can, together.
P.S - If you have any comfortable shoe recommendations, the comments section and my DMs are always open.
ah, what i'd give for pink men's shoes