Those are absolutely the most common sizes I sell at my store. When I have no customers, my job is to recover and fill the store (put shoes back in the box the right way, pick up trash, fill empty spots) I always start at size 7 and work my way up to 9.5. Then I go to the children’s aisle and then back to the rest of women’s. Then I do men’s. I can pretty much guarantee that by the time I finish, sizes 7.5-9 will be trashed while the rest of the women’s sizes probably wont need a major recover again before the store closes.
I have sold many pairs of men’s shoes to women with larger feet (they’re wider and even our wide 13’s aren’t really as wide as the customers would like). I’ve only had one man buy a pair of women’s shoes and they were slippers. He was about to have back surgery and was looking for shoes he could just slip into and out of and our Airwalk slippers have a rubber sole and an open back and are pretty wide. He loved them. It’s fairly unusual that a woman’s shoe in my store will be something a guy would want, even the sneakers and slip resistant work shoes. I do have some transvestites who come in to buy our 12-13 heels.
To a woman who usually runs about 7.5 to 8 and cannot wear heels due to hip problems (the extra sway really gets painful), this is an interesting piece of info that I’ll keep in mind next time I’m shopping at a Payless. My mother takes about a 5-wide, and has been known to check the kid section, since it’s difficult for her to find her size.
I recently bought a pair of sneakers at a thrift store that were labeled size 6, and fit me fine (they’re Reebok, in case that’s important).
Second the “why is shoe size a vanity thing?” sentiment. Not that many people can determine another person’s shoe size without measuring or being told. I don’t even really get vanity about dress size, which does have at least some genetic factor. I could get down to concentration-camp levels of skeletal and not get below a 10, probably, due to wide shoulders and hips (and that’s a question of basic build, not just that I’m a bit overweight).
Now’s a good time to shop at Payless! We’re currently having our 5 day sale so there’s a crapload of stuff on sale, up to 50% off. I prefer this one to the BOGO because you don’t have to buy 2 pairs of shoes just to get one pair on sale (not that I have a problem with buying two pairs of shoes).
I don’t know how any shoe brands handle the kid-adult thing unless they’re sold in Payless. I’d guess that either you were wearing Reebok kid’s shoes or they were labelled incorrectly, or they were made at 5pm on a Friday.
I’ve found that within a brand and a style, the sizes are fairly uniform (for instance, a Comfort Plus heel of one style will probably fit the same as a comfort plus heel of another style) but all bets are off when you change brand or style (so a Fioni heel or a Comfort Plus sandal may not fit).
I get incredibly irritated when people try on one shoe and then buy 3 or 4 pairs because they very frequently end up returning them. TRY EVERYTHING ON!! BOTH HALVES TO A PAIR!! WALK IN THE!!! KNEEL IN THEM!!! RUN IN THEM!!! People who try on one shoe while sitting down and decide the pair is perfect make me feel stabby. Luckily I’m really good at hiding my homicidal urges.
I totally don’t get the foot size sensitivity thing, probably because I have small feet. I’m not jealous of people with smaller size feet than me and I don’t wish mine were any bigger but I don’t feel special because mine are a 6.5/7 (though they might go back to a 6/6.5 if i lose some damn weight). I suspect it has something to do with old class differences between wealthy women who never had to stand on their feet all day and poor women with wide, flat feet from hard labor all their lives.
Yes, many women are squirrelly about their shoe size. Despite being a woman myself I just don’t get it.
With relief. Seriously, I was very happy to get my feet measured. I mean, sure, I’m familiar with that standard foot sizer thing, but it’s much easier for another person to accurately and objectively size your foot.
It may not require professional assistance but a lot of the amateurs are crap at sizing their feet. I’m not a shoe seller, I’m a cobbler who’s expected to fix the damage caused by mismatched feet+shoes. When I’m not being asked to stretch something 4 sizes because Pwecious can’t deal with her feet being size 10 instead of size 6. (In reality, a half size is the maximum we can stretch 'em, and that’s assuming a genuine leather shoe of quality leather)
>sigh< Yes, there are fetishists out there, but I suspect fewer than people think there are. That level of suspicion strikes me as odd and paranoid.
Then again, I long ago stopped batting an eyelash at the effeminate men who come in with their “girlfriend’s” pumps and handbags for repairs, the obvious hookers with their “fuck me” footwear, and the suspiciously human-sized “leashes”, “harness”, and other pet “gear” people bring in for repairs. Maybe it’s just a different dynamic, given I’m the one repairing their toys rather than trying to purchase from them.
I haven’t a clue – I ask myself the same question frequently.
To some extent, yes. I find it more common among older women.
I think in the past a small foot was considered dainty and feminine and having a large foot was viewed somewhat like “unwanted facial hair”.
In my experience the women who are worst about this are also the ones most frequently wearing cheap high heels, which are of limited comfort in the best of circumstances.
Young ones seem more likely to buy the wrong size because they fall in love with the look of the shoes and can’t get them in their correct size, so they put up with the wrong size to wear a shoe they like the look of, or matches their outfit, or is “fun”. It’s less vanity than successful marketing.
See, I’m a tomboy who normally wears athletic shoes or workboots when I’m not wearing heavy duty sandals so you and I have that in common – protecting our feet is more important than style. We have a utilitarian approach to footwear.
These other gals… it’s fashion over function.
I don’t have long feet, but I certainly have wide feet (my last pair of shoes was an EE – it’s not unusual for me to buy men’s shoes to get the correct width) and I, too, get snarky comments, including on one occasion someone suggesting in all seriousness I get surgery to make my feet more narrow.
Basically, it’s like a lot of other fashion crap, telling women who don’t fit an arbitrary standard that there is something wrong with them. I’m sure your feet fit the rest of you, just as my feet look perfectly fine given the rest of my body proportions, but neither of us fit the “standard” (whatever that is this week). I was raised to be myself, however I happened to be. I suspect some other women are raised to change themselves to fit the current standard, whatever that is.
I have.
It’s certainly less common than embarrassed women, but it can happen. One was a young guy, still young enough to be shopping with mom, who wore a size 16. I suspect, however, it was mom’s comments, which made me cringe, contributing to the young man’s discomfort. I reassured him that we have numerous customers with feet that large, and even one gentleman with a size 18. Really, I sometimes hate parents who mess up their kids with unthinking snark.
The other end are men with very small feet. Of course, they also tend to be small in stature as well, so that may be part of the issue, but it’s not universal among short men.
My old shop used to segregate shoes by gender, which I really didn’t like, because you invariably got some wrong – women do wear workboots indistinguishable from men’s workboots, you can’t assume unisex styles are one or the other based on size alone, and so forth. My current shop just goes by ticket number, which avoids that potential pitfall of customer angst.
I suspect it’s an upper class/lower class thing, with small feet being upper class and big ones being a sign of being a peasant. Remember Cinderella? The princess wears tiny shoes, her evil step sisters have feet too big to fit into them. For women, small and dainty meant good, large and strong meant low-class peasant. High society women could wear painful tiny shoes, the lower/underclass women had to wear practical footwear because they actually worked, if not for pay then at least in running a household.
For the most extreme example, of course, see Chinese foot binding.
My friend teaches horseback riding and thus sees a large variety of tween-teen girls who are buying riding boots.
She says that, though we both consider size 7 about the “average” size (she is 7, I am 6.5), virtually none of her students wear smaller than a size 9. They consider her a small-footed freak. Statistically, they’re right. 9 is the average size for women as of 2012.
I no longer wear heels. My feet have changed considerably over the last several years, so I ask to have them measured each time I buy shoes.
Ten years ago I wore a size 6, comfortably. Now I wear 8 1/2. They may go down a half size as I lose more weigh, but I know I’ll never wear a 6 again.
I’ve been vain about a lot of things over my lifetime, but not my shoes size.
