Amy and the Mysterious Changing Shoe Sizes

My dear friend Amy is famous (well, at least in our circle) for rattling off what seem to be completely inaccurate, made up facts. Like the one about shoe sizes fluctuating with your weight.

"Your feet go up or down half a size for, like, every 10 lbs you lose," she said. "But I forget where I read that."

Now, I consider myself pretty informed. I listen to NPR, read good ol' fashioned newspapers, and  occasionally pick up a fashion magazine or two. And I've never, ever heard of this happening. In fact, I thought that shoes were the one clothing item guaranteed to fit, no matter what your weight fluctuated to. I was baffled.


This only encouraged her to make a mock of me at gatherings.

"Ensley's never heard of shoe size changing with your weight," she would say, shaking her head as if I'd declared that I still thought the Earth was flat.

Maybe the Earth was flat, for all I seemed to know about it. I fretted. I pondered. I analyzed. More than that, I became discouraged. If I can't one up everyone in the room with my intelligence, then what's the point of even being in the room? I just couldn't understand how I had never heard of this. Plus, I've just lost weight and I still wear the same shoe size.

Finally, the lightbulb came on. (Ok, it was a dim bulb. This wasn't exactly the most intellectually challenging conundrum my brain has come up against.)

"Wouldn't going up or down half a size just depend on...the brand of the shoe?" I ventured. "Like, at Target you wear a 9.5 8, but at Nine West you wear an 8.5." (This example is merely an illustration, since I do all of my shoe shopping exclusively at Target.)

Amy paused. She blinked. She shrugged. "That makes sense."

Indeed it does. It's comforting to know I can win even the most pointless of arguments, but even more so that I can still wear all of my Manolos Target specials no matter how fat I get.

If the shoe fits...