Third floor: shoes, boots and haberdashery

I have never actually worn high heels. Obviously, being MAAB, I was never really socialised to wear 'em and what frightens me away from the things now is the absolute certainty that were I ever to wear a pair I would injure myself halfway through my first step. Last year I tore a ligament in my ankle trying to mount the smallest step in the world, and on that day I was wearing very sensible shoes. Heels would, literally, kill me.

However. Observe, if you will, the sheer awesomeness of the heels produced by the people at Iron Fist. Specifically, the one at the top right.

It's got a frakkin' zombie on it.

If I was going to overcome my lifelong fear of having my ankle further off the ground than my toes, a shoe like that would do it. And I can't be the only biologically-male-bodied person who thinks that. I mean, come on, zombies. And the one next to it has a feckin' werewolf. If Iron Fist were to make those in larger sizes, maybe not in massive quantities, it's a niche market admittedly, but the point is, they'd be coining it in. I don't hang out in fetish clubs anywhere near as much as I used to* these days, but pretty much every body I knew back in the day who wore heels, male or female, would have literally killed for one with, I say again, a muthafrickin' zombie on it.

Now. I'm not the fastest learner in the world, but I've picked up a few bits of useful knowledge here and there, and one thing I've found is that a good heuristic for converting men's shoe sizes to women's shoe sizes is to add two - i.e. a male size 8 is about equal to a female size ten. Guys with size 12 feet are statistically quite rare (and this is where I open myself up to a torrent of abuse from the hitherto silent yet vast following my blog weirdly enjoys in the tall persons' community, no doubt), so let's assume most MAAB feet are a median 9-10. I'm a bit smaller, clocking in at about an 8.5, though it varies from shop to shop and make of shoe to make of shoe (the Airwalk sneakers I wear currently, for example, are actually an 8). But let's assume a 9-10 median to be the average. So, if Iron Fist were to unlock the profit-making potential of selling shoes with frelling zombies on them to people with larger feet than the average girl, they'd have to sell them in a size 11 or 12, rather than...

Seven? They only go up to about a size seven? Wow. There are cis girls those shoes won't fit. Astonishing.

There are a lot of things, readers, for which I fight. And this issue, cool as it is, has to be somewhat low on the list. But consider this, if you will, the equivalent of a manifesto pledge on my part: I will not consider my work on this earth done, I will not cease from mental fight nor, indeed, shall my sword sleep in my hand, until it is enshrined as a basic right that there should be shoes with zombies on them for all. And frickin' werewolves too. Because, in a very real way, until such a state attains, none of us is truly free.

(* this is a way of saying I never hang out in fetish clubs at all these days which nevertheless suggests that I may do, thus allowing me to look all cool and interesting. But you guessed that.)