Women sit in a salon getting pedicures while talking about shoes and gossiping about celebrities in this recent spot for eBay. The basic plotline is that one of the salon customers is shopping for designer shoes on her smartphone, and as she tries to interest the people around her in her Carrie-esque shoe fetish (Carrie from Sex and the City, not the pig-blood-soaked prom queen and telekinetic terrorist from the great Stephen King/Brian De Palma/Sissy Spacek movie Carrie), they all gossip about an actress who supposedly has the same pair of shoes the shoe-coveting lady wants to buy, culminating in a pedicurist claiming she did said actress’s toenails before, and she had toes like a sloth’s claws. (She says: “toes like a sloth”, but then indicates claws with her fingers. Which I think means her toes are like a sloth’s claws, as opposed to, say, being like a whole sloth, or a family of sloths hanging off the ends of her feet.)
This ad gets extremely mixed reviews for its YouTube posting, but I think it’s supposed to be funny. It’s funny to me especially, since most women I know aren’t interested in buying second-hand shoes on eBay, and most people know you really have to try shoes on to know if they fit well enough first before you buy them. But then again, TV commercials are mostly just fantasy anyway, so why bother trying to be believable, right? But this ad communicated something very different to me than an encouragement to shop on eBay, or a demonstration of how you can shop from the comfort of getting your toes attacked by someone using sharp implements.
Yes, I’m afraid the joke line that was supposed to be the big hit of this spot said something else to me, and so much so, that I didn’t even realize it was an ad for eBay until I had seen it multiple times. Yes, the thing is, the shoes this woman is displaying on her smartphone are these ridiculously uncomfortable-looking 6-inch spike-heeled monstrosities that are all the rage with masochistic women these days. And when the pedicurist lady says the actress who owns these shoes has toes like a sloth’s claws, all I can think of is: “Of course she does! She wears those horrible foot-torturing shoes with the 6-inch heels! When you wear those things, gravity pulls your entire body weight down onto your toes all day long, so of course this is going to mutilate your toes and crush them into sloth-claw-like talon shapes!” And that image, combined with my disbelief that women are not only willing to wear those torture devices on their feet, but that they actually seem to want to wear them, just blows my mind, and as a result, I simply didn’t/couldn’t pay attention to what the ad was advertising after that sloth toes comment.
And here is the big issue for me with this spot: the commercial is supposed to make me want to shop on eBay and demonstrate to me how much stuff is available to buy on eBay, but it really only serves to remind me of how I can’t believe women wear such horribly feet-mangling shoes! (As well as presenting an unintentional explanation of what will happen to your feet if you buy and wear them, which I should think would only serve to demonstrate why nobody should ever buy such shoes to begin with!) And not only are such shoes horribly uncomfortable, but they’re also ridiculously expensive! And I suppose that’s why she’s buying them on eBay: nobody but a rich and famous celebrity could possibly afford to buy them new! Oh, and I guess with shoes like these, they’re so horrifically and torturously uncomfortable, it doesn’t really matter if they fit right or not anyway, since they couldn’t possibly be less comfortable no matter what size they are, so it doesn’t make any difference if you buy them on eBay, since they’re going to hurt like crazy and deform your feet regardless of what size they are and how they fit.
Years ago, The Kids in the Hall had a comedy sketch about a designer (played by David Foley) who said he “love(s) the beautiful woman”, and he also “hate(s) the ugly woman”, so he designs ridiculously expensive fashions to torture ugly women: one of these being a “hat” which is simply a railroad spike driven through the head, and the other being a pair of boxes full of broken shards of glass with straps on them to be worn as shoes. This is what these absurdly high-heeled and absurdly high-priced contemporary women’s shoes make me think of: a torture device designed to punish women both physically and financially, but which nevertheless women stampede to subject themselves to the indignity and torment of. It simply beggars belief that anyone would do such a thing to their feet and pocketbooks, but there you are. And after women valiantly struggled for equal rights, this is what they get for their troubles! I guess it’s an example of “one step forward, two steps back”. (Literally: because these shoes are so hard to walk in!)
Here’s the foot-crushing, toe-torturing shoes & claw comment commercial:
