Feeling Especially Native North American Today?

As the weather gets warmer, Uggs are (thankfully) being shoved (or banished) into closets as flip-flops and ballet flats take their place as the footwear of choice. Last season’s boat shoe has been swapped with the similar, yet very different, moccasin (reverse assimilation?). Now Mae and Jane think the moccasin is cute when done correctly. Unfortunately we’ve seen some tarnished moccasins that would be disrespectful should they appear at an upcoming pow-wow (unless they were being donated to be burned at the bonfire). So heed our warning: moccasins are in but the house shoe or slipper that resembles the moccasin is not. So what is the difference? Not much. In fact, they could be the same shoe. But the moccasin is convincing as a shoe that is meant to be worn out while the house shoe or slipper is convincing as a shoe that has been worn to take out the trash every day (or judging by the looks some of these shoes, twice a day for the last decade), chewed up by your dog (or your dog and your best friend’s dog , your neighbor’s dog and then left for the angry pack of dogs in an alley in Detroit), and worn by Marion Jones for the duration of her pre-prison career. What we mean is your brand new cute skirt, perfectly pressed shirt and full scale hair and make-up are dulled by your insistence on wearing shoes that probably should have been tossed approximately half a decade ago. Remember the “Boho” (or “hobo”) look that dis-graced the covers of all the fashion magazines a few years back? In case you need a reminder: this is when all the fashionistas lost their minds and scavenged for their looks in trash dumps (the more rips in your jeans the better) and the only rule was that their clothes could not fit (seriously, the straitjackets they were given when they were institutionalized looked better than the garb they were prancing around the streets in). Well, ladies, your dirty grungy moccasins would feel right at home during that fashion trend. But since no one has patented a time machine yet, we will need to assume that one does not exist and move forward with our looks. That means wearing shoes that look like you meant to wear them with the rest of your outfit. So we applaud you for noticing the coming moccasin trend and trying to assimilate (or unassimilate), but we encourage you to run to your local mall and get some that won’t offend the local Native American tribe.