Ugg.

Today in my teenage angst, I bring up a seemly meaningless issue. It's not an issue at all, really, but rather a phenomenon that never ceases to baffle me. This phenom, is Uggs.

Gleaned from the wikipedia page on the subject - because everybody needs to know the history of Uggs Boots -, the "boots emerged as a fashion trend in the United States in the late 1990s and as a world-wide trend in the late 2000s, yet in Australia they are worn predominantly as slippers and associated with "daggy" fashion sense, and "bogan" culture." Not that we know what any of that means, as we do not come from the land down under, as our friends the Men at Work, like to say.

My first encounter with Uggs came in the fall of 2005 when a friend of mine (and her boyfriend, oddly enough) got a pair of Uggs in a burnt orange. They were astounding. They were so ugly and yet I wanted them. She let me borrow them one day and I paired them with jeans, a white oxford shirt and an argyle sweater vest. I remember thinking I looked damn good. And I think at the time, I did. Oh I should also mention, they were two sizes too big and if you've ever worn Uggs, you'll understand that this was bound to be a problem. I could hardly walk and I seem to remember shoving kleenex in the toes. I was an exceedingly vain eighteen year old. 

This week, as I walked the halls of the University of Regina, I played a game with myself. Count the Uggs. On Tuesday, I saw 22 pairs. Today, I counted 38. It's kind of astonishing how common these sad looking boots are. It's not that I don't understand it. They're comfortable, they're comforting. They're like sweatpants for your feet. When my best friend was pregnant she literally had to wear her Uggs, because it was the winter and she couldn't bend down far enough to actually put shoes on, so she had to have boots she could just step into. 

I think my biggest issue is that I'm a footwear snob. I don't understand wearing shoes that make your feet look bigger than they actually are. I seem to exclusively wear shoes that are essentially slippers with soles. With the exception of my army boots. Which, is a true exception as it is the farthest from my seeming otherwise exclusivity. 

So, Uggs wearer, excuse me while I judge you in the hall. It's not you I judge for wearing them, for I understand your reasoning in full. It is the shoes I judge, for being so ugly in the first place.