My obsession with sneakers started in the third grade. I was the new kid in a new school, and as a generally socially awkward and anxious person, I was pretty clammed up. But a few months into that first year I laced up a new pair of shoes, and while I sat doing grammar exercises in those new kicks, one of my fellow classmates saw them and gasped. He got on his knees and proceeded to lift his arms up to the sky and then down to my feet as if he were praising me.
It was because of the shoes. He loved them. I don't remember what exactly he said, or what shoes they were, but I remember his gesture vividly. In my tiny brain a link was formed: Social acceptance is tied to fresh footwear. It changed everything.
I don't remember anything about preference for brands or styles in those early years, but then I faced one of the most significant eras of my childhood. A few years after the praising incident, as middle school struck hard and I began to pay attention to brands, a new student came to our small school. We later learned that he was suffering throughtrauma—his mother had died just before school started. He translated the pain into bullying. At first it was scattershot, but pretty quickly, he focused it on me.
No social misstep was too small for him to lampoon, so I learned to retreat from people. Friends of mine would reveal months later that they were collecting information to give to my bully—we really weren’t friends, so I learned to trust no one. No adults or teachers at the school were of any help, even after pleading from my parents, leaving me adrift at 13 years old.
Even while everyone around me failed me, I wanted desperately to be liked by anyone. That moment of social acceptance that came with the right shoes from years earlier lived with me every day. I decided I needed the right shoes to fit in—I tried to get the shoes of my oppressor. My bully had recently gotten a new pair of Airwalk's The Ones. I obsessed over them, and knew if I got them, I would be okay. I would be accepted. But of course, it wasn’t that simple.
I’d never heard of this brand “Vans” before, so how good could they be?
Admitting I wanted The Ones was admitting to my terrified and exhausted single mother that I was not O.K. (she knew how not O.K. I was, but kids always try to protect their parents from the worst even when their parents know). So I tried to avoid it. But I couldn't. She read my desperation and went with me from store to store searching for the shoes. We went to different states, driving to distant malls, to every sneaker store we could find, and no one had the Airwalks. I grew increasingly desperate, and despite my mother’s best wishes she knew there was nothing to do. She finally said “enough” and refused to leave the last store until I picked a pair of sneakers. The sales associate suggested a pair of Vans, and we bought them.
I was disgusted and hated the shoes. They were not what I wanted, and they were a poor version of what I’d hoped for. And also I’d never heard of this brand “Vans” before, so how good could they be?
I put the shoes on and shamefully went to school the next day.
As we sat in our morning meeting, chairs circled in the biggest part of the classroom, Phoebe, one of the popular girls, waved at me to get my attention. She pointed at my shoes and gave me a thumbs up. I remember that moment to this day. It was like someone tossed me a life raft when I was becoming too tired to swim.
The quick respite ended just hours later, and the torture continued for years until I graduated and moved on to a new school that was supportive of me, a place my mother astutely says saved my life. But those cultural moments around footwear shaped who I was, how I see communities, and how items of aspiration can change the way we see each other.
As Airwalk has relaunched The One in recent years, it reminds me of those moments, the feeling of helplessness and desperation, and thinking that I wasn’t enough. The shoes still kind of scare me, but in the way a small spider does. There’s something terrifying, but also easily crushable. If I were to have the shoes now I would never wear them, but I may not be able to throw them away—they were closer to a “grail” than any shoe would ever be again. They represented everything I wanted in this world, far beyond style. They represented the potential for community and healing, acceptance, and maybe some joy. But I never got those things at that school or from that community.
But that is the heart of the "Sneaker Game,” or any game that deals with influence at least. For hyped shoes it doesn’t matter if they’re dope or the sneakerhead’s style. What matters is that the community, the group, thinks they’re cool. And if we buy them, if we wear them, we’ll gain that acceptance at least for a moment. We’ll be respected and lauded for great taste. And then the group will move onto the next release, the next hottest thing. For that week, for that moment, we’ll have tasted something we feel we don’t already have: belonging and respect.
Unless we decide it doesn’t come from these things.
