If you frequent the Internet, you may be aware that the Croc heel—or its properly repulsive nickname, the Crocheel—is making the hot take rounds. This abominable crime against taste and good sense has been around since 2007, but has only recently been brought to all of our attention. That has inexplicably resulted in the shoe selling out everywhere and ending up on Amazon for $200 instead of the original price of $50.
As the degenerate offspring of the already ugly classic Croc and an orthopedic pump for old ladies, the model features some hideous hardware and a chunky-yet-gelatinous rubber heel of a few inches. Its combination of dreadful practicality and ridiculous four-inch heel is exactly like the biblical story about splitting the baby in half, except that no real mother (Anna Wintour?) has stepped forward to do the right thing. That would be throw it in the fire and laugh while it melts into a puddle of tire material.
Did I mention they squeak?
I’ve written at length about why high heels, those jewels of the feet, are worth sacrificing a little comfort for. I’ve registered my Alex Jones-style trutherism about the damage stilettos do to your feet as a scare tactic borne from the corporate greed of Big Podiatry. I’ve jumped on the barricades to demand that the pump-hating, Birkenstock-wearing feminist left keep their “feels off my heels.”
But if those blisters and aching balls of your feet still have you hating the heel, and no amount of sex appeal can counteract the objections of your tired toesies, for heaven’s sake, embrace it.
If you want a comfortable shoe, please, please just wear flats. Wear a chic pointy-toe, a ballerina, a loafer, a sneaker, one of those hideous-but-trendy dad sneakers that look like they belong on the set of “Seinfeld,” even an actual Croc. For the love of everything that is holy, wear literally anything except this mangled half-breed of a water shoe and the once-beautiful pump.
Wear your flats proudly, and reject the bastard spawn of two defensible options—comfort and style—that is the Crocheel, the shoe that’s too impractical to wear on a river hike, yet too ugly to allow in a restaurant. Because the only thing worse than a Croc heel is one from Balenciaga that costs $900.
