#now bigotry over a 'girl' wearing 'boy clothes' was another story. but it wasn't because of the price of the boy clothes i was wearing

[arctic-hands]

Like I get we really had no choice to buy Payless and Walmart shoes when I was growing up bc I was the youngest of three kids and we were impoverished by my medical bills. We learned the hard way when my grandmother dropped sixty dollars for some skechers I liked at the beginning of summer only for me to hit a growth spurt and no longer fit them by the end of summer. But those shitty cheap shoes that began to fall apart after 3 months and had thin fabric insoles from the start had to have contributed to my shitty back and knees. Like I know chronic illness played a bigger part but it can't have helped

Also Vimes Theory Of Boots–because these shoes were disintegrating after a few skant months, we were constantly dropping more and more money to replace them than we would have if we could have just afforded good shoes from the start

Anyway this isn't to shame anyone who is too poor to afford good shoes, esp if you've got a kid or kids who are growing way too fast, but this is why as an adult I scrimp and save and look for sales on good shoes because ow my knees. It's a real shitty system we've got that kids are growing up with chronic pain just because good shoes are too economically inaccessible to families