Reading time: Less than 1 minute
I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a simile from Rebecca Mead.
Unlike many women, I have little interest in shoes except as vehicles that allow me to travel from one place to another without hurting my feet. Manolo Blahniks? I heard about them when I used to watch Sex and the City. But I wouldn’t know a pair if I tripped over them (or, more frighteningly, tripped in them.)
Nevertheless, for reasons I don’t understand, I was still drawn to read an April 2/13 Rebecca Mead story in the New Yorker, about Manhattan podiatrist Emily Splichal who wears stilettos. (Maybe I was intrigued by the self-contradictory — one might even say masochistic — nature of the piece?)
But I loved Mead’s ability to mine wit out of the situation:
“Women are going to wear them anyway,” she [Splichal] said sitting in her office, near Wall Street, and sounding rather like a needle-exchange-progam advocate talking about drug use.
A simile that makes fun of the main character in a story is something I can support. Too bad fancy dress shoes won’t support me.
And, by the way, I think needle-exchange programs make a whole lot more sense than stilettos…
