Ugh!

I just spent two hundred bucks on a pair of boots for Grace. Ugh! They don’t look like boots; they look like a cross between ski socks and woolly slippers. Guess what? These boots are made of sheepskin and cannot be worn in the rain. Ugh! As a Canadian, I gotta tell you that I’m not sure how long they’d last on the salty winter roads of my hometown, Toronto!

Granted they are made of “the highest quality” of sheepskin, but that just meant an extra twenty bucks for the deluxe cleaning kit, which includes a special brush, a spot cleaner and waterproofing spray. Ugh! So, why would I spend 200 big ones on useless footwear? Because they’re UGGS and apparently ... EVERYONE in middle school has them...!

Up until about a month ago, I’d never heard of UGGS. We were at a late season high school football game and I noticed that many of the teen girls seemed to be wearing dirty slippers with their otherwise hip jeans and tops. What happened to ballerina shoes, which seemed to be all the rage not too long ago? What about boots? Hey here’s an idea, how about shoes? I pointed out the slippers to my 11-year old daughter, who blushed and pretended she wasn’t looking at the cool girls. “They’re UGGS”, she whispered.

Ugh is right, I thought. Who would wear dirty slippers to a football game? But my daughter told me that “everyone” at her school has them. They’re worn like shoes. They’re so cool. They’re so warm. Blah blah blah....

Oh well, when I was my daughter’s age, I remember that it was cool to wear these lace–up Cougar brand boots with the laces only half-tied and the tongue hanging out. I remember one summer when everyone wore Dr. Scholl’s brand clogs. Do you remember that? They were supposed to condition your legs while you walked – ha!

Well, I don’t know what UGGS do, except keep your feet warm, I guess. This is no passing fad either. I checked the web-site when we got home (to see if I could buy stock in this scam...) and it turns out that the company is 25 years old! Some Aussie surfer dude imported the woollies from Down Under.

Well, I’m sure my daughter has no clue about the history of the company or its various line extensions. She just wanted them because they’re in style. I’m not so old that I’ve forgotten that feeling. I remember my sister and I desperately wanted Road Runner jeans when we were about 13. They would go on sale occasionally at the local BiWay store for 17.99. They were the coolest jeans (“everyone at school has them...”) but my mother, a single woman who wasn’t keen on denim anyway, said no. I think they were one of the first purchases I made with the earnings from my new part-time job a year later.

We’ve been pretty sheltered from popular culture for a few years now. At an international school that was host to kids from 72 different countries, you don’t see the kind of conformity in style that you do here in the USA. Once last year, I remember my daughter telling me, with a certain degree of envy, that a girl in her class owned three Abercrombie t-shirts. I’m such a style flunkie that I didn’t know what she was talking about.

But, my daughter is not a style flunkie. She is a style junkie. She sketches outfits, she studies ads, she loves colours. She dresses well and often wraps a scarf effortlessly around in her neck in that je-ne-sais-quoi way that so many women work so hard to achieve. She knew perfectly well what UGGS were and she wanted a pair very badly.

Ugh! *SIGH* Groan!