steel toes and stilettos

Sarah stood over her desk at work, reading an invitation to speak at an event at her alma mater. The event was called Steel Toes and Stilettos, and was an event celebrating women in engineering. When Sarah was in college, the group of women engineers was quite small. Most of them were married or divorced young women who had gone back to school for a second degree, and really the only degree that even could compensate for the loss of a person's extra income was an engineering degree.

Now it seemed that the flier held promise in the future. In addition to the women in the engineering college, the event also included high school girls. Sarah remembered high school, and its painful lessons, particularly when she was told by a female math teacher that she just wasn't good at math. Every day in high school, she was constantly overlooked by female teachers who favored male students in her math and science courses. When they made a mistake, they were given opportunities to learn. When she made a mistake, she was told, "you're just not good at this, and you're not going to use it later in life, so why bother?"

Sarah had been beaten for the position of valedictorian by a boy who had managed to squeeze in some AP credits that she wasn't able to receive. Even though she and the boy had the same GPA, the school was more willing to work with him to incorporate more AP credits into his schedule. They barred her from an AP physics course, saying that the class was too full of people who were actually going to use it for the rest of their lives, and that she was only going to be a teacher.

She did become a teacher, of sorts. She preferred to think of herself more as a professor and researcher, though. She was the only female professor in the department, and without tenure, her position was precarious.

She decided after reflecting on her position that she would accept the invitation to speak in front of a crowd of women, who like her, shared the same special experience of being a female in engineering. What would she say?

turning in her party shoes

"I must have these," Sarah proclaimed, waving the shoe wildly in the air. The shoe salesman with the receding hairline, perfectly polished brown shoes, and the tweed suit nodded in agreement. He was in a very good mood that day, because the shoe department had been very busy and his commission was very good.

Sarah paid with her platinum credit card, purchased a tube of Diorshow mascara from the Dior counter, and carried her bags to her car. Not only did she land the job position that she had wanted, she was getting paid very well for it, and while being fairly thrifty, she knew when to splurge. She worked hard, and she deserved to pamper herself once in a while. Not only had she landed the job position that she had wanted, she had also lost 30 pounds that year by taking bellydance and pilates classes, in addition to learning how to cook. Things were going incredibly well for her, and that night she would go celebrate with a couple of her closest girlfriends by going to the most popular club in the metro.

That night, she emerged from her apartment in dark designer denim, a slinky satin halter top, and her new purchase, to meet Erin, Janie, and Amanda. Erin was a nervous accountant who constantly bit her nails, Janie was a physician assistant who had recently broken up with her high school sweetheart, and Amanda was a law student who was going to graduate the next year. These were her best friends, all attractive and successful, but always wanting more.

These four women wanted everything; they wanted careers, money, and men. Often, they discussed the puzzling actions of their boyfriends and guys they were casually dating with little reservation. The best of these conversations almost always occurred after a night of drinking when they had hangovers in the morning, and drank mimosas and ate a fabulous light brunch at Sarah's swanky $900 a month loft apartment with a beautiful stainless steel and black granite kitchen. That was exactly what they were planning to do the next morning, after they left the club and slept it off.

The club was great, happening, with lots of gorgeous men. In general the night had been a success, with various men taking interest in both Amanda and Erin while Sarah and Janie had danced the night away. The next morning, Sarah woke up to find her head pounding, and beer spilled on her suede shoes. They were ruined, and so was her good mood. She got out of bed, walking around in her boxers and tank top, and began to fix breakfast. As the muffins were baking, she showered, dressed, and woke Erin who was staying over in her spare bedroom because the night before she couldn't find the keys to her apartment in her handbag.

At noon, Erin, Amanda, Sarah, and Janie were all gathered on Sarah's balcony, eating cottage cheese muffins, fruit, and drinking mimosa's. Janie, always the analytical one, dissected the conversations and come-hither moments of the night before with striking precision. She quickly summed up the night by saying, "If you date a man you met in a bar, and marry him afterward, you'll always be married to a barfly. Wouldn't it be more lucrative to meet a nice man while you're sober, without worrying that he is an immature Peter Pan prick?"

"Yes, but where would one meet this nice guy? They don't exist in their 20's, and in their 30's, they want to raise you and mold you into their own idea of the perfect woman, if they're unmarried. And most of them are married, if there's not anything wrong with them. Where do you suggest that we meet these nice men? At work, with all of the restrictions on dating coworkers?" Sarah asked, taking a sip of her mimosa.

"No no, not at work. There are lawsuits all the time dealing sexual harassment in the workplace, so much so that men are scared to make the first move," Amanda said, "but are you going to eat the last muffin? I'm starved. I don't know what's come over me."

"No no, take it," they all said.

"Seriously though, how are you supposed to meet him?" Sarah asked, thinking that all of her coworkers were sexist assholes who, when asking a question relating to safety and protocol, would always receive an answer from her at which point they proceeded to look it up and then congratulate themselves on their own intelligence. If a man had answered, they took it as the gospel truth, and still congratulated themselves on their own intelligence.

"I could fix you up," Erin said flatly, thinking of her realtor friend who was looking for someone who was smart, witty, and single. James was 28, and had just grown up when he realized that he hated his job in accounting and quit to study to become a realtor. He was successful, intelligent, soft-spoken, and was finally ready to date someone seriously.

They all groaned, and the male bashing and rapier remarks continued on for the next two hours, before they all left. Speaking to Erin, she agreed to meet James, eyeing her ruined purple suede shoes, realizing that she needed to grow up and stop partying like she did when she was a freshman in high school. It was time to put away the sexy dirtbags that always spilled beer on her shoes and broke her heart.