Growing Up a Sneaker Fiend…

by Lori Lobenstine

THEN…

It all started on the playground. I had my grey sweatshirt on, of course, and my new Nike high tops. White canvas, black swoosh. Must have been the mid-70s, and I was nine or ten. I heard the whispers and comments. "That girl's got on Nikes." "She's got high tops." The other kick ball heads were sweating me on the sly. I loved it.

But maybe it started before that, cuz getting those Nikes wasn't easy. First I had to wait for the annual sneaker shopping, which felt like forever. Then I had to try to convince my mom I needed Nikes, not just Chucks. I failed. In a last minute maneuver, I offered to pay the extra from savings from my weekly allowance. (At fifty cents a week, I wasn't a good bet for credit, but she knew where I lived…) I walked away hugging the box.

But maybe it started even before that, because sneakers were the only things I got to wear that were actually new, and the only things I didn't have to share with my twin. See, my family was big on sharing, not to mention "Value Village", the second hand clothing giant they had us thinking was the mall. Anyhow, those annual trips to sneaker stores were a big deal. My mom insisted that we jump up and down and run around the store to make sure the sneakers fit right. It was kind of embarrassing, but kind of important, too. Maybe they were growing a sneaker fiend without even realizing it…

In any case, I never looked back. For me, it was all about sneakers. I had a year to plot each selection, and I made the most of it. The seventies rolled into the eighties. My family moved to Ware, Massachusetts, and I wore my best new high tops to start seventh grade. Who knew all the girls would be wearing dress shoes? One of my teachers nicknamed me "Sneakers", and my seventh grade boyfriend still claims I introduced the whole town to a love of high tops.

Freshman year in high school, me and my sister made the varsity basketball team. That was big news, so I definitely "needed" new kicks. My goal became to always have sneakers no one else had. It was the early eighties, and Ware was swimming in Nikes and Reeboks. Over my high school career I chose Pony's, Pumas and my all time favorite-high top KangaROOS. Who had those?!? They had a velcro pocket in the tongue. Other important touches of the day included using white shoe polish to hide the cracks (damn Pony's), and using green markers to make my sneakers match my uniform. Go Ware!

Back then I was a female sneaker fiend with my own priorities and zero audience. No friends went with me to hunt down strange sneakers, and no one really admired my finds. Nevertheless, I was completely unfazed and absolutely thrilled with each selection. I didn't have a name for what I was, but I knew sneakers were the only fashion I cared about. What I never realized was that my best friend from seventh grade, "LB", was turning into a fiend, too. She was busy combing the East Coast for some green leather high tops, while I was doctoring my Pony's. Our junior year, she rocked some low top green Chucks, the closest she would get to her vision. And we still didn't talk about it! She says it was because I must have lost respect for her after all her years of wearing bubblegums, but I think the real truth is more elusive. We were used to being solo in our endeavors, we weren't expected to be sneaker fiends, and we didn't even have a language for our obsession.

AND NOW…

So what's changed today? Do young female sneaker fiends have a language around their passion? Do they recognize themselves and their peers? Who are the new "kickball heads" sweating their Nikes? How do their families feel about their sneaker collections? To get some answers, I started talking with some of these young women about their sneakers. (I can't say I was scientific, I just started talking to some young women I knew through my work and who I'd recognized put some extra thought into their kicks.)

Across the board, these young women did not have a particular language for themselves. When I asked Emily, a 16 year old, when she realized she was a sneaker fiend, she responded quickly, "When I met you." Allyson, 12, also connected our conversations about sneakers with her awareness of herself as a fiend. She told her mom, "She's my idol, Mom. She loves sneakers, too." None knew about sneaker fiend websites, books or magazines, but many immediately had ideas about what they would want on a site. Yamil, 19, said it should be called "female sneaker revolution!", and include different ways you could wear your sneakers, as well as sneaker poems. Loca, 24, pointed out that it should have "females, non-half naked", (which adds a good point for a later article about sexism in the sneaker world!) Despite not previously identifying as sneaker fiends, all of the young women I spoke with knew just what I was talking about, and all knew of other girls who they now labeled as sneaker fiends.

So what are the "kickball heads", family members and other girls saying about these young women's snazzy sneakers? Allyson reports that the boys are still sweating females' sneakers, when they're nice. She says, "When they see me wearing sneakers, like new sneakers, or just sneakers period, they're like, 'Oh, you always match your sneakers.' And stuff like that. They sort of look up to me, and they try to do the same thing. And they know not to step on my sneakers!" Katrina, now 27, talked about how being a female sneaker hunter was a solitary endeavor ("everybody was into penny skirts, shoes, and that. It was just my thing."), but also how boys would admire her finds: "Even when I was like in freaking middle school, guys I never even talk to would walk up to me and be like, 'yo shortie, your shoes is hot.' And that's what made me really get into it."

Family members, however, seemed to be less supportive than peers, and some were even less interested than my own parents had been! Emily says she's been loving sneakers since she was about seven. Was it because her mom put her in "Weeboks" since day one? Nah. She sighs, "My mom thinks I'm crazy! I have, like, twelve pairs of sneakers….and my mom has about, like one pair of sneakers." Loca talks about when, in sixth grade she got to pick out her sneakers for the first time. "They were these little Nikes. My sister had 'em so I wanted to get them too. I wanted to be down. And then my mom threw it in my face because I had my first pair-I had a name brand pair of sneakers, and she never had a name brand pair of sneakers before, like even at that point in time."

Now other females' responses to these young women seemed split based on whether or not they had a mutual understanding about sneakers. Non-fiends were unimpressed. As Allyson said, "When I come to school with nice sneakers, there's these girls in my school, every time I would come with a new sneaker on, they just look at me like, 'Why is she wearing sneakers?' Like they're the type that they wear like heels to school, and low cut shirts. And I don't like exposing myself like that. I come to school with sneakers, and a pair of sweatpants to go with them, a nice shirt. And they're just like 'what is she wearing?'" On the other hand, Emily's basketball teammates had more respect: "Like my basketball [sneakers]. Everybody wanted to buy them for the whole team. It's kind of weird….ten people with the same sneakers as you."

So what do these conversations tell us about what's changed (and what hasn't)? As Yamil notes, girls are still not expected to have particularly nice or unusual sneakers: "Like if girls had really dope new sneakers, everybody would be like DAMN. Where as most of the girls just had the regular, typical [Nike] Uptowns…so when you came out with something different, it was great. But when a guy did it, it wasn't that big of a deal, because they were expected to have the newest sneakers." That sounds just like my experience on the playground in the 70's!

Similarly, the sneaker fiend subculture is very male oriented. The growth of digital access to sneaker culture (and sneakers!) has introduced us to important language and community around our passion, but the sneaker fiend scene hasn't exactly recognized all of its female members. Books and websites dedicated to our subculture typically feature hundreds of guys, and zero to three women, (no exaggeration).

So, I'm still wearing a grey sweatshirt and my favorite high tops (some white on white Kevin Garnetts, at the moment), and now I'm sitting down to design "femalesneakerfiend.com". It's going to be our very own website to talk about, check out, photograph, doodle, and generally show off fabulous sneakers and the females who obsess about them. I picture an online community of old and new sneaker heads from around the world, talking to each other, hunting together, and making our presence-and passion-felt. So let's get that "female sneaker revolution" going.