This is not a story about Crocs…

I love my Crocs beyond reason. My pink Crocs, and the ugliest ones of all: my formerly white Crocs with fake fur lining that looks like roadkill. They make my plantar fasciitis flare up, yet I’m wearing them. They’re easy to slip on, and if there’s anything I love, it’s comfort and ease.

Still, every time I put them on, I’m haunted by “the man at the family camp vacation.” Years ago, when my kids were little (they’re all in their twenties now), we went to this fancy family camp in Vermont.

One night, my husband and I were sitting at the bar with “the man at the family camp vacation”—who presented himself as a laid-back California guy in a Hawaiian shirt—and his mellow-voiced partner-without-a-hair-out-of-place. We were laughing and drinking wine when the man gestured to my turquoise Crocs and said, “Men don’t find Crocs attractive.”

Regressing to my sarcastic high school self, I hunted for withering comebacks I’d never use: Oh, okay, thanks so much, because I was trying to seduce you. Do men find getting punched in the face attractive? If I had known about the book, Women Don’t Owe You Pretty, I would have flung it at him. Instead I simpered, “But I like them,” while I hunched my shoulders up around my ears.

Then a worse blow landed. My husband nodded and agreed that yes, Crocs were ugly and he wished I wouldn’t wear them. I wanted to both punch him and throw my arms around him, begging his forgiveness. I wouldn’t have minded if he had said he thought Crocs were ugly. But I also wanted to hear something like, “Yeah, I don’t love Crocs either, but my wife is adorable.”

It’s not that I didn’t wear the Crocs after that. I did and do. But every time I put them on, there’s a voice in my head that prods, You’re not attractive. Which I continuously counter with a weak BUT. My modest goal is to put on a pair of Crocs not as a rebellion, but as the simplest act of self expression. I think they’re fun and comfortable. I like the endless color choices. They’re easy to slip on, and they connect me to my childhood sense of play. What if I had simply looked family-camp man in the eye and said, “I love my Crocs and I love myself.” Why am I nervously laughing, even as I only imagine saying it? Is that really so revolutionary?

You may be thinking: Jesus. Just wear the fucking Crocs! (But then you probably wouldn’t be the overthinking type who reads Substacks).

This is not a story about Crocs.

First, you give weight to random vacation camp guy in a cheesy Hawaiian shirt who calls the “attractiveness” of your Crocs into question. Then you hide your nearly all-black wardrobe and your beloved, rumpled overalls in the back of the closet because someone says they make you look angry and frumpy. Then, before you know it, you’re letting the glorious hours laying on the couch with a book be co-opted by fast boat rides in the bright sun when you’re mostly an indoor cat, because we all know that reading is antisocial.

All my role models—Georgia O’Keeffe, Patti Smith, Celia Paul, Sally Mann—wear what they want, live where they want, do what they want. Celia Paul lives alone in a small studio across from the British Museum, wearing a smock and painting most of the day, taking breaks only to share a meal with friends or family. She and her late husband “lived separately, too, and let each other be completely free. Yet we were always there for each other.” What if I replaced family camp man with the voices of these muses, whispering in my ear. In a piece for the New York Review called Painting Myself, Celia Paul wrote: “I want the self-portraits I make to convey a sort of security, to transform the reflected “she” in the mirror into the real “I.” Celia Paul stopped modeling for other painters, stopped looking in the mirror to see who she was, stopped painting solely from photographs and painted herself from a combination of photo reference and memory, creating herself anew each time.

It’s easy to lose yourself, one small decision at a time. And…if you pivot away from the reflected-by-others self, maybe you can find your real “I,” or at least the “I” that you choose for yourself.

You can ask my trans child about what it takes just to be who you are. They’ve taught me that It’s a muscle. You start with the little things. I’m still learning that for myself. In the meantime, I love my Crocs.