My Mid-Life Crisis, My Crocs

I think a lot about the Nora Ephron essay "On Maintenance," where she discusses the way woman’s physical life becomes a series of patches, lest she risk fading into oblivion. You know…fixing the brittle, gray hair; nipping the sad, sagging chin; band-sawing the gnarled, calloused feet that grow more troll-like with each passing year.

Twenty-year-old me never would have thought I’d be implicated in this rat race. And yet here I am in my 40s, coloring my roots every 5 weeks, forking over ungodly amounts of money for treatments that promise to tighten, smooth and “rejuvenate” and otherwise devoting unnatural mental energy to looking—at a bare minimum—presentable.

Perhaps this is why I found myself so delighted and surprised by my recent love affair with Crocs, a shoe (do we call it that?) that in no way preserves a woman’s sense of nubile youth. A shoe that, if anything, connotes dorkiness, sexlessness and obsolescence. I may be trying to turn back time on my face, but it seems I’m willing to go full DGAF on my feet.

I came to Crocs the way many of my well-heeled peers do—through my children. My kids have long espoused the Jibbitz-encrusted plastic hooves, which fall somewhere between gardening clog, water shoe and orthopedic prescription. My 11-year-old loves them for comfort, but he also loves the look—pairing them (in sport-mode) with white athletic socks and low-slung mesh shorts, a Gen Z and Alpha uniform we parents aren’t supposed to understand.  

For a while, we lived in harmony: me making fun of my kids for their Crocs, them leaving the Crocs right by the front door as a tripping hazard. But then something happened: My son started to wear my shoe-size and I started just trying out his Crocs. First, I’d pop them on to bring out the trash. Then, to run to the car real quick. But suddenly, I was fully out-and-about in my fifth grader’s camo Crocs—strutting to the corner store like an E.R.-nurse-Taylor-Swift, popping over to a neighbor’s in a Jenni Kayne sweater and trousers.

If you are on a grownup business call with me, please know that I am wearing them right this very second—my silent F.U. to middle-age preservation.

I knew I had a problem because a) Crocs are not cool and b) my son was often begging me to give them back. But the fact remained that they were just so Goddamn comfortable! I won’t get into the indignities of my feet, but my lord! The toe-bed! The cushioning! The king-sized berth that allows each bunion and corn its own special pillow! As a runner, my legs and heels are often tired, and with each wear of the Crocs I could feel my feet nursing themselves back to health.

And so…I bought a pair. I bought them in a color I thought would be sophisticated peach but turned out to be—as my husband puts it—Ronald McDonald yellow. And I love them. I wear them with jeans and I wear them with dresses. I wear them with socks and I wear them au natural. They are the first thing my feet touch in the morning and the last they see each night. If you are on a grownup business call with me, please know that I am wearing them right this very second—my silent F.U. to middle-age preservation.

So yes, I fall prey to the beauty double standards that befall all women. But, in my way, my Crocs are my unhinged form of letting go. You can have my face, Botox, but you’ll never have my sole.