Confessions of a Work-at-Home Mom: The Uggs Have Eyes

I‘ll be the first to admit that I’ve never been a clothes horse. When given the choice between going to the mall to shop for the latest trends or shoving bamboo reeds into the tender quick under my fingernails, more often than not I’ll pop one too many Ibuprofen, hold out my fingers and say a prayer for speedy recovery.

I don’t know why. My mother dresses impeccably and adores shopping, as does her mother. I tend to run in a crowd of women noted for their sass, style and skills in a department store.

Even still, I just can’t seem to get the hang of the whole shopping thing. There’s all that looking and searching, stopping and starting, lifting and carrying, dressing and undressing, and unless everything’s 75 percent off and I’m shopping for clothes for my son, it’s really more than I can handle, even on a good day.

Which is why, when my son and I showed up to a south Tulsa library for a story time last week (the library hosts free story times at several of its branch locations each week, by the way, and they’re all free and open to the public), I was completely shocked to find that we were two of just a few of the two dozen or so people there who weren’t wearing skinny jeans tucked into a giant pair of Ugg boots.

As in, most of the children were wearing Uggs, too. And get this: Some of the little girls’ Uggs matched their mothers’. Never mind that a pair of the boot-like slippers I saw on a few of the toddling infants at this story time retail for $50.

Needless to say, I sat on my shoes, a humble, well-worn pair of gray One Star Converse sneakers I bought on sale at Target, the entire time.

But as my son and I perused the library after story time was over, I thought to myself, really? Simply because I haven’t been to a mall for a reason other than my Mac required a visit to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store six months ago I totally, completely missed what’s apparently the trend of the century? I mean, the last time I remember seeing everyone dressed alike to that extent it was 1994 and everyone, from your little brother to your great-grandmother, wore Tweety Bird and Taz the Tasmanian Devil on their shirts, their shoes, their underwear – everything.

Something else I wondered: Maybe everyone’s wearing these Ugg boots because they’re highly functional, or something.

But then I remembered that we live in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and that the yearly average temperature in our area is about 60 degrees. I’m not so sure that our climate, or the typical chore list of a stay-at-home mom in our area, requires calf-high, fur-lined boots.

See, there I go again, missing the entire point of what shopping and fashion are all about (or, at least, what I think it might be about). Form doesn’t always follow function, and vice versa.

Not to get all existential or philosophical here. Because no matter how I try to spin it in my own mind, I still don’t like Ugg boots. Frankly, they look silly to me. Like a bunch of people from Siberia got lost and are destined to roam the plains of the American midwest with sweaty, overheated feet forever and ever, amen.

But, I did go out and buy a pair of those skinny jeans. Jeggings, actually.

So, there’s that.