An open letter to people selling shoes on ebay

Dear sellers of high heels on ebay,

You may find some of the hard hitting points from this letter a little hurtful. I am coming from a place of love though, this is for your own good. I want us all to get along. I don't want there to be any confusion when I'm done, so I will be frank. Take a moment now to prepare. If ever there was an occasion to comfort eat, this is it. Go and make a hot chocolate with gold top milk and fill the pockets of your nightgown to maximum capacity with Oreos. Nobody is judging you. I have numbered my observations for your convenience. Breath in deeply and proceed. 

1) Heels claiming to be heels that aren't heels. If I search for 'high heels' on ebay, one can reasonably assume that I am not doing so for my general health and well-being, but rather that I actually want to purchase high heels. So when I set to it, full of youthful expectation and an irrational sense of hope akin to that experienced annually by Liverpool fans, I envisage spending joy filled hours scrolling through reams of shoes, glorious shoes. The search should not be interrupted with a dose of sensible. If I wanted sensible I would have put an advert in the parish bulletin. See Figure 1 for the full horror. An inch of solid black rubber does not elevate an item from bog standard loafer to high heel. Also it should be noted that having a massive lump of rubber underfoot will not protect you in the unfortunate event of being struck by lightning. So really these bad boys have nothing going for them and should not be deviously masquerading as high heels. You are only embarrassing yourself here.

Figure 1. A solid pair of loafers. Nice air holes to keep your athletes foot from thriving. In a stunning shade of bland, perfect for the transition season when you 'don't know what to be wearing atall, sure you'd catch your death out there still but isn't there a grand stretch in the evenings all the same Mary?'

2) Heels claiming to have been 'worn once'. This is an ambiguous term, and ambiguity does not sell. What do you mean 'worn once'? Did you pop them on, watch an episode of Hell's Kitchen, get the life scared out of you by Gordon Ramsay, decide you're never leaving the house again and silently slide the shoes off in a fit of moderate anxiety? Did you wear them with a pair of your boyfriends rugby socks folded over twice and climb repeatedly up and down the cream carpeted stairs muttering Hail Mary's under your breath in the vain hope that you would have them broken in before Marion's 21st? Or did you let your cousin Brian mash his hairy size 11 toes into them for his charity 5km fun run where he went in full drag? Figure 2 depicts an exemplary example of shoes that regardless of whether they have genuinely only been 'worn once' or not, should never be marketed as 'worn once'. You will lose all credibility, Clodagh from Cavan will give you a sellers score of one star, your ebay career will be over and all your future hopes and dreams will melt away in front of your eyes.

Figure 2. Brian? Did you do this?

3) Heels lined up for a photo with the left shoe on the right and the right shoe on the left. WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS? Leave.

Figure 3. My OCD is flaring up. Does anyone have a brown paper bag? I need oxygen, ASAP. Do you feel guilty? You should. 

4) Inappropriate placement of heels for the picture. Now this is a rather more sensitive area. My previous points, I feel, are well justified. I would confidently wager that most would be in agreement with me. My next point may not be so much of a crowd pleaser though. I only dare voice my opinion now that I know my dream of running for general election has already been shattered (Gerry Adams feels this blog teeters dangerously towards undermining party policy). The origins of my problem with modern day ebay shoe positioning lie firmly in a rigid Catholic upbringing. I've contacted Father O'Connell-Murphy and Brother Benedict McLoughlin and both are prepared to back me up. We have come together and, between Father O'Connell-Murphy's organisational prowess and Brother Benedict's belief in the human race, come up with a temporary solution. There will be a Novena sometime in mid-February to pray for the redemption of souls engaged in suggestive shoe positioning on global forums. I struggled greatly with the issue of whether to place such filth on here or not, but in the end figured that forewarned is forearmed. Proceed with caution. 

Figure 4. Sweet merciful mother of Mary. Never in all my days....

5) The close up shot. You are not employed by National Geographic, presumably (I realise I'm stereotyping but do National Geographic employees typically sell wedges with free delivery from East-Hampshire? No.) So macro-photography isn't the way to go. If you are photographing the shoes in a bedroom approximately the size of wheelie bin, perhaps placing the shoes in a corner and standing diagonally opposite might work? When one does not include a full size picture, I tend to let my imagination run amok and assume either a rottweiler has done away with the left foot or there are some class of bodily fluids prevalent. 

Figure 5. Lovely studs. No questions there. But...well...I have trust issues okay?

6) Soft edges. I do appreciate photographic artistry. Really, I do. But there's a time and a place. And this isn't it. If you are in such a hurry to take the photo, the logical conclusion is to assume that there is something very big wrong with the shoes and you just can't be rid of them quickly enough. Either that or your camera is not capable of the demands you are putting on it. You need to assess the number of frames per second you can capture without motion blur setting in and tell your enchanted tap shoes to slow down to an appropriate rate for the picture. 

Figure 6.  Tap tap tap tap tap tap, look at me go guys! I got the rhythm, Uhmmm, hmmmm. tap tap tappity tap

Thank you for your time.