Identity Re-soled: An Interview With Meghan Cleary
Meghan Cleary greets me as though we’re old friends — “Oh my god hi how are you!?” — immediately making me feel at ease, though we’ve just met for the first time. I came across Meghan’s work a few months ago, while developing my own project on shoes and identity: 100 Days of Sole.
Meghan is a shoe expert, and is known as the Shoe Therapist. A vocation that is unconventional, yet far from superficial, as Meghan believes that shoes contain a unique connection to how the wearer is confronting identity.
“The classic thing that happens to me when people realize that I’m a shoe expert is they’ll cajole me with sentiments such as ‘Oh, my wife is an expert on shoes.’ Ha. Ha.” Meghan said. “Or I’ll speak with a woman who loves Merrill’s or Crocs and she’ll look down on the subject as if she’s not into shoes.”
Meghan tells me how even Sarah Jessica Parker — who played shoe-obsessed Carrie Bradshaw in the HBO series “Sex and the City” — once gave a similar disclaimer. Before the release of the first “Sex and the City” movie, Parker shared with Megan that just because she was obsessed with shoes on her show, it didn’t mean that she identified as a shoe person — an instance where even the star herself felt the need to shed the shoe-heavy reputation in order to be taken seriously and not considered as just another fashionista.
But a connection to our shoes doesn’t have to be superficial in nature. Meghan, like myself, believes that everyone has their own style and preference for a reason. In other words, our soles say a lot about out soul.
“Most people, if you ask just a few questions, can get very intense about their shoes. It taps into something within people that has to do with identity — or rather — how they identify themselves in the world and how they function or move through life,” Meghan said.
“So even when I meet that person who believes that shoes are superficial — simply because they’re not into high heels — all it really means is that they identify as a practical person, and are into practical shoes,” she said. “People also get really caught up in thinking they…
