With the leaves changing and the temperatures cooling, soon we will be folding up our norts and t-shirts and moving our leggings and crew necks up to the top of the drawer. In a few weeks, when the weather crosses the line from crisp to uncomfortably chilly, some of us will be donning Ugg boots.
I, like many of you, first discovered Ugg boots in the seventh grade. It was as if one day the Ugg Australia corporation broke into every junior high girl’s home, heaped her tennies onto a funeral pyre, charged $150 to her parents' credit card, put a fresh pair of Uggs on the doorstep, and left. I never had a desire to own a pair of sheepskin boots until I glanced down the middle school hallway, one day, and realized I was the only one without a pair.
I can’t blame my mother for her reluctance to cave in; after all, to the untrained eye, Ugg boots are just glorified house slippers. However, after a few months, I was able to scrape together enough cash to buy a pair of my own, and they quickly became a wardrobe staple. I wore them religiously until two or three winters later. Trashed from snow and sidewalk salt, I threw them deep into the back of my closet, never to be touched again.
Interestingly enough, the days of the Ugg have not faded away for everyone. Rather than recede into the past with gaucho pants or the denim skirt, Uggs have outlasted fad-hood. But like all things popular, they attract a lot of negative attention. Although I wouldn’t call myself a fan, I don’t understand all the hatred. The only thing worse than seeing girls on my timeline tweeting about how much they love their Uggs is girls tweeting about how much they hate them. Don’t they know that Uggs are ridiculously practical? Can’t they remember the way their feet felt in 2007?
Uggs are just footwear and I find it frightening that anyone could hate them any more than they could hate light bulbs, staplers or eggshell colored wallpaper. Of course, there is the whole animal rights activism vein of attack, but as a soulless, leather-wearing, bacon-eating monster, that approach won't sway me.
Uggs may be a bit awkward and clunky-looking, but at the end of the day, I will defend the Ugg boot to the death. Unless a pair sprouted arms and legs and came to life and physically assaulted you, don't complain. When polar vortex round two rolls around this January, I know won’t be the only one envying the Ugg brigade. Sometimes, triple-layered fuzzy socks just don’t cut it.
