All Women Love Shoes/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character, usually female (as per the trope name), has an obsession with shoe shopping.

  • Straight: Alice goes shopping and comes home with a new pair of shoes she didn't need.
  • Exaggerated: Alice goes shopping and comes home owning the entire shoe store chain.
  • Justified: Alice has an unfortunate habit of breaking or losing shoes, but insists on buying a new pair every week instead of just going barefoot or repairing them.
  • Inverted:
    • Alice can't STAND shoes, and is far happier going barefoot everywhere.
    • David likes shoes and has to be dragged away from shoe stores.
  • Subverted:
    • Alice and Bertha go shopping. Bertha propses Alice go shoe shopping, but Alice declines, since she doesn't care about shoes that much.
    • Alice loves buying and collecting shoes... but doesn't actually wear any of them.
  • Double Subverted: Bertha's persistence ends up convincing Alice to try it, and she winds up enjoying it more than she'd thought she would.
  • Parodied:
    • Alice has a swimming pool filled with shoes she's bought.
    • Bob throws a shoe and Alice fetches it like a dog.
  • Deconstructed: Alice's love for buying shoes she doesn't especially need winds up giving her and her family significant financial problems.
  • Reconstructed:
    • Alice is a millionaire with a steady income coming from a steady job, so she can afford her shoe-shopping luxury.
    • Alice only buys shoes that are on sale. So, she can afford to own that many shoes.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice realizes she has a shoe-shopping addiction and tries to avoid it, but every other visit or so, she ends up caving to her desires regardless.
  • Averted:
    • Alice never has time in the plot to go shopping, period.
    • Alice is a Funny Animal living in a world of Barefoot Cartoon Animals, so the concept of putting clothing on her feet is alien to her.
    • Alice is a Tomboy and doesn't care about shoes other than as something to protect her feet.
  • Enforced: Nike is sponsoring the show's production, so at some point in the plot Alice has to go shoe-shopping specifically for Nike products.
  • Lampshaded:
    • Alice is frequently going "LIKE OMG SHOES!!!"
    • Alice's husband makes snide remarks about her constant shoe-shopping.
  • Invoked: Carrie needs to burn cash for one reason or another, but can't find a way she's satisfied with. She brings Alice to the mall, figuring Alice will spend it all on shoes anyway.
  • Exploited: David notices Alice has a lot of money and that she spends it all on shoes, so he enters the shoe-making business to try and get a piece of that action.
  • Defied:
    • Alice winds up in a mall which has absolutely no shoe stores anywhere.
    • Alice is a barefooter.
  • Discussed: "...I need to get Alice a gift. What do women like?" "Shoes? That's what TV says, after all."
  • Conversed: "Ever notice how much money Alice spends on shoes in that show? It's improbable!"
  • Played For Laughs: Alice tries to go shoe shopping, but every pair of shoes she selects turns out to be well above her price range, to the point of ridiculousness. After trying on literally thousands of pairs, she finally finds one she can afford... the ugliest pair in the store.
  • Played For Drama: Alice was a poor girl for most of her childhood, spending her days barefoot on the streets, begging for money. Now that she's a grown woman with a proper income, she finds shoes a small but fascinating reprieve from that tragic past.

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