On a day the colour and temperature of slate, the kind of day when I wouldn’t be out of my house if not for the fact that I hadn’t yet gone to bed since the day before, the local child labour-devouring clothing chain turned up the heat at their Bloor-Yonge location in a scheme to bring the unthinking hordes in off the street.

Drunk with heat, I tottered in, momentarily blinded by the display of blood-soaked merchandise (I say this figuratively, though they could probably pull that off next to their collection of paint-spattered tweed blazers). Suddenly, I stopped dead in my tracks.

The thoughtful display-dressers had outfitted a mannequin not only with the requisite ill-stitched corduroy, but with something magical: black leather motorcycle-style boots (I say style because no self-respecting Hells Angels wife-there’s an oxymoron for you!-would be caught dead wearing them). Too delicate to survive a spill off a Harley, they were fit only for urban posturing. I fell in love.

I had been nursing a desire for boots just like these ever since I saw a pair at a girlfriend’s house, and had been maddeningly told they were bought overseas. These actually turned out to be the exact same boots, something I had to explain to said girlfriend, but even if I had known this at the time, it wouldn’t have stopped me from buying them.

I went back and decided to check the shoes’ label. Genius: the inscription read “NINE WEST.” There was a Nine West down the street. Thank you, downtown shopping-district saturation. I went. There was one pair left in my size. They were $240 (plus tax). I thought for three days. On the fourth day, I bought them. It is the most expensive purchase I’ve made all year. That book of Marxist literary theory would have to wait. Sorry, Karl.

As far as I’m concerned, the world needs women in superhero boots. They have a striking, possibly subversive effect on the onlooker. You’re less likely to dismiss their wearer’s political opinions, or her right to control when and if she gives birth, if in cool weather she’s wearing flat-soled boots that cover her from toe to shin. None of your impractical things that expose her ankles to windchill, or worse, anything with funfur. Clothing shouldn’t have such an effect, but it does. And women need to be heard now, more than ever, when chicken-fried steak-gulping, white-haired men down South seek to erode reproductive rights faster than you can say “ewwww, partial-birth.”

Now, more than ever, superwomen are needed-maybe even super-cat-biker-women. They have mechanical wings and submarines, and can hack into the broadcast signals of Fox News by feline mental force alone.

And those women need boots, dammit.