Ode to the Beater Shoe
Graphic by Isabelle Hauf-Pisoni.
If you were to ask me what my favorite item in my closet is, I’d have to shout out my musty, dusty, trusty beater sneakers. Despite their scuffs and tears, I can’t begin to imagine the chaos of getting dressed each day without them. But beaters often go unnoticed, doomed to live in the shadows of the knee-high boots, colorful Jordans or chunky sandals of the world. It’s time we give credit where credit is due, so here’s an ode to the beater shoe. Thanks for carrying us through life with comfort and ease, no questions asked.
I asked the Northwestern student body about their beaters and they had plenty to say.
“Um, so these are my beaters. They used to be the nicest pair of shoes I owned because I usually only have three pairs of shoes tops. I bought these to skate, so these are my skate shoes. So when you skate in your shoes they get ruined because the shoe that you push on, which is the shoe that hits the floor, … its sole just gets super thinned out. So walking on these is like … I’m basically barefoot. And then there’s holes in both toes and the shoes are just cracking in half because they bend a lot, but I really like beaters. I mean, these are slowly becoming unwearable so I need to transition into a new pair of beaters; but in general, wearing beaters to most places is really freeing. They turn into your favorite shoe because you don’t have to worry about keeping them clean or keeping them intact. They’re already ruined. You can just have fun with them. You love your beaters.”
“Honestly, they’re so comfy. I bought them as nice shoes, but after wearing them to a few events and parties, they started slowly becoming my beaters, and I accepted that. That’s what they do now. So when I want to go out and know I’m gonna get stepped on, but I want to look nice, I bring these out.”
“I bought these sneakers my junior year of high school. It’s funny because these are the first sneakers I bought on my own where I started to get into shoes and everything like that and was looking at release dates and different colorways and all that. So at first I was taking extremely good care of them and wearing them for special occasions only and all that type of stuff. But I think the thing that I love the most about them is how versatile they are. They kind of go with a lot of different outfits. So over time, they’ve kind of taken on a beater quality. And so for me, beater shoes, I think, are fun because they just take the pressure away of taking care of your shoes.”
“Okay, I usually wear socks with them so I’m gonna preface with that, but I got them for lacrosse. They’re lacrosse Crocs. They have gibbets on them. Number seven. The whole team got matching Crocs and they got them to match with their sticks and my stick is Carolina blue. I love Crocs so much. I have this pair, I have a fuzzy pair, all my siblings have Crocs. It’s kind of like a DMV thing where you own at least one pair of Crocs and you wear them everywhere. I wear them everywhere. I wear them out when I walk, I wear them when I have to do water related activities. They’re just such a multifaceted shoe that I can literally wear them wherever, whenever.”
“So I got them on the Adidas website over the summer because I needed new white sneakers because I feel like white sneakers are the go to for me. They just go with everything and I didn’t have any that I liked in the moment. And usually when I look for shoes, I look for something with a little bit of a platform because I’m short. These don’t really have that, but I liked how they looked and I thought the Velcro strap was cool because I feel like my shoelaces always come untied. So these are really easy. At first I was kind of cautious about getting them dirty because they were new, but then I just started wearing them so much because they were so comfortable. And, honestly, I was wearing them so much back home, and I was walking around so much that I was like, okay, these are gonna be my go-to. And they’ve honestly held up pretty well.”
If you’re reading this while you’re rockin’ your beaters, be sure to give them an appreciative pat on the heel. We never know how much longer they’ll last, so enjoy every threadbare second.