Are You Ready, Boots? 1. The story starts in medias res. A woman named Lulu and her good friends Spencer and Betty are out shopping shoes after having had a lunch accompanied by two bottles of Chrystal.
Lulu is trying on some very high, very kinky boots and is really excited about them. She ends up buying them, though kind of regretting it several months later and not wearing them until later in the winter when she, one evening, goes out with Spencer and some of his pals.
They go to a bar and here she meets a guy called Charlie. He is the perfect man; handsome, British, rich and very charming.
They start going out and Lulu is very fond of him. Though her friend Spencer finds him boring and not fun enough for his best friend, Lulu still accept Charlie’s offer to be his girlfriend and go meet his parents.
One evening Lulu wears the boots she wore the day they met and Charlie tells her how hideous and slutty he finds them. Then Lulu’s mind is made up: Charlie is a boring, pompous ass and so wrong for her, so she ends up leaving him. 2. Lulu is the main character. She is a typical modern woman. Full of ambitions, fashion-minded and longing for her “soul mate”. She thinks she wants a rich, well educated and seemingly perfect man, but finds herself wrong when she dumps Charlie. Although the story doesn’t exactly say she leaves Charlie, that is what I get from the last line in the story: “Are you ready boots?” I said to them. “Start walking.”
She has a sense of humour (told on p. 4, first line) and likes to go out and have drinks with her (probably gay) friend, Spencer. Her looks are not described in detail, but I figure she is fit and on the pretty side of appearances. She is basically a very normal woman, easy to relate to and not especially extreme in her personality. She is a pretty flat character. 3. The role of men in the story is that they are seen as a necessity. You need a man if you want to live life happily ever after. Preferably a rich and good-mannered one (speaking as if they were a pet or the perfect dress). No straight men other than Charlie appear in the story though - Spencer and his pals are most definitely gay.
One thing about the story that is mentioned very often, you could call it the leitmotif, is that a person’s appearance is very important to Lulu and her friends. The first thing Lulu noticed about Charlie was that he was handsomely dressed and looked very presentable.
If you focus on opposites and adversaries, then Charlie and Spencer are each other’s complete opposites. Spencer is a fun, outgoing type who likes to crack jokes and hang out with his friends. Charlie however, is a stiff, upper class bore, who makes formal jokes he has heard and memorized. It is also Spencer who sees what kind of a man Charlie is from the beginning and in his disapproval, he affects Lulu. If Spencer hadn’t said anything about not liking Charlie, then Lulu would probably have married Charlie. Though you can’t be sure as to Lulu’s decisions, if not affected by Spencer, it is likely she would have stayed longer with Charlie. I do believe, however, that eventually, she would leave Charlie, or he her. They didn’t go together and in the end, one of them was bound to figure it out. 4. A persons clothing and appearance is always the first thing someone you meet for the first time notices. It is a natural thing everyone does. If you have a huge boil right between your eyes, people notice it. How you dress and look is a signal to others who you are. If you f.x. put on black combat boots, a black t-shirt with a picture of Kurt Cobain and paint your eyes and lips black, most people would think of you as some sort of rebel. If you put on a perfectly fitted suit from Armani and a tie from Hermes then you will signal class and style.
It is all about the way you dress. When you don’t know a person and talk to them for the first time, then of course you judge a bit by their way of dressing and appearance.
I can understand why some people feel some sort of negativity to people whose clothes or just appearance they find weird or disturbing. But even though a person might dress differently, and you would never like to look the same, then it is unfair to judge the persons personality by their choice of clothes. You can have doubts about not having the same opinions, but you can never know for a fact if you like the person before you talk to them and get to know them.