What you can tell about your male professors based on their shoes

A lot

In 2016-17, 73% of tenure and tenure track professors at the University of Toronto were men1. The report in which I found this information begins “UofT has been successful in achieving increased gender equity within the faculty complement over the past 12 years,” but that’s beside the point. The point is that this data has real impact on real people. Real people like me, who have to keep track of the 17 male professors they’ve had among 20 total professors in the last two years. 

Although the many men whom you will encounter throughout your time at UofT may seem, to the naked eye, indiscernible, this is not strictly true. I’ve devised an infallible method for telling them apart; a window to their difference. The method lies in their shoes. You see, there are many restrictions placed on men and men’s fashion from within the university and from society at large. The glimpse of choice offered to the academic man is at the joints of him, the edges of his requisite suit: the tie, the socks, the shoes. The tie and the socks, though confound. They are where the conservative man expresses radicality and the radical man expresses conservatism. Do not trust the man in the patterned socks or the pastel tie.  

The shoes, however, are a whole other beast; they are not part of the suit. Of course, I’m not suggesting that they are outside of the suit—outside of the system. But, they’re not inside of it either. The shoes are a window to another world, an image of the much obscured, much beaten down, but certainly very present personality of your male professor. The professor who shines his shoes is shouting out to you as he chooses his polish, “See me!” he says. As he applies it to the leather, “Understand me.” As he carefully wipes semi-circles onto the body of the shoes, “Know me.” So, what do the shoes mean specifically? I can tell you that I’ve noticed haughtiness in those who wear orange snow-sleeves over their dress shoes, anxiety in those whose soft suede is carefully unruffled, practiced superiority in sneaker-wearers, but I cannot bring myself to come to terms with the level of authoritarianism that would create scales of shine, color, material, and lace. I would be prescribing that which is relevant by virtue of the fact that it is not prescribed—not as prescribed. Maybe the canvas shoe represents a degree of non-criticality, comfort in the academic institution. Maybe now that I have said that I have effected a rupture and the complacent shoe is worn only defiantly. This is for you to see for yourself. I have simply shown you a mode of knowledge available, and essential, to all of us students of men.  

Here lies my tip. The next time that you are inevitably confused about whose classroom you are in, do not look to the face. You will see nothing in the beard trimmed to regulation, the eyes clouded from days spent in libraries. You will force your eyes to land on the spittle on their lips, your eyes which instinctively know there is nothing there. Look instead to the shoes. Stephen Hawking once said, “Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.” But he too was a male academic. What does he know?