I have done it. I bought the cow shoes. You know, the ones with the camel toe, the hoof. I’m not proud of it, but I can’t lie, I don’t regret it. Not. One. Bit.
You might know them better as Tabis. They’ve been around for long enough that people have formed their opinions on these shoes and are now changing them. But why?
Well, in all honesty, it took only a few weeks of seeing an influencer, manana.mariee, styling her plethora of tabis, for me to give in and buy my own (not the $1000 Maison Margiela’s but the much cheaper—and equally as hoofy—Raboesy’s).
The shoes I found so ugly for so long have now become my number one obsession, and I almost felt foolish that an influencer was actually able to do their job and influence me. Almost.
It reminded me of all the times I’d seen the shoes before. In stores. On the street. Online.
And there was one common denominator: everyone always called them ugly.
But then, as I doom-scrolled late at night with no one but myself to see the shoes, I started to form my own opinions on them and started to think: yeah, they’re ugly but…I like them.
Which got me thinking. What if we find certain things ugly simply because everyone tells us we should?
Think about it. How many times did you like something (or even someone) and were scared to show your friends out of fear of what they’d say? Bought an outfit and then changed before leaving the house because someone said it looked weird? And how many times did your friends’ reactions make you question something you were completely sure about five minutes earlier?
According to psychologist Solomon Asch’s famous conformity experiments, roughly 75% of participants went along with an obviously incorrect group answer at least once, showing just how easily the opinions of people around us can influence our own.
But conformity doesn’t always mean standing in a room and giving the wrong answer. Sometimes it’s standing in a room with a little voice in your head asking, “What are people going to think?” before you even let yourself decide what you think.
Social media has taken that group of people in a room and expanded it to thousands of strangers on your ForYouPage. When the same shoe, song, outfit, or person appears over and over again, surrounded by comments telling you it’s either the best thing ever or the ugliest thing since the comeback of Crocs, it becomes pretty difficult to separate your own opinion from everyone else’s.
Maybe that’s why my opinion on Tabis changed so quickly. For years, I was looking at them through everyone else’s eyes. They’re ugly. They look like hooves. Why would anyone wear those? But when I finally spent enough time looking at them without people around me telling me what to think, I realized something slightly embarrassing: I actually liked them.
Of course, this doesn’t mean every opinion we have is secretly borrowed. Sometimes things are just ugly (I’m looking at you, shoulder pads). Sometimes your friends have good taste. And sometimes the shoes really do look like feet. But how much of what we call “taste” is actually just familiarity, repetition, and social approval?
That’s why each city has its own style. Everyone takes inspiration from one another. Walk through New York, and you’ll see one version of “cool.” Walk through Los Angeles, and you’ll see another. Go to Paris, London, Seoul, and suddenly the things you thought were weird start to look completely normal. We’re constantly looking at each other, taking notes, borrowing ideas, and deciding what’s worth keeping.
Maybe that’s what makes taste so interesting. It feels personal, but it’s never completely ours. The things we love are shaped by the people we’re around, the places we live, the people we follow and, increasingly, what an algorithm decides to put in front of us.
So maybe I didn’t really discover Tabis on my own. Maybe I just needed to see them enough times, from the right person, in the right outfit, before my brain finally stopped saying those are ugly and started saying I kind of want those.
And now I own the cow shoes.
Maybe they are ugly. Maybe they’re not.
Either way, I like them. And for once, I don’t really care what anyone else thinks.