Are You Ready, Boots?

"Are you ready, Boots", by Maggie Alderson, is a short story, which story mainly takes place in London. It is a youthful environment in a financial world; with new fancy clothes, lots of drinks, champaign and parties. In continuation of that, it is also a superficial environment, where you are being judged by your look and the clothes you are wearing.

Even though the most of the story is in London, the opening, which is in medias res, is set in New York. The two friends, Lulu and Spencer, who are also two of the main characters, are shopping shoes. It is the first time the reader experiences the financial world and the consumer society, because Lulu is trying some Manolos, which is very expensive shoes. Even though Lulu is spending "two months' rent money on that four day trip to New York" the fact that she is actually buying such expensive shoes shows that she, at one point or another, is well-off. That is why I think it is people from the middle/upper classes.

Lulu is the first-person in the short story and therefor we hear all of her thoughts, which often are about peoples' appearance, including her own. She is a good-looking girl, with a sense of fashion. Just like her gay-friend, Spencer, who has a very feminim personality. In many ways they remind me of each other. They both have humor, but also a negative type of humor, in the way that they are making fun of people, e.g. that Lulu thinks it is "hyterical", when Spencer did "impersonations of people simultaneously as they walk by" .

Beside Lulu and Spencer another of the main characters is Charlie, who Lulu meets the first time she is wearing her boots from Manolo Blahnik. He is very handsome, has a good job, owns a Porsche and just approaches to be the perfect man. Almost. Because gradually Lulu finds more and more things that she dislike about him. Among other things he does not like Lulu's Manolos, and at about the time he propose to her, he tells her that because of the boots he was about to turn her down the night they met. Apparently all of the characters have superficials characters.

Obviously Lulu is the only female character in the short story. She has two men in her life; Spencer and Charlie which is each others opposites. The heterosexual versus the homosexual. They also have different functions in Lulu's life. But it seems like they are both used as a symbol. Charlie as the handsome man, who has it all, and Spencer as the