God I hate my feet. No matter how much I coddle them and coat them in layer after layer of Vaseline and foot acid and Saran Wrap and whatever else on the planet I can find to make them less hideous than they naturally choose to be, they are the Titanic.

I can initiate all the emergency procedures I like, but these puppies are going DOWN.

Yoga is basically saving my life lately, but there is one sad side effect involved: I spend a lot of time every week staring at my feet, and worrying that other people are staring at them, too (and being grievously offended by them, thereby disrupting their own namaste and such). So I've majorly upped my Vaseline/foot acid/Saran Wrap game...but have also decided that really, the best solution is to just hide the damn things.

Yesterday I wrote about the ballet flats that Francesca convinced me to buy (whereupon she FAILED ME by telling me to buy a size too small...and then, annoyingly, reversed said fail by reminding me that I know how to stretch out leather shoes in a pinch, thereby simply expediting what happens to ballet flats anyway, which is why you should, in fact, buy them a touch too small).

And now I'm going to tell you about the shoes themselves, because they're phenomenal.

Before we begin: I am not a ballet flat person. I feel like ballet flat people are sylphlike and graceful and Audrey Hepburn-ish, and I am none of those things. Whenever I try on ballet flats, I feel like I'm playing dress-up, and not in a good way; in a 37-year-old-wearing-my-daughter's-clothing kind of way.

Cynthia Rowley Zodiac Wetsuit (c/o)

Wetsuits are not cute; I speak from vast experience here. I bought my first wetsuit when I was 12 and got my scuba diving certification...and I still have the same one. This would be kind of fun - look at meeee, fitting into my preteen wetsuit! - except it's sort of like still being able to fit into an Ace bandage that happens to be purple, and cover your whole body. You can do it...but that doesn't mean it's necessarily a great idea.

The thing about wetsuits is they're meant to be functional. You don't wear them to be adorable; you wear them to not freeze. And so the best-looking ones I've seen - up until now, at least - are only "cute" because they're not terrible and/or neon. In other words, they are black.