I am so curious what your brain jumped to when you read the word “mules.” The animal? Swallowing a condom full of drugs? Or to the 1990s, when people’s feet intentionally looked like this?

I have to be honest: I didn’t have much love for mules the first time around; I mean, look at them. Elizabeth here looks like she is headed to Elf School, where she teaches them how to make Koosh balls. But one Amanda Woodward — the gloriously smart, efficient she-storm of steel played by Heather Locklear on Melrose Place — used to tromp around in mules ALL THE TIME as the capper to her tiny mini-skirted suits. And so to me, mules are time machine. I look at them and instantly I am in my dorm room watching Dr. Michael Mancini making out with all kinds of people, and Amanda dishing out verbal abuse to terrible Alison, and Jake being so boring but so hot, and Jane mispronouncing the word “design” as though it has twelve Es in it up front, and Kimberly Ripping Off Her Wig. It was a wonderful time. But it was not a high point for footwear, and so I tend to think mules should stay exactly there, in that space and time forever, kicked off under Amanda’s desk — you know, the one over which her former boss Bruce hung himself.

What say ye? Are you pro-mule? Anti-mule? A former acolyte who has vowed never to go back? Or a current convert?

[Photo: Fame/Flynet]