Admittedly, we all flip-flop on this issue

It’s been the flip-flop-ification of America this summer.

When we look back at the summer of 2005, this much we’ll remember: The Northwestern University women’s lacrosse team wore flip-flops to the White House. As with hula hoops and jelly shoes, the flat-footed flip-flop now has the power to conjure the general cultural ambiance of an era.

The lacrosse team managed to simultaneously mortify their mothers and delight their peers, echoing the glee of those timeless moments when the generations clash, the co-eds suddenly start shaking their hips with Elvis or screaming as Ed Sullivan names the Beatles.

To his credit, the president seemed oblivious. He’s got daughters in their early 20s. He’s not likely to be rattled by the sound of a college kid fwap-a-fwap-a-fwapping down the corridors of power.

But the rest of us noticed.

Since then, I’ve realized it’s not just the Northwestern lacrosse team.

Flip-flops are truly everywhere. They’re on my daughters’ feet — they must own a couple of dozen pairs between them. (One daughter says she’d probably avoid wearing flip-flops to the White House. Somewhere along the line, perhaps the great Bon Marche dressing room dust-up of 1998, she got the message: Occasionally you’ve just got to suck it up, follow a fashion convention and keep your mom happy.)

For their generation, these thongs-for-your-feet (the distinction must be made) conjure up a tropical ease, a hibiscus-in-your-hair evening with a comfy affordability that appeals to everyone. Most American kids can spring for a couple of pairs of Old Navy flip-flops (two for $5.) And they convey a sort of relaxed, polite rebellion — nothing so edgy as a jagged tattoo — but a simple sidestep away from the frenzied pace of the lives of their parents.

Baby boomers have trouble fighting back — we secretly love them, too. My husband’s fashion lineup has long included a pair of work flips for wielding the weed eater and dress flips for backyard barbecues. It wouldn’t occur to either of us to wear them to a funeral at St. John’s Cathedral, though.

I work in a flip-flop free zone, yet during my time off, I’m rarely parted from a pair of Teva thongs. They slap around under my feet like little clouds of heaven.

Yet it hadn’t dawned on me the nature of the phenomenon until this very summer.

My flip-flop epiphany arrived when I attended a wedding on the Oregon Coast. As I rounded a corner to walk into the front door of the church, there stood the father of the groom, looking distinguished, a dusting of silver in his hair, in a formal black tux. Black fabric from his pants draped over his feet, and there I noticed a pair of sleek black flip-flops. “Nice shoes,” I said, amused.

He rolled his eyes. “Believe me,” he said. “It wasn’t my idea.”

The entire wedding party wore them, near as I could tell. They gave a certain spongy bounce to the procession and a tropical insouciance to the reception. The next day the flower girl happily flapped hers, decorated with rhinestones, all the way home in the car from the beach.

I predict when the bride’s generation clings to the fashions of their youth, it will be flip-flops they wear the longest.

All of us have a few fashion iconoclasts tucked in our families, the uncle who shows up at a family funeral in his 50s looking like an aging Starsky or Hutch, his 1970s grooviness fading under the effects of sunshine and Budweiser. There’s the ancient aunt who wore 1950s red Joan Crawford lipstick right into her casket. And we all know the 1960s wife who insisted on wearing a Donna Reed bouffant for the next 40 years.

For awhile, I thought that for Echo Boomers, it might be piercings that would last. But nose rings have already turned into this generation’s hot pants. And I’m convinced there will be way too much money to be made with some new dermatological laser-removal breakthrough for tattoos not to fade.

No, it will be flip-flops, the blue denim jeans of this decade, that will flap and slap their way into family reunions, wedding receptions and funerals for the rest of our days. They’re cheap, they’re comfortable, they’re just so darned easy — a 20-year-old’s polite spit in the eye.

I sense the winds of change blowing, though.

The White House is only the beginning. There will be designers who muck it all up, who turn from crafting $180 blue jeans to creating diamond laced flip-flops for the Oscars, Baroque style flip-flops for the opera, flowery aristocratic flip-flops for taking tea at the Four Seasons. Check out www.flipfloptrunkshow.com. You’ll already find $88 gold flip-flops encrusted with stones.

But before the inevitable happens, flap to your heart’s content. Savor this summer’s democratic sense of abandon while it lasts.