shoes!

[keryx]

Shoes. I want to marry my shoes. Not all of them; just these (I have them in black patent, and they did not cost that much). They're my favorite pair this spring, with their girlish shinyness and the red insteps.

I love shoes. Not in a itty spikey little $400 a pair way. I mean. I do wear heels of various heights and types, but comfort is equally important to me as the artistry of shoeness. I wear neither ugly nor painful shoes, and choose them for personality or the feeling that they communicate (to me) more than anything. My favorite shoes ever are still my pink and black kitty shoes. Who could not love them?

So, yes, shoes are my big shopping thing. Shoes are the reason I've bought (I'm so embarrassed to say this) a Lucky magazine on the occasional sick day. [A point in favor of that magazine, though - at least it doesn't lie to you; it's clearly designed solely to sell you stuff and doesn't both with pseudo-editorializing.]

This sheer sculptural variety of shoes, this idea that shoes have personality - and of course, the high heel - exists only for women. Is it then sexist to be a connossieur of shoes?

Take the common (sometimes feminist) arguments against high heels, for instance:
1. They're bad for your feet. Well, yes, wearing ill-fitting shoes of any sort are bad for your feet. If your toes are pinched or your feet and ankles can't move and flex, you shouldn't be wearing those shoes. Keeping your foot in an unnatural position (i.e. pointed) all the time is bad. Ironically, men seem to be just as likely as women to wear the worst shoes of all - the super-engineered, feet-imbolizing running shoe designed to absorb shocks and hold your feet in someone else's idea of the ideal position. Those things destroy your ankles and knees over time. Heels can, too. Actually, most shoes pretty much suck. Shoes are bad for our bodies. Sometimes wearing heels, assuming they're no less comfy for you than any other shoe, is akin to smoking if the air you breathed were already filled with tar and nicotine. But that's assuming you don't feel obliged to wear heels, which gets me to #2...

2. The high heel, like all trappings of "feminity", enforces gender roles. Yes. Yes it does. I like to think I'm choosing the things I choose freely, but my choice combined with others' results in enforcing the idea that women wear silly shoes and men don't. Does the idea of a non-drag man wearing heels seem absurd to you but the idea of women doing it seem normal? Every person who chooses to do X contributes to what we think is normative behavior related to X.

3. Heels are all about attractiveness to men. This is a sexist statement in and of itself. It presumes that women don't contribute to notions of beauty by dressing to be seen as attractive by other women (like women don't have an objectifying eye? puhleez.), and it disregards the power of being an object of desire. Making the beauty myth only about men, in my mind, further emphasizes the idea of female as passive and man as active, a duality that isn't as consistent throughout the history of crazy beauty ideas as we seem to think it is.

As with anything else labeled "feminine" or "masculine", shoes are something of a loaded choice.

Comments

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

I wonder what I'm compensating for when I recently began to have a fetish for these? :)

I admit to being a little biased on this subject; I have always had a bent towards things "masculine" be it the short hair, men's cologne, pants, whatever. I sometimes fall prey to the thinking that feminine = weak.

However, every time I hear a guy say that a woman becomes infinitely more attractive when she puts on a pair of heels or something like that, I become enraged... what the hell is wrong with us sans heels?

I also agree that it's damn hard to run away in heels. In a perfect world, this wouldn't be a concern...

[keryx.livejournal.com]

a woman becomes infinitely more attractive when she puts on a pair of heels or something like that
The hell? I'm clearly living in some hole with a bunch of other freaks, as I've never heard a guy say such things. I like your semi-butch style; it just makes me feel really young, personally. Like 5.

Running is easier without shoes at all, in my opinion. On the other hand, heels can be a very effective weapon if you're, say, grabbed.

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I understand the 5 comment, but okay :)

And yes, there are lots of people out there even in the freak community who think that way about heels... sometimes ESPECIALLY in the freak community. :-/ You've been lucky, or I've been very unlucky? I dunno.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

It was a really abbreviated way of saying "like i'm 5 years old".

I think we just have different types of freaks around us. My freaks all seem to think women are uber-hot when dressed like you generally dress.

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

We need a freak transfusion! :)

[firecat]

Those kitty shoes are a scream! If I didn't need wide width shoes, I'd buy them.

My feminist problem with heels is that they are a required part of the uniform for certain professions (for women). If you don't wear them for whatever reason, you are less likely to get that kind of job or be promoted if you do get it. Even relatively low heels are uncomfortable for some of us, so that limits our professional choices.

Your liking heels doesn't particularly affect that, I suspect, so I don't think it's contributing to the sexism of the culture.

Regarding item 3, some feminist thought considers the ubiquitous association of certain adornments with sexual attractiveness to be damaging to ourselves (both men and women) and our culture. The problem isn't that heels are considered sexy. The problem is that heels are so inextricably linked to "sexy" that non-heel-wearing women are usually considered less sexy. This limits people's choices. But changing what one is attracted to is difficult and so I think of that philosophy more in the category of "be aware of it" rather than in the category of "you gotta stop doing what you're doing."

[keryx.livejournal.com]

I think my #2 is a legitimate problem, which you echoed re: professional careers. Am I enforcing that? No, but I'm contributing to not changing it in a way.

I still contend that #3 is only valid inasmuch as it's actually #2 - that is, if heels-wearing is something women are supposed/assumed to do. The sexy/not sexy thing ultimately seems to come down to us thinking (as a culture) that the "ideal" of feminine/masculine is what's sexy. So, it's more about the ideal than it is about the male gaze, is all I'm saying.

[firecat]

o, it's more about the ideal than it is about the male gaze, is all I'm saying.

I definitely agree. I think the problem is that there is only one notion of what's sexy, rather than many notions. (This is changing, but it's still somewhat true.) I don't think men alone are enforcing the "oneness" of it.

[miffyness.livejournal.com]

What about short people? If I wear flats, I feel like a little girl and my trousers drag on the floor. If I didn't have the option of making myself a couple of inches taller, I'd feel disempowered. I appreciate pretty shoes the way I appreciate clothes and handbags; as aesthetically attractive objects in their own right, without any particular regard for how other people might see them. I'm with Austen on the question of fashion: Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

As a fellow short person and heels wearer, I hear you. But there's also the question (with anything political) where what has no political statement attached to it for you is actually enforcing some bad situation (i.e. gender norms) when looked at in the total of, in this situation, everyone who wears heels making it look like that's a requirement of femalehood.

Ultimately, though, it's just something to think about.

[dr1819.livejournal.com]

Lots of men are attracted to heels. So much so that perhaps 30% of all men have worn heels on more than one occasion, and at least 5% of all men wear them on a regular basis. They're not about passivity! Rather, it's about power, beauty, form, function - the same reason men enjoy strapping themselves into the cockpit of an F-16, referred to by those throughout the Air Force as "The Sexy Jet."