![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shoes!
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.
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.
no subject
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.
no subject