Head over heels
More than once it's occurred to me: what is it with modern women getting so pathetic and overexcited about shoes? You know, Sarah Jessica Parker syndrome: screeching in faux-orgasmic delight about their must-have Manolos as if nothing else mattered. In a way, fair enough (girls are allowed their toys as well as boys). And I understand the true hidden allure of shoes for women - they accessorize one of the few parts of a woman's body which can be relied upon not to suddenly ruin her look (and her life) by gaining weight.
In this way, shoes are the devoted dogs of the fashion world - blind to their owner's physical faults, and for that alone they must be worshipped. Yet every so often there would be this tickle of feminist irritation at the way women seemed to use shoes as an excuse to regress to "fairer sex" status, only this time with a knowing ironic nod that (sometimes, somehow) made it worse.
Modern women are obsessive to high heels though they create vertigo, hobbling and bleeding feet. File photos |
Then something happened. At Christmas I opened a box of Jimmy Choos, painfully high (more than 13 centimeters), black, with a tiny strap. We stared at them as if the baby Jesus had appeared before us in shoe form.
Solemnly, I put them on, stood, wobbled, and fell over. Eventually I was hoisted up as if by a crane and, being tall anyway, almost crashed my head through the ceiling. Somewhat over-made-up for a December morning, and wearing my heels, I probably resembled a festive transvestite, but that didn't occur to me.
My only thoughts as I slid back into a chair were of power, glory, dominion.
These weren't just shoes, they were I'm Queen of the World shoes. And, I reasoned, there was nothing remotely anti-feminist about that.
I remembered all this when I saw the recent survey on women and heels. The vast majority of polled women loved wearing heels, even though a good half of them had either fallen off them or wrenched their ankles.
All of which rang a painful bell. I'd just spent a week in the Loire valley, and had mistakenly packed only the Jimmy Choos for eveningwear.
Heaven knows what the French made of the femme Anglaise who arrived at their restaurants hobbling, sweating, clutching on to her companions, as well as various window sills and waiting staff, for support, but one presumes it wasn't: "Comme c'est elegant!"
After a few nights of this, I became aggrieved. What sadist first dreamt up heels, and how come men got away with not wearing them? Who decided that women teetering about on 13cm stilts was sexy, while on a man it wasn't?
Well, OK - it was probably all of us. But still it is interesting - how, for so many men, shoes are just shoes, while for women, their choice of shoes can end up defining them.
For me, it's the Jimmy Choos warring against my other favorite footwear - a truly hideous pair of clumpy sexless boots that every man I meet begs to be allowed to incinerate, and I keep wearing as some kind of pointless feminist rebellion.
In this way, is my duality, the schizoid essence of myself, reflected in my footwear? Am I overdone tranny and, as one wag put it, "failed lesbian", and nothing in between? Or do I just need to buy some new boots?
Heels are here to stay because of, not despite, the increase in female power. Rather than turning us into flesh puppets who can be posed at will once mastered, heels give women an extra dimension.
One saw this on the face of Tamara Mellon, head of Jimmy Choo, when during her public separation from her husband she strode into court in the kind of killer heels that, worn right, probably prove more effective and intimidating than any barrister. You could also see it in the pictures of Victoria Beckham standing in her now-infamous YSL Tributes (15cm and counting), her perma-pout silently screaming: "Look at me. You would have given up, sold your soul for a pair of Birkenstocks by now, but I'll stand here, pretending that my toes aren't bleeding for as long as necessary."
The Guardian
(China Daily 06/15/2007 page18)
