I've always considered myself a feminist but not an angry feminist. You won't ever see me running around on the street waving a sign that endorses or condemns anything.
I might be in agreement with angry sign wavers but that's not my scene because, frankly, most sign waving gatherings do not involve clean safe restrooms that are easily accessible. For the same reason, I don't camp.
I digressed. I am here to talk about the evils of high heels and why women should stop wearing them.
I sprained my ankle when I was 11 and thought wearing platform shoes was the ultimate social triumph. Dad had taken me to buy school shoes and the shoes we came home with ["platform" shoes 3 inches high] caused Mom to yell at Dad, something along the lines of "YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BUY PRACTICAL SHOES, NOT THOSE!"
Dad never took me shopping for school shoes again.
Mother knew the pain of impractical shoes. She had spent years working at Sears, forced to wear high heels and stand on her feet for hours at a time. Store policy.
A friend of mine posted a photo of some high heeled shoes on Facebook the other day -- Gucci stiletto pumps, leather, for $999. She thought they were beautiful. I shuddered in horror at the sight of them, and remembered the title of a book written years ago by Steve Martin called Cruel Shoes.
I've driven cars that didn't cost $999.
I do not understand why women are fascinated by Laboutin shoes or Jimmy Choo shoes, or any other shoes that cost a ton of money and are horribly uncomfortable. I am truly puzzled by the fascination most women have with high heeled designer shoes.
My view: Shoes are simply a way to cover up and protect the second ugliest part of one's body.
Full disclosure: I have feet like a hobbit. Short, wide, fat feet that no high heel will ever make beautiful. I don't care. Even when I was quite skinny, years ago, I avoided high heels.
Why?
High Heels Are Evil
Here's the sad truth about heels such as the ones at right: they are tools to keep women from being powerful and confident. How distracting is it that your feet hurt all the time because of your shoes - hello Ms. Grumpy? And... after you fall and break your ankle it's hard to be badass.
Those shoes are impossible to run in. Therefore, a woman wearing heels like that is not likely to get very far very fast. So if a bad man is chasing her, she's going to get caught.Those shoes increase a woman's dependence on a man. She has to hold onto him if walking on uneven ground, or muddy ground.
Heels are terrible for a woman's legs and feet. Check out 10 Side Effects of Wearing High Heels. According to the article, those darling pumps can cause: lower back pain, sore calves, foot pain, ankle sprains, awkward spinal curve, constricts blood vessels, constricts feet, weakens ligaments, knee pain, hyperextension in toes.
Further, high heels aren't practical. You can't run in them. You can't jump. Your feet will sink into muddy ground and you will likely fall if you are trying to navigate a yard or field.
Try picking up a crying child when you're wearing high heels. You AND the child are likely to be hurt in a the resulting fall.
The Beauty Myth of High Heels
We are taught as little girls that we look pretty when we wear mommy's heels. We try on Mommy's shoes and go traipsing around playing Grown Up Lady. We are taught that is how we are supposed to act.
Then we grow up. Most of us accept the idea that if we are wearing high heels we are more sexy, so we wear them despite the pain and discomfort and impracticality of them. We teach our daughters to wear them. We train them that high heels are the only appropriate shoes to wear to work, to weddings, on dates.
We teach our little girls that pain is part of being beautiful and sexy and we just have to put up with it.
That isn't a new idea, of course.
Pictured at left: my aunt Hazel, my grandmother Wilma Butler, her sister Dot Butler
My grandmother wore a corset every day of her life until she was in her mid 70's. She was raised with the idea that if a woman didn't have a small, cinched-in waist she looked awful. Nowadays, we laugh or look aghast at the idea of a corset as an essential wardrobe item, but women put up with that torture for more than a hundred years.
Some women in the 19th century would have ribs removed so they could have a tiny waist.
Women have long been taught that our own happiness comes second to looking sexy. We are taught that in order to be beautiful we must accept being uncomfortable. We must accept a man's idea of what a woman should wear. We have to dress to attract a man, or we won't be happy - so goes the conventional wisdom.
You don't see men wearing tight, uncomfortable clothes or shoes that cause them to totter when they walk. They don't smear paint all over their faces and grow out their fingernails and paint them. They don't spend hours styling their hair. They don't spend a fortune on pretty underwear.
Woman turn themselves inside out to be attractive.
I honestly hope and pray that one day, all women will look back at the era of women wearing ridiculous spiky heels and shake their heads in disbelief, as we do now when we consider corsets.
I hope we will teach our daughters to reject the idea that we have to modify our bodies and our hair in order to be beautiful.
The truth is, we are beautiful just as we are. We are powerful just as we are. We deserve to be loved just as we are. We just have to own our own beauty and power and stop conforming to what men want to see.
We have to change the definition of a beautiful woman and end mental and physical torture in the name of "beauty."
Only then will we have a level playing field.
