In Defence Of Claire Dearing’s Shoes
When in a hostile work environment, dig your heels in.
Here’s something millennials aren’t supposed to say: as a child, I didn’t love Jurassic Park. I turned two just after the film came out, and like most kids my age, I saw it and both the sequels in primary school. Three was the only one I went to the cinema for, and by then things were past their prime—but even before that, I didn’t obsess over it. I never liked Spielberg’s family films as much as they seemed to expect: the stories felt designed for a nostalgic adult view of childhood, not for the kid I was, and I never related to the child characters. I liked the second Jurassic Park best because it felt more like horror, and because I preferred Jeff Goldblum’s character to Sam Neill’s. Last night I watched Jurassic World, the squeeboot not directed by Spielberg. I liked it more than the others, and I like its hero.
I’m not talking about Chris Pratt, who you’d assume from the posters is the main character. The man he plays is the worst thing about the film, a Marvel-type loveable dickhead who fails at being loveable. Bryce Dallas Howard plays his female boss, who spends the film being belittled, judged and sexually harassed by him because they once went on an awkward date. Claire Dearing is thirtysomething, childless and married to her work, and at the start, you’re not meant to like her. When a dangerous predator gets free, Claire declines to evacuate in case it damages her company’s PR. The body count doesn’t end up any higher than in previous films, but Claire learns the the same valuable lesson as Andy in The Devil Wears Prada: caring about your job or being good at it is a mortal sin if you’re a woman.
When the monster escapes, Pratt’s dinosaur-keeper is one of the people it tricks into letting it out, but he blames Clare both for the beast’s existence—something she didn’t arrange—and its escape, and the film never calls his bullshit out. As Alyssa Gonzalez notes, ‘the men in [it] treat Claire as though every single thing the escaping zoo animals wreck is specifically her fault, no matter how little sense this makes.’ As the plot progresses, she adapts to a more literally hostile work environment, running and fighting and saving Grady’s life more than once, eventually orchestrating the beast’s demise. Throughout the film, her disintegrating designer suit symbolises her redemption—and yet the couture heels he ridicules her for wearing stay on until the end. Paying tribute to Claire, Gonzalez writes:
Women in action films are regularly maligned and insulted for impractical shoes, with no example acknowledging that high heels became an iconic and enduring part of women’s fashion during a period in which fashion dictated that women borrow men’s styles — in this case, shoes meant for keeping a grip on stirrups during horseback riding — and men then mostly abandoned them to avoid seeming feminine. … But Claire … does all of her dinosaur wrangling, including leading a hungry Tyrannosaurus to its desired target, in heels.
Like Grady, reviewers rolled their eyes at Claire’s heels, which Howard reportedly insisted she keep on; ‘Given the level of vitriol,’ one author observed, ‘you would think Claire was sporting hotrod-red sky-high stilettos intead of a pair of simple beige pumps.’ In-story, I found the shoes justifiable—the character doesn’t have anything to change into, and heels would certainly be better than bare feet, while cutting them Romancing-the-Stone-style would only make them harder to walk in. (High shoes are made for flexed ankles, and don’t become plimsols simply by being amputated.) But Claire’s footwear also signifies what I find compelling about her: faced with Grady’s taunts, bullied by the men above and below her, Claire refuses to change and—to coin a phrase—digs her heels in.
It’s a smart piece of costuming, her three-piece suit: as femme as anything, but with several more layers of interest. The fact it’s white from head to toe recalls John Hammond in Jurassic Park, who gets off easily in comparison when things go haywire. What jumps out at me most is the pairing of her blazer with a wide belt, subtly suggestive of a safari suit—as if to imply Claire is handier than meets the eye, foreshadowing her defeat of the indominus rex. When Grady mocks her appearance, Claire responds by knotting her untucked shirt and rolling up her sleeves, and later it gets wrapped around her waist, with a more practical-looking tank top revealed underneath. Again, the symbolism is of toughness with a feminine veneer. Why layer up like that in a hot climate? Because you’re ready for anything.
While Claire’s outfit succumbs to wear and tear, her choice to adjust her silk blouse rather than discard it feels significant—and I could say the same about her shoes. This character is insistently attached to her clothes; while her makeup is light and her nails clipped short, her femme garments matter to her. It’s by no means unthinkable that employers past or present required her to wear heels, even while letting employees like Grady sneer at them, and that Claire has a chip on her shoulder, determined not to be held back: her shoes are a reminder of how she’s thrived in a hostile environment, and even when she’s running for her life, even with a tyrannosaurus on her tail, those fuckers are staying on. Claire’s whole story is about her ability to survive a no-win situation; I think that’s what her shoes are about, too.
