Shoes speak louder than words
“Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world,” said Marilyn Monroe. How about starting with getting down the stairs?
Pass any female sales assistant in a high-end boutique or a posh department store such as Harrods or Selfridges and you will notice that they all look immaculate; shiny locks, polished nails, red pouches and perfectly lined eyes, but what you don’t see is hidden by the counter. The awful truth is that these poor women are in agony. They are resting their achy feet one at a time and counting the minutes until the society imposed torture is over, all the while suffering in silence and wearing the pain wonderfully with a dazzling Hollywood smile.
“We need to get you into some heels”
“God my feet ache,” moans Ava Moussavi. “Look,” she says and points toward her whitened toes, which indicate reduced blood circulation. “I need to sit for a while.” Originally from Iran, the 29-year-old now lives in London and works as a part-time sales assistant for British retail brand Reiss. The store’s management team prefers female staff to wear heels and flat shoes tend to only be acceptable at the end of the day once the busiest hours are over. “‘We need to get you into some heels’ was one of the first things the store manager said to me,” Moussavi says with a laugh. Having previously worked in Chanel, she is familiar with strict dress codes.
While retail jobs can already be physically demanding, adding a pair of high heels to that equation can present quite the challenge. Given that heels usually start to hurt after the first few hours, a full nine hour day of prancing around the shop floor with constant trips to the upstairs stock rooms resembles a somewhat in vogue nightmare.
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“I, too, struggle to wear high heels for a full day at work,” sighs Norwegian Kristine, also a sales assistant at Reiss. “It’s something you eventually have to get used to, which I, kind of, have. Comparing to when I first started at Reiss, I can now last longer in my heels before I have to change into lower shoes,” she explains.
High heels are seen as a synonym for traditional femininity. From childhood, we have been taught that the magical and glistening glass slipper was a part of Cinderella’s identity as a woman. In this particular fairy tale, the concept of beauty was embodied into a single dainty shoe, associating the high heel with elegance and grace. Even Cinderella’s stepsisters were desperate to fit into the tiny heels, further more exploring the frustration of trying to fit into the standards of beauty established by society.
Are Choo’s and Manolo’s then nothing but a symbol of social oppression, even if self-imposed? And how much freedom does a woman really have in her selection regarding the matter of choosing to wear or not wear high heels that is not influenced by the pressure forced upon by society?
Beauty is pain
One must suffer to be beautiful, or so say the French. Though high heels can make a woman appear more attractive in physical terms by elongating her legs and accentuating her hips and buttocks, they come with a rather horrifying list of unwanted and unsightly side effects. Heels can not only damage toe nails and worsen bunions but also cause severe back and hip pain and increase the risk of arthritis.
According to the Spine Health Institute, wearing high heels daily for a long period of time can even lead to changes in one’s anatomy. When wearing heels the chest is pushed forward which throws the hips and spine out of alignment with each other. Because heels increase the pressure on the balls of the feet, conditions such as metatarsalgia — in which the ball of the foot becomes painful and inflamed — are common for those who have spent the last decade pounding the pavements in their highest Christian Louboutin heels. Are the famous red soles truly worth it if they are simultaneously a synonym for misalignment and disfigurement?
“It is an old tradition to force women to wear heels at work,” thinks Kristine. “Especially at Reiss where we have to dress up and almost be something pretty to look at. I get that it might look better with heels when you are in a nice dress. But heels are so damaging for the feet and I feel it’s unfair to force this upon us. Wearing heels should be a choice and not a norm.”
From the infamous crinoline — an undergarment that physically restrained women — to the torment of the tight Victorian corset and to strict religious dressing, fashion has through out history been a way of controlling women mentally and altering them physically. In fact, if it weren’t for Coco Chanel and her revolutionary ideas women might still be constrained by the corset.
“I’m not afraid of heights. Have you seen my shoes?” uttered Miss Bradshaw whilst skipping effortlessly around New York wearing a pair of her beloved 800 dollar Manolo Blahnik heels.
Shoe power?
When we see powerful business women in sky high stilettos dominating the pages of Forbes we automatically equate heels to authority and wealth, which further promotes the connection between beautiful designer shoes and female empowerment. After all, even the devil wears Prada. Because high heels can also be a means of expressing power through sexuality, it is easy to understand why women are compelled to wear them in masculine and man dominated work fields such as law and finance. Essentially, heels can give a woman added leverage and even out the playing field.
“I’m not sure if I feel more powerful when wearing heels but I do kind of feel more noticed. Saying that I am 5´11 and with heels, I do become very tall,” Kristine says. “I get a different posture when wearing heels, which makes me carry myself better and with grace.”
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Perhaps it is precisely because high heels originated from a place of monarchy and influence is why they are so connected to the thought of power. The first accounts of people wearing heels date back to 3500 BC. Aristocratic men and women used to wear heels for ceremonial purposes, essentially distinguishing themselves from the lower social classes. In Ancient Venice, high heels were a status symbol that revealed wealth and social standing for women. Making physical movement somewhat impossible, they were a perfect message and direct signal to showcase that the elite social class was beyond the acts of any kind of manual labour.
But given the oppressive history, is the high heel nothing but yet another tool of control if the choice to wear them is no longer up to the woman herself? The debate was even discussed all the way in parliament after Nicola Thorp, a receptionist at PwC, was sent home from work without pay for refusing to wear four-inch heels. As a result, she started an online petition calling for making it illegal for a company to require women to wear high heels at work. The current law specifies that dress codes must be reasonable and equal to both men and women.
Essentially, employers should not discriminate against women and require them to have a certain type of appearance. Speaking to the Telegraph, Thorp said that “I hope that the Government will now bring an end to forced dress codes. This goes to the heart of gender discrimination.” Following Thorp’s petition, the parliament heard stories from women who had been required to dye their hair blonde, wear revealing outfits and to continuously apply makeup. Even Vogue weighed in on the workplace dress code debate, saying that “as it’s no longer the 1950s, it’s widely acknowledged a woman can look perfectly “smart” without any of that gubbins.”
The winds of change
Fortunately, it seems that the days of this sort of gender discrimination are slowly starting to be a concept of the past, the province of British Columbia recently passed a law that bans mandatory heels in the workplace.
“Strangely enough, I think that shoes are a communication tool between people,” said Christian Louboutin. Indeed, the high heel does not only have the power to construct a woman’s identity but also position her in relation to others. Given their oppressive yet simultaneously empowering history, high heels have established themselves as a somewhat complex and multidimensional object and way of portraying femininity. Knowing the excruciating pain a pair of beautiful heels can bring yet still choosing to wear them despite this, a woman is showing the world that she is a force to be reckoned with.
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It was Mr Louboutin who also said that it is necessary to realise that the world doesn’t only have one way of seeing things. By acknowledging and taking into account the history, culture and implications of wearing high heels, a woman is essentially making a certain kind of social statement and providing an answer to the question, who do I want to be? Indeed, since it takes a bucket load of will power to survive in heels, the very thing that defines the meaning behind them is the woman who is wearing them on her feet.
It is said that before judging someone you should walk a mile in their shoes in order to understand their experiences, challenges and thoughts. In this case, try doing so wearing four-inch heels. Preferably ones with red soles.
Written by Katja Vallinkoski
