It's often said that all good things come to an end - chocolate bars, holidays, silent witness episodes - even, sometimes, relationships. So I have mixed feelings about the sudden and abrupt cessation brought about today, which marked the parting of ways between me and my high-heeled shoes.
Now, I've always had a soft spot for gorgeous and slightly quirky shoes, and though I'm prone to leaving them at people's houses or lending them out and forgetting to get them back, I've still got a mighty fine collection.Just thinking of my favourite pairs - the urban outfitters black shoe boots as worn by alexa chung, the soft brown leather brogues from minelli in paris, the green topshop cowboy ankle boots that I got on the cheap off ebay - makes my stomach clench in regret.
Already the little gollum-type voice is piping up in my head, saying 'but look, look at their shiny leather, the delicate heels, don't take them away from us!'But my mind is made up. I must admit I've been considering this for a while, and I've spent the last few days considering whether it would be appropriate to wear heels to my university interview. And what it kept coming back to is - why? why do we wear such things, these corsets for our feet, these beautifying torture implements?
I didn't find an answer. All I found were weak arguments for a boost in height (that I don't need, being 5'5") and men claiming it makes women 'sleeker' or more delicate'. There was also the usual bit about thinning the calves and so on, but what rational woman slows herself down and puts herself in danger simply to render a section of her anatomy marginally more slender?
I was also fascinated by the story of an unnamed transexual, who had found the move to women's shoes one of the hardest changes. It seems men are completely uninformed on just how painful this ridiculous habit of our is!
Now, this isn't to say that I see women on the tube or on the strand wearing heels and think less of them (though I do worry about the ones about to walk up embankment - oh the cobbles!). Part of it is subjective, and concerns how we see ourselves as women or more directly, how we see ourselves being viewed by others.
Heels have long been believed to be a way of showing higher status or perhaps a more formidable personality, but I feel this belief is inherently flawed. The marginal gain in height is rendered negligible as the posture shifts to a more deferential pose - bottom out, shoulders caved inwards, spine dangerously curved.
Anyway, what's so powerful about teetering dangerously on spindly heels? You are always undermined by the three-inch tapered block that holds you off the floor and makes you focus on keeping your balance instead of explaining a spreadsheet to the shareholders.
High-heeled shoes are practical only to a certain height, beyond which they become useless and dangerous. They were originally worn by horseriders so that the stirrup wouldn't slip as they rode. Now it is a status symbol, and has left its male roots to become practically the epicentre of stereotypical female culture - bring up footwear in any mixed group of friends and men roll their eyes and laugh, murmur 'girls and shoes.. ' and shake their heads.
I'm not blaming men for our preconceptions about the body, with reference to shoes. The fact that we suspect men want us to be thinner and taller with strangely conical calves really represents a success for the shoes' advertisers, and is in keeping with the belief, since feudal times, even before, that the female body is in some way in need of 'improvement'. We had the corset - now we have the shoes. Equally painful, equally restricting, equally pointless.
But even then, that didn't make me stop wearing them. Because I still felt that, as much as I hated the blasted things, they always give the impression that a certain care has been taken to formulate a look, which suggests that I am a woman with an agenda and I've got things on my mind, not just my feet. Also, they're beautiful (cringe).
Would it come as a surprise to you that the three women who convinced me to stop wearing heels were Hilary Clinton, French singer Mylene Farmer, and the wife of business chief Jean-Francois Cirelli?
They also managed to convince me in a completely new and shocking way - not with a stunning article or damning report, or even in a blog.
No, they simply used the power of stairs. Wanna see?
Hilary Clinton, Secretary of State
Mylene Farmer, French singer
the wife of business chief Jean-Francois Cirelli
I am embarrassed for these women, but also ashamed. Two must cling onto the nearest sturdy man for support, one simply scrapes herself together and limps off. By the way, the steps in all three photos are the ones to the Elysee Palace in Paris. These woman are significant, important, with status and money and reputations, yet they have allowed themselves to be made vulnerable by the very thing that we women cling to for 'support' and 'authority' - their shoes.
In the fight for equality in the political domain we are doing well, but our pursuit for aesthetic perfection gives the impression that we are 'flimsy' and 'delicate' and still in need of the supporting arm of a man to help us through. Hilary Clinton is thought by many to be a very strong, powerful woman, becoming Secretary of State and dealing with her husband's infidelities. However, that lonesome shoe left on the step makes me wonder how we can stride towards a more equal future in such ridiculously impractical footwear that renders us once again unbalanced toddlers?
So, to summarize, I have now decided that I favour unattractive sturdiness to ladylike flimsiness. It sort of reminds me of a section of shakespeare's sonnet number 130, which seems particularly apposite when in reference to these artificially heightened monstrosities, that promise to make a woman's walk elegant and airy:
"I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare"
