The heels in question. With my dog photobombing. |
As someone who openly and loudly identifies as a feminist to
friends, acquaintances, and strangers alike, people often assume that I eschew
articles of traditional femininity, such as high-heeled shoes. However, I’ve
never been morally opposed to those sorts of things. I don’t believe that
wearing them is an inherently anti-feminist act, or that an inherently
anti-feminist act even exists.
Although I’m certainly not against the existence of heels, I
have always been vocal in my personal
opposition to wearing heels. Shoe shopping has never been fun for me, since I’ve
always found it incredibly difficult to find comfortable shoes. I’ve tried on
and discarded the entire stock of many a small, local shoe store, been reduced
to tears when unable to find a single pair of flats in large corporate stores,
and simply shrugged my shoulders and tried not to care when all of my friends
were wearing cute shoes and I was stuck in the only overpriced pair I could
find that I was able to tolerate.
Because of my own difficulty finding wearable shoes, I very
strongly believe that nobody should ever wear uncomfortable footwear. What you
put on your feet determines your mobility; an uncomfortable shoe can ruin an
entire day, and can hold you back from accomplishing what you want to do. This
is why I never even tried to put a pair of high heels on in a shoe store, and was
deeply suspicious of my friends’ insistence that not every heel is
uncomfortable.
This was all true until a few weeks ago, when a local shoe store
was going out of business and slashed its prices drastically. I went in; I saw
a cute pair of heels; I tried them on; they were comfortable. I was shocked.
There had literally never been a time in my life when I had just walked into a
store and liked the first pair of flats that I tried on, and I had certainly
never expected to have that sort of reaction to three-inch heels. But nope.
They were comfortable, quality, and bizarrely inexpensive, so I bought them.
Why did I even think to try them on, you ask? In May, my future
roommates and I went to my future dorm’s end-of-the-year formal, and we had a
professional photo taken together. Although I love the picture and all the
people in it, I was – amused? embarrassed? – by the noticeable height disparity
caused by my roommates’ heels and my flats.
When it comes to things like wearing heels, putting on make up,
and engaging in other activities established and nurtured by the patriarchy and
sexist beauty standards, I believe that it is important for women to do what
they feel comfortable. If a woman wants
to wear uncomfortable heels and spend an hour doing her make up every morning,
I think it’s crazy, but if it makes her feel happy and confident, I say go for
it; it’s a feminist act. Such actions would be anti-feminist, however, if a
woman does it not for her own enjoyment, but because she is simply knuckling
under to masculine expectations of the attractiveness and desirability of
women’s bodies.
It is for this reason that I have never worn heels. I would not
have enjoyed them, and only would have worn them for the benefit of others. Wearing
these heels that I bought is not an anti-feminist act, though, since I have
made a conscious decision that I wish to wear heels for my own purposes and
have found a pair that I feel comfortable and confident in. On the contrary, I
believe that they are feminist heels.
If nothing else, at least I’ll break 5’ while wearing them.
No comments:
Post a Comment