by Lizzie PatonShoes are controversial. For some they are simply necessities of practicality and convenience but for others, particularly women, they can be used as a means of projecting an idealised identity. For an object that gets trodden into the dust every day, these pieces of clothing are awarded unusual significance. They function as objects of deified beauty, worthy of worship and synonymous with elegance, high glamour and full-throttle sex appeal. They have the power to elevate us to the personality we want to be.
Frivolous and fanciful notions perhaps, but try telling that to Cinderella or the Old Woman who lived in a shoe: these ladies’ domestic and marital destinies were shaped by their choices of footwear. The modern age fairytale ‘Sex and the City’ warned us of the financial perils of an unchecked ‘substance abuse problem’ as showcased by Carrie Bradshaw and her $40,000 debt as a result of her ‘needs’. An addiction to designer shoes can result in a seriously undignified fall from grace, made all the more painful by the dizzying heights experienced when it comes from the seductive edge of a Manolo Blahnik jewel encrusted four-inch stiletto.
Dangerous female obsession with shoes is not just the stuff of myth. Why for the sake of a few paltry scraps of leather would a girl throw herself deep into debt, as many undoubtedly have? Simply because they have a limitless potentiality as an expressive force. Yves Saint Laurent told Coco Chanel that “one look at the shoes told him all he needed to know about a woman”.
Many agree with him that they give a more accurate reflection than clothes. For whilst they share clothing’s ebbs and flows of seasons and indeed centuries, a beautiful boot or ballet pump is not subjected to all of the same constraints – it has no tubby thighs to flatter, no bingo wings to conceal. Praise be to the simple transmutability of a shoe, allowing you to be truly ‘fashionable’. Fashion is knowing yourself, what you live for and what works for you. You can embrace this all with your footwear, allowing it to do the talking as well as the walking with loud colours and bold designs or understated elegance and simplicity of shape.
For me however, the joy of these items of pedal creativity is we can put on and take off varying personalities with the same ease and regularity as we do the shoes themselves. Think about the serious sex appeal and allure of a stiletto; they change the way you move, causing the wearer to walk in a more sensuous way. The body is also accentuated; heels thrust the hips and breasts forward, rounding off the derriere, making it seemingly more appealing. No wonder the right shoe can be seen as so erotic and empowering. All those teasing curves and tantalizing arches, preoccupied with revealing and concealing the delicacy of the female foot over her male counterpart, culminating in the titillating possibility of every shoe fetishist’s fantasy: toe cleavage.
According to thousands of women, the high heel is the ultimate weapon of sexual liberation, the pleasure afforded by them far outweighing the occasional pains of those pesky blisters and toe cramps. Shoes will always be noticed by members of sexes, however fleetingly, thus their influence should never be underestimated. Just think about the horror of socks and sandals, the prospect of which certainly leaves me quaking in my (caramel leather perfect for winter) boots.
Of course, I am aware that there are a fair few who disagree with me on the positive boosts and influence the shoe can bring to your life. I’ve heard lamentations that sex in high heels is the biggest of disappointments for men. Rather than a seductive prowl across satin sheets in skimpy attire, more often that not it involves tears to the duvet in the dark and an accidental prod of a four inch heel into the upper thigh region. One scarred sufferer described the “drunken stumbling of the previously revered resembling that of a physically challenged hamster.” How disappointing.
Gloria Steinem, the iconic feminist of the 1960s used the high heel as the embodiment of repression of women, famously stating, “If the shoe doesn’t fit, must we change the foot?” It is hard to reconcile the fabulous image of a gilded ‘Choo’ with the suggestion that shoes can in fact equally be wielded as tools of social oppression. The traditional Chinese practice of foot-binding, as well as the 3000 pair collection of Imelda Marcos, the former First Lady of the Philippines, serve as stark reminders that footwear can also reflect serious issues. In these cases, the pattern of the print and length of the heel are unimportant when placed in the context of human suffering. The 21st century has brought many topics of debate to the forefront of fashion, be they labour rights for the third world or anti-fur campaigns. I can only hope that shoes have skipped away from the darker and disreputable elements of their past towards a more optimistic and light-hearted future. It is time to ask not what you can do for your shoe, but what your shoe can do for you…
