Due to ridiculous, self-imposed factors I ended up sitting around in our capital city the other night, with nothing to do except watch people passing by for an hour and a half. I saw many things, some heart warming, some disgusting. As a woman hobbled by me, wearing one high-heel, I began to notice more people doing the same and plenty that had abandoned heels altogether in favour of walking around in their bare feet.
This would not surprise someone that wore heels and had to put up with the lack of comfort on a regular basis. It made me question why these types of shoes are actually a normality on nights out when in reality, women do not take comfort in wearing them. In a way a physical argument could be made. In the same way that women have breasts, they have support. In parallel, the average height of a woman would be slightly less than a man and so heels go towards addressing this imbalance. While this seems rational, I do think that there is a very important difference. Where brassieres create comfort, heels do not. Where brassieres were reclaimed in the 60s as an empowering symbol of femininity, heels are a subtle inequality that women feel obliged to wear.
As I sat there in the city, watching heeled women passing by I was reminded of statuesque forms standing on pedestals. They are raised up by the demands of men and placed on pedestals to be adorned or scorned. It is also worth noting the etymology of this word "pedestals" as containing the Latin "foot", further highlighting how important foot-wear actually is in our perceptions. As usual with these posts, I am certainly simplifying things and making a small observation rather than analysing an entire social issue. I do however think that this subtle form of inequality is not due to the natural differences between men and women.
They seem to be a socially imposed one that are, from this perspective, fundamentally unfair.
-The English Student
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