Jennifer Forsberg Meyer
High heels mystify me. Yes, I know why women wear them — I occasionally wear them myself. They elongate and flatter your legs, plus they accentuate the “womanliness” of your gait and posture. They’re sexy, in other words.
What I don’t understand, however, is why women think they need to wear them other than on a date, say, or for a fancy evening out. To put it more bluntly, do we really need them in the workplace? Especially these days, in the era of our raised consciousness about sexual harassment?
Even more basically, why do we women subject ourselves to the torture of heels at all? If you’ve never worn them, you can’t imagine how exquisitely painful they can be.
They force your weight onto the balls of your feet, frequently squishing (sometimes deforming) your toes along the way.
In a column on high heels I wrote in 2013, I shared how Sarah Jessica Parker, who played the stiletto-wearing Carrie Bradshaw on television’s trendsetting “Sex and the City,” described how her fashionable Manolo Blahniks had deformed her feet.
“I went to a foot doctor and he said, ‘Your foot does things it shouldn’t be able to do. That bone there … You’ve created that bone. It doesn’t belong there,” the actress told Net-a-porter.com.
Experts disagree on whether high heels directly cause bunions or simply contribute to them. Search online for “celebrities with bunions,” however, and you’ll find visual evidence that makes the connection hard to ignore.
But when have women let pain or even injury stand in the way of enhanced beauty? Almost never. (A side note to prove my point: Years ago, I scratched my cornea with a straight pin while attempting to separate eyelashes clumped together with mascara. Fortunately, though amazingly painful, the injury was just a scratch and it healed. Still, what could I possibly have been thinking? Obviously, not thinking.)
Our culture reveres high heels, sometimes to outrageous extremes. The glamorous Cannes Film Festival is one place where, arguably, heels make sense. Yet some female film professionals would prefer not to wear the uncomfortable shoes as they walk up and down the streets of Cannes, doing the business of filmmakers.
But wear them they must, according to official policy. British actress Emily Blunt was furious at 2015’s Cannes event after women in flat shoes — including the wife of a film director, attending his film — were turned away from premieres.
“Everyone should wear flats, to be honest,” Blunt told The Telegraph, though she herself wore mustard-colored stilettos on the red carpet. (Yes, it’s a contradiction. We’ve all been there.)
At the 2019 Cannes event it happened again, when a security guard tried to bar a flats-wearing Variety critic from entering a screening. (The guard relented when the reporter threatened to post a video depicting the encounter on Variety’s website.)
And so it goes. That’s why I was so delighted to see Kamala Harris, our new vice president, celebrated for her championing of classic Converse sneakers. She wore them regularly on the campaign trail, showing off her impressive collection of Chuck Taylor All-Stars.
I found that encouraging and it made me think back to the first time I ever wore a pair of modern athletic sneakers, decades ago. It was grand! My feet felt not just comfortable, but pampered — a new experience.
More important, my stride in those shoes was confident and ground-covering. I felt I could conquer the world in this footwear. Why, I thought at the time, would anyone ever wear anything but these on their feet?
Well, it’s complicated.
I was reminded of that during a different moment of the 2020 campaign, when Kamala Harris sat for an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash. I couldn’t help but notice that both of these smart, high-achieving professional women were wearing nearly identical tan-colored high-heel pumps.
At one time feminism eschewed heels, considering them a tool that oppressed women by making them vulnerable sex objects. (Anyone who’s ever tried to run in heels knows the term vulnerable is not an exaggeration.)
Now, though, modern feminism celebrates a woman’s right to wear froufrou footwear and whatever else she darn well pleases. The question for me is, why do heels “please” women so?
“At the end of the day, all assets count, right?” designer Gabriela Hearst recently told the Washington Post, adding, “Beauty is a tool to attract.”
True enough. And as many who routinely wear high heels have noted, the attractiveness of the shoes can make a woman feel powerful.
“There’s just something about a heel — especially for women in a man’s world — that makes me feel stronger,” actress Kristin Chenoweth told CBS’s Erin Moriarty in a piece on the history of high heels.
But is that where we women want our strength coming from? On a red carpet, maybe. But at work? In the office? Or would it be better for it to come from the power of our great ideas and our outstanding contributions?
Maybe someday women will be able to wear comfortable shoes wherever they want and still be taken as seriously as they deserve. Is the vice president’s occasional sneaker wearing a tiny step in that direction?
I hope so.
Jennifer Forsberg Meyer is a columnist with the Mountain Democrat. Leave a comment for her online, or for a reply reach her at [email protected].
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