And the sad thing is that the super-flat shoes that are in style this summer (those little sandals with no cushioning and no support) are no better.  Neither are the slim, support-free sneakers currently stylish for women to wear (keds, toms, converse)  I just started a new job that requires me to be on my feet most of the day.  I had to go out and buy ugly quasi-orthopedic shoes to wear until the weather cools off, damn how it looks.  The dudes on my job?  They just wear whatever.  Stylish men’s shoes are perfectly acceptable for practical on-your-feet-all-day wear.

Why is it so hard to relegate high heels to special occasions, and view flats as the only appropriate everyday wear? 

Maybe because they make women appear taller?  It’s hard to get that effect any other way, and superior height has measurable benefits in the working world—for men, at any rate.  Wonder whether there are any studies that look at the relationship between average earnings and women’s height, real or enhanced.

That said, I agree with you that heels are torturous.  Patriarchal leg irons, bah.

I’m a man who thinks women in high heels—even at dressy functions—look ridiculous.  But I know many men who think they’re the sexiest things on Earth.  The pressure is coming from some men, but I think it’s mostly from women trying to outdo other women.  My tattooed companion thinks stripper shoes are awesome, while I like a hotrod girl in Converse All-Stars without a high heel.  Yes, those exist.  They’re knock-offs, but they’re out there.

There’s a one-upwomanship thing that goes on with a lot of inexplicable (your definition will vary) women’s fashion things.  You trim your eyebrows? She makes them so thin she has to draw them on.  You diet a lot? She doesn’t eat on days with U’s or S’s in them.  You shave it? She waxes it, while another she had laser.  You tan? She’s got John Boehner’s people on speed-dial.  High heels are nothing compared to some of that.

I also wonder if some women get off on being taller.  In jobs where someone is in a power relationship with men, most of whom are taller, I imagine some psychology and social status thing enters the picture on days when different heels are worn.

Pook - but shorter men don’t wear high heeled shoes.  And taller women do.

I don’t spend all day on my feet, but I do have two desk jobs that I work every week day back to back, so I have the pleasure of wearing heels from 7:30 am to 10:30 pm most days.  Last night my husband called me and asked me to stop at the grocery store on the way home and I had to tell him that I couldn’t do it.  The idea of walking around the grocery store in my heels after working in them for 15 hours was just too much.

Maybe if I were a better feminist I could buck the social expectation to wear heels, but I feel that if I am ever going to advance in my career enough that I don’t need the additional job, it is to my advantage to dress in a way that will be percieved as professional, and I didn’t write the rules of what that looks like in our culture.

Also 3letterjon - you have no IDEA.  Seriously, just don’t.  Please.

#3, no one cares what gives you a boner.  Jesus.

Opoponax, it’s true what you say about shorter men and taller women—I don’t have a good explanation.  Though isn’t there a flourishing market for invisible footlifts in men’s footwear?  It’s too bad we can’t just all compete with tall hats instead. Or giant wigs! Much better for the feet!

Back in my academic days, another woman told me I should wear platform shoes like she does for the height.  I thought about it, but I’m 5’2” for cripes sake.  Even a 2” heel only makes me 5’4”, which is still short compared to men.  I’ve never figured out how to walk in women’s shoes anyway, so I said screw it (also to academia, but not for shoe reasons) and managed to stay gainfully employed in shoes I can walk a mile in (thank you Merrell and thank you IT).

I’m tall (5’10”) and I love heels.  Love them.  I figure that there’s nothing I can do to make me shorter, and so what’s a couple more inches.  I embrace the height.  Also, I’m in physics and a woman—sometimes it is fun to be taller than some of the more obnoxious guys in the room.  They tend to take it personally.

But, that doesn’t mean I wear them every day.  In my job, I have the option to wear them or not, as the mood strikes.  So long as I’m relatively neat and put together when I’m teaching, nobody really cares what I have on, and I can guarantee that nobody cares what is on my feet.  I know women who work office jobs and they don’t get that option.  Even in winter, when it’s cold and there’s a foot of snow on the ground, I know people who don’t have the option for practical shoes and MUST WEAR HEELS in order to look “professional.”  It’s completely ridiculous that so many women don’t have that option.

“It’s a question that I’m kind of surprised isn’t dwelt upon more by feminist writers, honestly.”

Probably because everyone does it and it is totally! everyone’s! individual! decision! and they are totally! doing it! because they want to!.  Every time this comes up on the more popular sites, you seem to get a bunch of women absolutely doubling down on the idea that this is their choice, they’re totally not caving to societal expectations or dudely demands or unwritten dress codes at work, this just makes them feel sexy/better/more in charge, and how dare you call them collaborators just for wearing their favorite shoes.  Presumably because wearing high heels all the time, unlike make-up and shaving, actually hurts a lot and comes with tangible medical consequences, but a lot of women still can’t (or feel like they can’t) stop doing it without suffering real consequences.  So you get a ton of flak while being unlikely to change many people’s minds.

Oh, and then you get to listen to dudes talking about their penises’ opinions on the matter.

The whole corporate dress code (wool suits in summer? And suit pants anytime just suck) makes little rational sense.  Like most things, women get the worst of it but the whole thing seems to be one foolish thing after another.

Opoponax: <quote>And the sad thing is that the super-flat shoes that are in style this summer (those little sandals with no cushioning and no support) are no better.  Neither are the slim, support-free sneakers currently stylish for women to wear (keds, toms, converse) </quote>

In case you haven’t noticed, sandals, non-cushy flip-flops, and All-Stars are being worn by both sexes - and all year long.  You can’t throw a hiking boot on my college campus without pegging some student with crappy footwear.  (Disclaimer - you’ll have to take my chucks off my cold, dead feet.  I find them as comfy as Doc Martens.  So There.)

Non-cushy shoes are actually better for your feet (and especially your back) than cushy shoes, as long as you’re not forcing your feet into unnatural shapes. We’re meant to be barefoot, after all, but our manufactured environment and population densities make that a dangerous (and socially unacceptable) option.

#3 - Yes, why on earth would women do this to themselves, and to eachother?  It is a mystery, just like the writhing escher-esque cacaphony between their legs. Luckily you and I, wise paragons of manhood, can stand to the side and click our tongues sympathetically at the poor misguided dears, engaging in such futile and perplexing displays of “one upsmanship.”

...Seriously, was that a joke or something?

Emmett,

Sorry for putting it out there that I don’t find high heels sexy.  Was that oppressive somehow?  That they give my girlfriend a she-boner may have been TMI, but I figure that’s worth sharing from a “Jesus Fucking Christ on a Pogo Stick, isn’t this a subject where stating some anecdotes may or may not be worthwhile?” kind of way.  Apologies to the Unicyclists.

Opoponax,

There is some correlation between height and income for men.  It’s not completely consistent, though there was this proposal: http://www.bnet.com/blog/harvard/the-tongue-in-cheek-case-for-taxing-tall-people-more/2566

You also got me thinking about Tom Cruise, though that’s not exactly an everyday example.

How do “professional” dress standards get to be so strict about everything else that is considered even vaguely sexy, but heels are mandatory? Ok, sky high heels are too much, but flats are out too. I have to go out of the way to hide my huge boobs, but I’m doomed to wear shoes that are tricky to walk in and hurt? I totally resent being forced to be sexy in the one way that I would never choose for myself at work.

And I understand that most flats don’t provide good support or whatever, but for me that’s not even in the same ballpark as the pain heels are for me. And at least I can go down stairs without worrying about busting my ass.

Gavel Down,

Yeah, it’s a big fucking joke.  Giggling-through-the-vomit funny.  Sorry, but even with the patriarchy still existing, men are too busy doing other stuff to actually make women do ALL of that crap.  Women may be half of the population and not equal in actual power to men, but they still manage to accomplish at least 35% of the bullshit in this country.

The different professional dress requirements at most jobs for men and women are so different, and so much more expensive and difficult for women to comply with, that it’s insane they haven’t gotten farther in equal protection suits in the courts.  It’s really blatant gender discrimination, and (at least in the decision I reads) the ruling judges really have to fudge or even shamelessly lie in order to find differently.  I blame the lack of female judges.

I flatly refuse to wear uncomfortable shoes for anything other than occasions where I’m going to walk more than a hundred metres. (Which means that since I do a lot of walking, I own many pairs of comfortable shoes.)

I do have some heels that are comfortable to walk in, but I mostly wear flats. Luckily I am not in a position where my profession requires me to hurt my feet to get ahead.

Dammit my comments keep getting eaten!

Bingo Amanda!

The problem isn’t that high heels exist and silly footwear is silly.

The problem is that impractical, ridiculous, and dangerous footwear is required for women and appropriate footwear is considered inappropriate.

I agree with ElleDee above, as someone who also struggles to control cleavage. 

I’m rather short, but I won’t wear shoes that I can’t walk in.  That means business boring but so what?  If I want to be taller, I’ll stand on my tippy toes - and have done so to get a better command of a podium.  Still better than wearing heels all day.

What puzzles me is how the altered gait that heels cause translates to social empowerment.  Some women manage to stride purposefully in heels, it’s true, but a fair number (including myself) wobble around like toddlers learning to walk. How can something so infantilizing also be empowering?

Anyhow, I’m trying to 2nd what preying mantis wrote. Women don’t like to be told that they’ve internalized patriarchal ideals, even if it’s obvious (gee, how convenient that your totally personal aesthetic is the exact personal aesthetic of your culture. It’s teh amazing!!!)

That said, I think that the best way to combat non-stop high-heel wearing is to understand that there is a cult of beauty in this country, but there is also a cult of health. A lot of beauty is wrapped in the terminology of health (look at what happens anytime someone with a double-digit dress size dares feel comfortable in their skin). So if we’re going to make any headway at all on the issue of high heels, we need to stop talking to women like they’ve been suckered into a mug’s game and instead appeal to their “cult of health” over the cult of beauty. Wearing high-heels nonstop may make you feel totally empowerful, but over time the damage it’s going to do to your legs is going to make it harder to stay fit (and ergo, thin).

One other point—I’ve noticed that the high-heels-all-the-time philosophy is something I’ve only seen in urban areas, where image is everything and you have to be 100% on all the time. In the suburbs and rural areas, where women have different roles and motivations, practicality becomes more important than fashion (you’re not going to see the orthodontist’s assistant in the exurb office park, or the soccer mom trying to grab groceries before picking the kids up from school wearing 6-inch spikes, that’s for damn sure).  I haven’t lived in really oppressive gender-policed areas (well, other than Jersey City) so it may be that in suburban Bible Belt areas women are expected to wear high heels because anything less gets you branded a dyke. I can only speak to my experience.

And the sad thing is that the super-flat shoes that are in style this summer (those little sandals with no cushioning and no support) are no better.

Well, they’re better—-you can still walk after standing in them for a few hours—-but they’re still not good enough.  And I have occasional arch pain in my right foot to show for it.

Having had to buy various shoes for young men in my life, I do have to say that the shoes that guys wear for business dress are often far more expensive than they shoes I buy for myself.  There is more to them, they are better made, and they last longer, but they are quite expensive even at the most basic level.

When my MIL stopped working and retired from her bank manager job, she had to have physical therapy to stretch her tendons so she could walk comfortably barefoot and in non-heel shoes.  The woman had fucking barbie feet from 20 years in heels.  Never.  Just Fucking Never.

“Dammit my comments keep getting eaten!”
—Comment #21: Mighty Ponygirl on 08/26 at 10:18 AM

There must be some Internet Law that always allows comments like this to get through but not other comments from the same person.

One other point—I’ve noticed that the high-heels-all-the-time philosophy is something I’ve only seen in urban areas, where image is everything and you have to be 100% on all the time.

I guess you weren’t around a few years ago when I saw women jumping in and out of SUVs at the school yard with tracksuits hemmed for 4” spike heels.  TRACKSUITS!!!!!!

3letterjon, the phenomenon of women policing women to force them to meet patriarchal standards is certainly real, but it exists because men have those standards.

Of course, men don’t actually care what women wear on their feet. Of course not. Thinking about women’s fashion is gay. It’s just that women in flat shoes are fugly and probably dress that way because they’re lesbians.

This actually occurs over and over. Men say they don’t care how women dress—makeup, shoes, what have you—and it’s true that men work very, very hard to be unaware of the details. They are, however, aware of the *effect*. You personally might find flat shoed women hotter, but apparently most men don’t agree. So men may say, oh, they totally don’t care if women wear high heels or not, but show them two women and one’s wearing high heels, and they’ll say the high heeled one is more attractive. And professional. And they’ll hire and fire on that basis. And vote on that basis. And throw the party’s support to one woman or another on that basis.

Women enforce patriarchal standards on other women for two reasons: one is that if the other woman is their child, their sister or their friend, meeting patriarchal standards is the way they perceive to get ahead in the world, so they force those standards on the girls and women they love; the second reason is the reason it is so hard to get the right to spank kids out of the classroom. “I put up with that shit, and if I had to, you have to too!” The existence of women who get ahead without meeting patriarchal standards is offensive to women who got ahead by meeting them, because it implies that they didn’t *have* to destroy their bodies to be successful, so they’re going to try to tear the other woman down because goddamnit, if I have to wear painful shoes so does she! Men do the same thing in many other contexts (in fact I’d argue that the male policing of patriarchal standards on men is *much* harsher, more violent, and more common than the female policing of patriarchal standards on women. Women don’t beat each other to death for not being feminine enough.)

Flats, heels, whatever: someone says all shoes are bad for feet.

http://nymag.com/health/features/46213/

3letterjon, before you make this a men vs. women thing, here’s a link to a piece I wrote on a similar topic:

In a patriarchy, women take on the scut work.  We do housework so men’s time is freed up to do more “soul-affirming” work.  We’re more likely to do assistant work so men can do the work that gets them all the credit.  And when it comes to sex, women are tasked with the job of pushing prudery.  Men have the privilege of not having to worry about these sorts of things to nearly the same degree.

Women are stuck in a double bind, tasked with obeying and enforcing beauty standards so that men don’t have to bother themselves.  On the contrary, men have the privilege of enjoying the hard work women put into this while getting to feel superior to women because they’re not “frivolous” like women.  But if women get together and start rejecting certain standards, you’ll often find that men who fronted like they’re above it all freak the fuck out. 

See: the battle over pubic hair.  Women haven’t fully embraced our duty to punish each other for not getting Brazilian waxes, so that men can pretend not to care about that stupid girl shit.  So when Sasha Grey goes on “Entourage” sporting a full bush, guess who freaked the fuck out?  Men.

Seconded #26. Men’s dress shoes are expensive, but they’re also incredibly durable compared to corresponding women’s shoes. And you only need two pairs, really: brown and black.

I think it’s not dealt with more because it’s so ubiquitous that even the feminist writers who have realized the problem have just given up. And I mean the ubiquity either makes women double down on it being ‘their choice’, as preying mantis says, or just shrug and say they have to do it to fit in/look professional/gain male approval. My office isn’t that strict, and I wear flats most days, but I’m downtown and see hundreds of women walking around in stilettos daily. I can’t imagine what their feet must feel like. Not to mention that walking on polished stone/marble with smooth soles seems dangerous, and then there are all the grills on city sidewalks that ruin any leather heel. I walk to work, and when I see a woman walking in stilettos she has to avoid grills and be careful - yet I don’t think men even notice, even the ones walking with these women.  Are they so oblivious?

Sometimes I wish all men were required to wear high heels for a day just so they’d have some idea of what it’s like. I hope someday we’ll look back on the regular wearing of high heels as something as odd as wearing corsets everyday.

So if we’re going to make any headway at all on the issue of high heels, we need to stop talking to women like they’ve been suckered into a mug’s game and instead appeal to their “cult of health” over the cult of beauty.

God knows that’s why I don’t wear high heels basically ever.  But I also have a lot of tattoos, so people don’t expect me to fit certain norms.

Alara,

If the buck can’t stop with you*, then it can’t be stopped.  You’re either completely powerless, or you have some responsibility for your choices.  Own up to it, or you’re nothing more than what the patriarchy wants you to be.

*personal and universal

3letter—I think the problem was a network-related one on my end. No signing off of a VPN mid-comment writing for me anymore! :D

The pubic hair battle makes me so sad. I’m not really in a position where it’s going to effect me, but if I ever had a man start making comments about my bush, I would go to town. After all, the guys insisting that a woman have a vulva like an 11-year-old (fucking pedophiles) aren’t exactly the sort eager to get down and munch. So fuck them sideways with a backhoe.

3letterjon, you are teh awesomesauce! I’m sharing that with everyone I know. Ever since I started wearing barefoot shoes (Terra Plana Dylans at work and Vibrams for running),  I haven’t had aching feet once (okay, a blister now and then). I also used to twist my ankle occasionally—hasn’t happened in the year since I switched.

Flats, heels, whatever: someone says all shoes are bad for feet.

Wiggling around is kind of stupid and defensive on this, don’t you think?  Flat shoes aren’t great for your feet, but compared to high heels, they’re massages and good nutrition.  I literally have worn high heels for a mere four hours and was in so much pain I had to walk to my car barefoot.  I’ve never had that problem in flat shoes.  Ever.  Women literally wear away the padding on the front of their feet.

Amanda,

As a frivolous man with a bald pubis, I hear you.

And 3letter comes out with it, finally: he blamed women in order to make it clear that this isn’t really a problem except that women are so frivolous and dumb.  Which is nature, I guess.  Jesus.

This must be a regional thing.  Out here in the granola crunchy Northwest, hardly anyone wears heels except to get dressed up and go out, and even at the snazziest of venues aprox 50% of the women will be wearing flats or small wedges, and nobody cares.  I’m only 5"1’ but no-one has ever suggested that I should wear heels to look taller, or more professional, or anything like that. 

I guess I’ll just have to be happy that I live in a feminist appropriate-footwear paradise the next time I fly into Miami and suddenly feel like a bum because my shoes are just comfortable and don’t have even a single rhinestone on them.

Sometimes I wish all men were required to wear high heels for a day just so they’d have some idea of what it’s like.

Years ago, my husband’s company threw a lavish party for their 10th anniversary.  The founders made it known that they wanted Creative Black Tie.

So my husband went in drag.  He was a complete sensation with the higher ups, but he was even more popular with the ladies.  Women would sit him down and bring him drinks and such because they KNEW how hard it was to walk around all evening in 4” heels (which made him 6’5”).

You wear those shoes like a dove.

(meaning: high heels + enlarged boobs = walking like a pigeon)

I do think, in my experience, women have started to relent on the enforcing heels front.  Like I said, I basically never wear them, but I’m a firm devotee of the cult of cute shoes.  But women compliment my shoes all the time!  Of course, I hang out with feminists, so I don’t have to worry about it.  Feminist men, as well.  So I get no grief whatsoever.  But I’m a writer; we’re expected to look comfortable.

When I’ve worked in environments where women give up their patriarchal duty to enforce beauty standards so men don’t have to, I’ve found men step right up, at least straight men.  I had a boss who teased me for not wearing lipstick, for instance.  I’m sure he would have preferred it if my female colleagues had done that hard work so he could pretend not to notice, but other women tend to write me off as incorrigible if they disapprove of me, or, more commonly, they think I’m fine the way I am for whatever reason.  Because of this, I’ve found the whole “men don’t police women” thing to be a lie.  Men don’t police women….unless women fall down on the job.  Most of the criticism I’ve received in my life for minor failures to live up to patriarchal beauty standards have been from men.

My boy prefers the heels look, but he knows that I don’t like heels and while I wear them on special occasions, he’s said he’s unable to enjoy the effect fully since he knows I don’t like them and he’d prefer I be comfortable. (Mostly I wear either sneakers or combat boots outside and bare feet around the house.) So I wear heels to SUPER fancy stuff (and often for about ten minutes before I kick them off and wander around barefoot again) OR to events (weddings, funerals) I wear a pair of sneaker Mary Janes from Skechers. Works out well.

Pixel, you should tell him that *no* women are comfortable in them.  It’s not a personal failing of yours that you don’t like them, unless honesty is a personal failing.

The purpose of high heels is exactly the same as the purpose of footbinding.  The message they send (which has precious little to do with sex) is that the man who owns this woman is rich—so rich that he can afford a decorative woman incapable of doing practical work like plowing a field.  Prestige is derived from conspicuous consumption, and women in fancy dress are prime objects for consipicuous consumption.

A few years ago, my boyfriend’s daughter was starting her nursing clinicals, so we gave her a pair of Dansko’s, which were recommended by other nurses. While we were getting them, I decided to try a pair myself, and my whole idea about shoes changed. I had no idea that shoes could actually be that comfortable. Really. No idea.

They were pricey initially, but I have worn the hell out of them for years, and they’ve been pretty indestructible. I’m finally thinking it’s time for another pair.

If I ever have to go back to wearing heels on a regular basis, I’ll… No. I just say no.

Conversation about uncomfortable shoes always makes me think of Primo Levi’s “Survival in Auschwitz” and I suppose when you get down to it, the wooden shoes and the high heels are both about control.

Pook - but shorter men don’t wear high heeled shoes.  And taller women do.

Shorter men put lifts in their shoes to make themselves look taller without being accused of being vain like a woman.

I’m extremely spoiled by working in Southern California in an entertainment office:  I get to wear jeans and sneakers to work every day.  When I wore my new Reebok Easytone shoes, the only thing my (female) boss asked was how comfortable they were.

Well, most of what I wanted to say has been said, but idio, those all-stars will fuck your feet b/c they don’t support your arches.  Been there, done that.  Buy them 1/2 a size bigger and add inserts.

Just to add to Alara and Amanda, when you have women defending the patriarchy and insisting that they only conform to patriarchal standards b/c they like them, it’s b/c they have internalized the patriarchy.

It’s the culture.  They don’t have to think about it.  They just know they feel better when they conform.

Not that it’s in the same class at all, but the women who mutilate genitals don’t say they do it to serve the patriarchy.  They do it for their daughters benefit.  To make life better for them.  So they can be good girls and get good husbands.

It’s fucking mutilation (again on a different order of magnitude from heels) but women enforce it and don’t actively think about the fact they are doing it for men b/c it’s so internalized by growing up in that culture.  They don’t have to think.

Going back to shoes…women can buy them and express themselves with them.  It’s just that the ones that say “professional” or “sexy” or “not a lesbian” or otherwise bring benefits are shoes that aren’t designed to work as shoes.  Your choices of expression are limited to ones that will fuck up your feet over the long term unless you special-order ugly orthopedic shoes.  Why are the choices limited?  B/c our society demands it.

Men’s shoes are designed to work as footwear.  They are durable and with shining and re-soling can last for decades.  So even while they have choices in footwear, those choices work.  Their shoes don’t cause long-term damage.  Again, b/c our society demands it.

I lived in Danske European walking shoes with my high-end furniture sales job where I walked about 15 miles a day. No way would I cripple myself with high heels and I refused to listen to the complaints of the women who did. My Danskes are adorable with pant suits, incredibly well made, and I always looked professional and, apparently, stylish enough to be quite successful. Clearly, my moods were better because I wasn’t in agony most of the day. Oh, and I’m short (not quite 5’3”) and that is OK. I really don’t get this shoe fetish thing.

I feel vulnerable in high heels. I can’t run in them if I had to save my life, I can barely walk in them. I feel like an easy target. Keep women crippled and slow, sounds like the dream-society for rapists.

My father went apeshit on me when I announced in college that I would not ever wear heels.  My mother, who had suffered messive tendon problems all her life as a result of her high heel wearing, aproved my decision.  Dad, undaunted by my mother’s lifetime of pain, threatened that I would forever look ugly and trollish and short and squat and would never get a date.  He stormed, he begged, he pleaded.  It was weird, man.

Amanda @45, right on. Early in my career, it was the men (regional mgr) and not the women (branch mgr) who pointedly grilled me about my makeup choices. Apparently, the doods thought my 80s style eyeliner was harmful for business.  Which, of course, is a ridiculous notion by any objective measure. But it marked me as uncompliant, even threatening, and therefore had to be put down.

After wearing heels for years, I job-switched to warehouse work, where heels on concrete floors would kill you, and have since delighted myself finding super cute and comfy flats. As to 3letterjon, all the girls think my shoe collection is, wait for it, super cute. Because women are not stupid and can appreciate good design in a comfortable package.

very time this comes up on the more popular sites, you seem to get a bunch of women absolutely doubling down on the idea that this is their choice, they’re totally not caving to societal expectations or dudely demands or unwritten dress codes at work, this just makes them feel sexy/better/more in charge, and how dare you call them collaborators just for wearing their favorite shoes.

It’s like they’re not aware that shoe manufacturers exist.

I feel like feminist discussions about uncomfortable footwear fall into the same patterns that we tend to get into with other body and appearance issues like shaving and dieting.  Most feminist women can recognize that the pressure to be thin/hairless/high-heeled comes from the patriarchy and we object to it on principle, but every woman has her limits as far as how much personal sacrifice she is willing to make out there in the real world in order to make a principled stand against those unfair pressures. 

I find that my life is more pleasant when I make certain compromises with the patriarchy and I think my fellow feminists should be understanding about that.  Yes, I diet because being a size 12 instead of a size 18 makes my life easier in a number of ways.  I will talk to anybody who will listen about body acceptance and health at every size, but up until I manage to change the world (I still hold out hope that I can do it) I have to live in the world as it is, and I don’t think that makes me a traitor to my fellow fat people.  I also shave my legs and wear reasonably high heels for similar reasons.  I wish women could refrain from getting on eachothers’ case about stuff like that because none of us is at fault for what the larger culture still expects of us and not everyone can be a martyr for the cause.

ugh this, I work with a lot of high school students and was disgusted when one of them told me she had to go to careers day in make up and high heels, I was incensed.

If the buck can’t stop with you*, then it can’t be stopped.  You’re either completely powerless, or you have some responsibility for your choices.  Own up to it, or you’re nothing more than what the patriarchy wants you to be.
Comment #36: 3letterjon on 08/26 at 10:43 AM

Are you telling us that everywhere you go, you loudly and immediately decry any form of sexism or other inequality ever?  I mean, as a man, you have more power to change it than women do.  And I don’t mean just reacting, I mean acting.  Going to your boss and saying, I’d like you to review your salary policy and tell me if you’re paying women equally.  Go to the police officer on the street and ask if they’re doing all they can to protect women from sexual assault.  Search out people mentioned in the news as complicit with the patriarchy and try to reason them out of it, or if that doesn’t work, get some kind of protest or group action together to force them to change.

Picket sexist movies, books, establishments in your area.

Call the most hidebound rightist radio talk shows to present the other side.

Because if you’re not doing everything you can, and I mean everything, you have no fucking right to tell people that they have to rebel against everything in society, to their great personal disadvantage, or they’re “nothing more than what the patriarchy wants them to be”?

I guess you’d tell slaves to just stop obeying their masters and helping their fellow slaves manage the master so not everyone gets whipped every day, or they’re just complicit running dog lackeys of slave culture.

Fuck you.  Your privilege is obvious, and sickening.

GumbyAnne—no one raindrop thinks it’s responsible for the flood.

When we do things like shave, wear heels, put on makeup, etc, it’s not enough to understand that in doing so we capitulate to the standards of the patriarchy. We also have to understand that by doing so, we make it that much harder for women to break free of those expectations.

In case you haven’t noticed, sandals, non-cushy flip-flops, and All-Stars are being worn by both sexes - and all year long.  You can’t throw a hiking boot on my college campus without pegging some student with crappy footwear.

Except that guys have other options.

I just went shopping for shoes I could walk in all day.  Wherein I discovered that there are roughly three models of comfortable and stylish shoes for women which are under $200/pair and possible to acquire in a convenient manner if one can’t afford a personal shopper or doorman apartment building. 

The vast majority of all shoes that exist in your average shoe store are comfortable, practical, affordable shoes for men.  Not to mention that men by and large don’t face the “omg I have to be fashionable!” thing that women do.  If you’re a dude, it’s OK to show up in those Merrell slip ons everybody has.  If you’re a woman and you do that, you’ll be labeled frumpy and/or a mannish dyke

What happened to wearing flats or sneakers to work and then changing into heels? I couldn’t handle commuting in heels, even the low heels I wear, especially in winter with snow and ice! Last winter I saw so many women wearing high spike-heel boots that could not possibly have been comfortable. I’d worry about breaking an ankle!

I walk to work, and when I see a woman walking in stilettos she has to avoid grills and be careful - yet I don’t think men even notice, even the ones walking with these women.  Are they so oblivious?
Comment #34: lijakaca on 08/26 at 10:37 AM

They barely notice women are even there—maybe they see a pair of boobs or an ass or legs, but that’s it.  Watch men and women walking in a crowded environment and see who gives way to whom.  Most of the time, men only avoid other men.  They expect women to move out of the way.  Chivalry and door-holding indeed.

Opoponax, I got my danskos for $49 at Marshalls, which also has airwalks and clarks.  Not high fashion, but what I would call “Dr. and Professor Shoes”.  My favorite walk all-day blue shoes are actually made in Italy for New Balance, and I got them in the professional shoe section of their factory store.

The fact that knowing where to find stuff that works takes a couple of decades of experience is more shitty patriarchy, however.

The Opoponax at 4: Funny that you should mention short men in high heels. High heels were first put on shoes in the 17th century to make short men appear taller. They were created to make one short man in particular look taller, King Louis XIV of France. I think they really didn’t become part of the Western female wardrobe till sometime in the 19th century; when they dropped out of the male western wardrobe.

  I’m guessing one reason why there isn’t a lot of focus on high heels and the health problems they cause is because as Amanda pointed out, lots of people think that they are sexy and fun. Feminists and other varieties of liberals have run into a lot of problems in the past and present on other issues when it looked like we were trying to take people’s fun and pleasure away. See food wars for further examples plus the always popular wars over pornography. The listen learned was not to look like we were trying to take people’s fun away, especially if there are more important issues to campaign for.

OT, what is really funny is that I dump my bike in the garage most mornings and come up stairs to shower or at least comb my hair. 

Whenever I have to drive to work on a business dress meeting day, the garage guys that I chat with all the time don’t recognize me.

My personal experiences in high heels is negative. When I was twenty-one, I had the experience of a woman in high heels, by acccident, stepping down hard on my foot when I was wearing sandals, my preferred summer foot wear. It was rather painful. Since that day, I haven’t be a fan of high heels.

Oh, and then you get to listen to dudes talking about their penises’ opinions on the matter.

FTW

Ms Kate -

Marshalls: the store for people who have enough time on their hands to stop by repeatedly and browse through the whole place until they happen upon something that fits what they’re looking for.  In other words, if you have to go there to find affordable shoes, that goes into my “...for people who don’t have a personal shopper…”  I work 12 hours a day.  As if I have time to scope out shoe sales at fucking Marshalls in my off time.

It’s weird that I think of Converse All-Stars and Onitsuka Tigers as my uncomfortable ‘cute shoes,’ while at the same time I hang out with women and drag queens and at least one ballerino who regularly contort their poor feet into positions and pressures that only a dyed-in-the-wool sadist would force on anyone, but which (except for the ballerino) place the boobs and buttocks in better viewing position, give the calves nicer shape, and make the feet look dainty (or orgasmic if you want to take the image that far).

@Comment #66: Lee on 08/26 at 10:37 AM

I’m guessing one reason why there isn’t a lot of focus on high heels and the health problems they cause is because as Amanda pointed out, lots of people think that they are sexy and fun. Feminists and other varieties of liberals have run into a lot of problems in the past and present on other issues when it looked like we were trying to take people’s fun and pleasure away. See food wars for further examples plus the always popular wars over pornography.

Lee, I think that’s part of it. But I think there’s also another reason you’re eliding. I think that there is a real patriarchal sense in our culture which wants to control women, and which is expressed in clothing, for one example. The pretty heels are partly a measure of men’s control over women. That they are also fun & fashionable doesn’t invalidate this premise.

They barely notice women are even there—maybe they see a pair of boobs or an ass or legs, but that’s it.  Watch men and women walking in a crowded environment and see who gives way to whom.  Most of the time, men only avoid other men.  They expect women to move out of the way.  Chivalry and door-holding indeed.

I second this.  A few years ago, as an experiment, I decided to stop stepping out of the way of oncoming men on sidewalks or in hallways and let the collision happen.  I expected that most men who didn’t get out of the way in time would react with annoyance or anger (“watch where you’re going!”), but the reaction I most often got was surprise followed by a sincere sounding apology.  I then realized, it’s not that they just assume that I will always defer to them, it’s that they literally don’t even see me.  I’m not sure which is worse.

It’s not just the shoes: men have a basic uniform to dress up in. Women have no such opition on clothes. It’s either suits for work, long dresses for parties, bridesmaid gowns, wedding dresses ( I HATE the wedding industry complex!!) et al. It’s all part and parcel of catering to the male sex/gaze.

@Comment #58: GumbyAnne on 08/26 at 10:22 AM

I find that my life is more pleasant when I make certain compromises with the patriarchy and I think my fellow feminists should be understanding about that.  ...  I wish women could refrain from getting on eachothers’ case about stuff like that because none of us is at fault for what the larger culture still expects of us and not everyone can be a martyr for the cause.

Agreed

A few years ago, as an experiment, I decided to stop stepping out of the way of oncoming men on sidewalks or in hallways and let the collision happen.  I expected that most men who didn’t get out of the way in time would react with annoyance or anger (“watch where you’re going!”), but the reaction I most often got was surprise followed by a sincere sounding apology.  I then realized, it’s not that they just assume that I will always defer to them, it’s that they literally don’t even see me.  I’m not sure which is worse.
Comment #73: mamram on 08/26 at 12:16 PM

I’ve had more than one woman I work with say she wears heels so she can look her co-workers in the eye, or at least get closer to that ideal.  Shorter people are ignored.  I wonder if shorter men have this experience, too.

In the past, many women on the street wore hats with feathers and other height-extenders.  Old movies depict haughty women as having very tall hats, often with big feathers, or tulle, sticking way up.  Maybe that was the same instinct.  Taller is more important.

@Comment #76: oldfeminist on 08/26 at 11:24 AM

Old movies depict haughty women as having very tall hats, often with big feathers, or tulle, sticking way up.  Maybe that was the same instinct.  Taller is more important.

Both my Aunts drive SUV’s. When asked why they chose an SUV, both said something like, “I like the way I feel taller. I feel safer.”

One horrible addition. Women who wear high heels often enough, long enough will sometimes find their feet crippled in such a way that NOT wearing high heels is more painful than wearing high heels.  I know at least five women this is true of, so it can’t be that uncommon.

Amanda: To be fair to him, he’s never made me feel like it was a personal failing. He knows that when it comes to personal tastes, it’s what we’re individually comfortable with. (Also, we have a friend who really LOVES her heels and is more vocally inclined to try and get me to try wearing heels than he is. And several male friends that cross-dress that also love their heels, although they don’t give me the same evangelism that the female friend does. “Oh, you just need to work your way up to higher heels. You probably started too high,” says A.)

Just to clarify—I don’t want my comments to imply I think high heels have as their primary function to make women more equal because they’re taller.  I think that might be a factor in why women might not want to give them up.

The popularity of platform heels (beyond when the fashionistas have proclaimed them “dead”) supports this notion.  Platform heels are still dangerous, since you can slip off them sideways or twist your ankle viciously, but they do not put as much weight on the ball of your foot.  The whole shoe is elevated.  A five-inch stiletto is difficult to walk or even stand on.  A five-inch platform heel with a two-inch platform, when standing still or moving forward on a smooth predictable surface, is like walking on a three-inch heel.

Ditto ankle straps, because they keep the shoes on your feet, centered under your heel.

Just came to mind—I wonder if dance shoes are a good choice for looks and wearability?  Dancers have to look good but can’t go flinging their mules out into the audience.

I hate, hate, HATE, when men say “I don’t think girls in high heels are attractive.”  What is that man saying in #3?  “I imprinted on jock porn where this volleyball player was getting it up the ass while she was wearing converse, so I think chicks in converse are totally hot”.

“I don’t like chicks who wear makeup”.  What is he saying?  “I like women to look really naturally hot while in their not-wearing-makeup-wearing-makeup way.  I don’t want to bone the 40 and 50 somethings who apply too much concealer because five other morons told them they didn’t want to bone them and it creases around their eyes.”

You know, who gives a fuck?

How about I make a list of the attributes in men I don’t want to bone?

And how about, this time, I tell the truth?

Patty Murray ran for Senate in 1992 as “The Senator in Sneakers.”  Her pitch was she’s a “Average Jane” hitting the pavement and knocking on doors.
Now she’s known as “The Senator from Boeing.”
I have no idea what she wears.

Bethnyc I have wondered that too!  I worked in the city back in the day, as an intern in college, and actually, even in high school.  (My dad worked there so it was easy to get the summer jobs there).  Back then, simply nobody wore heels to work, you wore sneakers and changed once in the office.  I have been shocked when I’m in the city lately because I see working women walking around in the heels.  ANd on the trains and subways too.  I don’t know what happened.

I’m 63.  I do not own any high heels unless a pair of cowboy boots and a pair of clunky 1.5 inch heeled shoes count as heels.

I do own some 15 pairs of cross trainers and a bunch of semi dressy Pumas.

I’m working class so I wear the polo shirt uniform with mandated specific colored pants.

I do not shave my pits or legs but I’m not very hairy.

Most of this crap is an illustration of the social construction of gender.  Create these artificial differences and magnify them so that people won’t notice how much overlap there between the sexes/genders.

I was born transsexual and became both a feminist and came out as a lesbian.  This meant that I’ve thought quite a bit about what is real about sex and gender and what makes up the construct part.

Oddly much of the modern construct part is based on the corporate selling of gender panic i.e. insecurity.  They are really working on every one’s insecurity and fear of not being authentic in an artificial role.

I’m 5’7”.  What pisses me off is how jeans for average height women seem to assume I’m going to wear them with heels and are about 2’ longer than work with sneakers so I have to shorten them or walk on the back part of them.

This is why I don’t understand the Crocs hatred I’ve seen on this feminist blog (and others).

Yeah, the I’m-a-Little-Dutchboy iconic Croc is ugly, but this summer I’m wearing one of the five pair of kinda cute Croc flip flops I can walk a mile in. Also not as hot as exercise shoes.

Haven’t tried on all the styles, but some even look possible for work.

There are a number of comfortable shoe brands, if you must get your heel on: Sofft is one of them. You won’t get a 5-inch in them, but a reasonable comfortable 2 and 1/2 inch or so, cute for work.

(I’ve found that even the Sofft brand and others aren’t that comfy once the heel gets over that height.)

But don’t give me the barefoot-is better-garbage, since barefoot isn’t possible for office or walking anywhere but on the beach or grass.

I’ve got exercise shoes for the long haul, but for social occasions and work, the comfy shoe styles are a fairly good compromise.

I’m sixty and 4’10 1/2 inches and gave up other shoe brands a decade ago, and so have investigated the comfortable shoe market, and there are a number of manufacturers.

Occasionally, I’ll try on flats or sandals or heels in a department store that aren’t of the comfy variety brand and I can’t believe women are going to be forced to walk more than a block in ‘em.

I recommend you go the comfy shoe brands now before your feet are destroyed like some of my other 50-60 year old friends who can only now wear the ugly orthopedic shoe. (If you think Crocs are ugly…)

GUmbyanne, I agree, and well said.

I don’t think always wearing flats makes you a better feminist.

I like flats, sometimes I like heels.  Mostly I like the wedge.

Yes, I consider it another effect of the patriarchy (with a healthy dose of capitalism) that, while comfortable and cute shoes that aren’t bad for your feet do exist for women, they are incredibly hard to find and usually very expensive. And funny how fashion mags never seem to highlight them,  even when they pretend to feature realistic business attire eh? It’s always Louboutins or Alexander McQueens.

Still have a scar on my knee from where I fell/tripped wearing platforms in the ‘70s: when platforms came back, I fell/twisted my ankle a couple times (a chiropractor picked up on it, without being told.)

So, no, platforms may be a bit more comfortable than the 4 inch spike, but no, they’re not that much better.

Crocs and Sofft brand comfy shoes aren’t that hard to find, or that expensive. (And yes, they also carry heels.)

Nordstroms carries a number of comfy shoe brands: I try on until I find one that suits me, and then order it online from Zappos or Ebay or other website that gives a break on price.

A few years ago, as an experiment, I decided to stop stepping out of the way of oncoming men on sidewalks or in hallways and let the collision happen. 

These experiments are always interesting.  I should do that for a weekend some time and blog it.  “The Weekend I Refused To Defer To Men”.  I’ll need to meditate on this one for awhile.

I’ve had more than one woman I work with say she wears heels so she can look her co-workers in the eye, or at least get closer to that ideal.  Shorter people are ignored.  I wonder if shorter men have this experience, too.

Probably, but I do think “female” trumps “short” in the “who gets ignored” department.  I’m a relatively tall woman and men still casually expect me to defer to them when it comes to space issues.

The attractive qualities of high heels are way more than visual.  Just the clacking sound alone is enough to make men pay more attention, even if the wearer is swaddled up in a winter coat and long trousers so there’s no visual effect. The fetishised sound of oppression makes them prick up their ears and take notice, I suppose.
The changes to the body’s appearance that are used to claim an asthetic benefit to heels are very exaggerated in my opinion, and seem like a rationalisation. Heels are predominantly a fetishistic issue. They represent capitulation to sexualisation (that is, the belief that women’s primary role in life is to be attractive to men) and oppression.

many moons ago (pre-children), i had occasion to do a show in which i was cast as a drag queen. i wore a wig, dress, heels, panty hose and a bra. the costuming ladies did a marvelous job of making boobs for me, complete with nipples, 44DD’s (those bad girls hung on the green room wall for years!). having never before worn women’s clothing, it was an enlightening experience for me. to this day, i am amazed that women allow themselves to be sucked into wearing heels and panty hose, on a daily basis.

i nearly killed myself one night, entering the stage, and stepping down a flight of stairs. i caught a heel on a step, and it was only because one of the guys happened to be right below me, and stopped my fall, that i didn’t end up in the hospital.

while i’ll be the first to admit to enjoying the sight of a shapely pair of legs, enhanced by heels and hose, it isn’t necessary for most jobs, and the health threats aren’t worth it.

Amanda—One of my current experiments is reaping very interesting rewards.

Normally, I find myself doing the bullshit “smile because your role as a woman is to put other people around you at ease.” So I grin like a jerk at total strangers on the sidewalk, people I don’t know, people who rarely feel the need to return the favor.

Now, a friend of mine is in the FBI (and she’s pretty badass, at that). And as a gift, she gave me an FBI baseball cap, as in, the kind they wear on raids. The navy blue ones with the big white FBI lettering on them. So they don’t accidentally shoot each other in a clusterfuck situation. And as it’s my only baseball hat, I sometimes wear it when I’m walking around on a sunny day.

I find, when I wear it, that everyone smiles at me. Just in case.

Although I understand why feminists are reluctant to fight this fight (everybody likes cute shoes, after all), there really needs to be more discussion of high heels from a health angle.  Two of my aunts recently had to get painful foot surgery to correct the damage done by a lifetime of wearing heels.  And not sky-high dress heels, just the “sensible” heels they had to wear in the workplace every day to be seen as professional.  My mother is one of the few women in the family who dodged this fate, because she was a stay-at-home mom and was free to wear sneakers every day if she wanted to, so she did.

One of my aunts who had the foot surgery is a nurse and started her career in the days before it became acceptable for nurses to wear comfy flats and loose clothes like the doctors.  Imagine being constantly on your feet in high heels for twelve-hour shifts.  The last time I wore heels, I could barely stand after an hour.

When we do things like shave, wear heels, put on makeup, etc, it’s not enough to understand that in doing so we capitulate to the standards of the patriarchy. We also have to understand that by doing so, we make it that much harder for women to break free of those expectations.

Fine, but don’t be mad at me about it, I’m a victim here too.  I don’t expect or require anyone else to do any of feminine performance stuff I do, but leave me alone about doing it if I want to or feel I need to. Don’t blame me if the patriarchy gives us two bad options and I chose the other one than what you did.

Sometimes I come down on the other side. For example I don’t wear make-up because I find it inconvenient and it might cover my acne, but it just makes it worse underneath the make-up.  I refrain from playing “more feminist than thou” with people who do choose to wear it, even though they are perpetuating that illusion that anyone can have perfect skin and that we should be wiling to do anything to present a perfect face to the world.  If someone judges me for being insufficiently embarassed about my less than stellar skin, I’ll be mad at the judger about it, not turn around and be mad at other women who do choose to wear make-up.  We are all just playing the same rigged game, trying to find the best way to balance our feminism with practicality in our own lives.

Suzan, very insightful comment.  I think you are correct about a perceived need to magnify the socially constructed gender attributes so that you are very clear on who is who, etc.

This tends to also emerge in discussions where some bonehead bigot can’t possibly imagine a marriage or even a relationship without asking “who is the woman” of a gay man or “who is the man” regarding a lesbian couple.  As if there was only one way of doing things that is highly gendered in nature.

Okay, I’m not sure how this relates, but it’s fascinating considering this discussion.

A museum exhibit of 40 years of Vivianne Westwood shoes (mostly sky-high heels and platforms) including a—get this—PENIS shoe (for women.)

You read that right.

http://tomandlorenzo2.blogspot.com/2010/08/vivienne-westwood-shoes-exhibition-1973.html

I’ve leave it to others to deconstruct THAT.

GumbyAnne, I’m not mad at you at all. I just think the problem of bowing to societal pressure is more than just accepting that it makes your life a little easier to shave.

I do some of this crap myself. But most people can’t tell.

Atheist at 72: Well yes, no disagreement here. Its just that one tactic that conservatives have long used against liberals and other leftists, and this tactic is often ironic considering the Religious Right’s existence, is to depict as a bunch of people trying to take fun and pleasure away by regulation or making things safer. Its been done with food, sex, and even playgrounds. High heels is a variety of that, hence why many Feminists probably do not speak about the issue more often.

I don’t wear makeup and wear sensible shoes 90% of the time.  The remaining time I need to dress up to business dress standards (evenly applied in my workplace and field, at least) or I just want to get the girl on for shits and giggles.

That 10% of the time really rattles my sons sometimes. I’m not sure why, but their mental construct of “mom” is not a particularly feminine one.  My older son understands more now that he’s older, as he likes to dress up and he and his friends wear ties and shirts on Fridays because Friday is Tie Day.  I think my younger one is disturbed by the sexual overtones when I pull on a slinky dress from H&M;, a Rodeo Bra, fishnets, and heels to go do some nightlife.

Of course, this is all about fun for me.  I’m beginning to see that the right to NOT have to wear ridiculous clothing most of the time for work is really becoming a form of privilege.  A clear example: this 50 year old or so guy and another guy were walking along the sidewalk in front of me just now during lunch.  50 year old guy had a duffle suitcase in tow and was wearing a fluorescent pink hat, a dorky t-shirt with sleeves cut off, khaki shorts with a belt, and trail runners.  Oh, had a ponytail too.  The pack of Junior Mitts in suits walking behind me, likely workers at Fidelity or Bain or the like, were yammering about the guy’s general dorkiness.  Then one of their more senior folk pointed out that he had founded some software startup 20 years ago, and was most certainly a mulit-millionaire.

@Comment #78: Gar Lipow on 08/26 at 11:34 AM

One horrible addition. Women who wear high heels often enough, long enough will sometimes find their feet crippled in such a way that NOT wearing high heels is more painful than wearing high heels.  I know at least five women this is true of, so it can’t be that uncommon.

Gar Lipow, that’s horrible all right, but should never be forgot. It is probably the best reason these issues of clothing and appearance is actually very important. Patriarchy can destroy women’s health.

Opoponax, did anybody ever tell you how arrogant and dismissive you can be?

You’re welcome.

Next time, read the whole comment, eh?

Back then, simply nobody wore heels to work, you wore sneakers and changed once in the office.

Y’all do know that guys never have to do this and can simply leave the house in the shoes they plan to wear all day.  Right? 

That’s kind of the thing, for me.

It breaks down to this:

Dudes: the world is built around the idea that you should easily be able to obtain and wear shoes that match your clothing and do not cause you pain.  The presumption is that all of this is possible without even really having to think about it.

Ladies: your options consist of radically debilitating torturous heels or slightly less painful flats.  Anything more practical will inevitably have its practicality undermined by requiring a hefty outlay of time, energy, and/or funds to acquire.  On top of all that, there’s a good chance that the best solution for you is to carry around multiple pairs of shoes to change into and out of as needed throughout the day.

I never wear make up that doesn’t look like make up, wheres the point in that, so I’ve never found my boyfriend telling me that he prefers me with out make up on particularly rage inducing, I get it, I hate kissing in lipstick too.

I always wonder if actually my ease in bucking the make up/always in high heels deal was because I went to a private school that absolutely did not allow make up or heels, so I missed out on that peer correction.

A few years ago, as an experiment, I decided to stop stepping out of the way of oncoming men on sidewalks or in hallways and let the collision happen.

I’ve done that and gotten the same reaction.  I’m 5’10” and weigh 150 pounds, but guys still act like they honestly can’t see me until we’re right on top of each other.

The thing I’m doing right now is refusing to scoot to the edge of a bus seat when the guy sitting next to me does the gosh-my-balls-are-SO-big-I-have-to-spread-my-legs-three-feet-apart sprawl.  Again, I don’t think men even realize they’re doing this until they physically bump into the woman next to them.  But they usually won’t do it if another man sits next to them.  It’s bizarre.

Shaenon, my standard retort to jerks who try to push me out of my seat and call me fat:

“Excuse me, but you are the one who can’t seem to fit in your own seat and I’m fat?”.  Loudly. 

Of course, designing bus and train seats to fit a standard size man or woman in a winter coat is simply out of the question, let alone 3/4 of the population’s shoulders and butts.

#107

The thing I’m doing right now is refusing to scoot to the edge of a bus seat when the guy sitting next to me does the gosh-my-balls-are-SO-big-I-have-to-spread-my-legs-three-feet-apart sprawl.

LOL. I must say, I totally hate that shit too. I always think those guys look like they have ultra-slow-drying balls.

Holy Spaghetti Monster, that illustration is HORRIFYING.  D-:

Gar Lipow @ 78:

One horrible addition. Women who wear high heels often enough, long enough will sometimes find their feet crippled in such a way that NOT wearing high heels is more painful than wearing high heels.  I know at least five women this is true of, so it can’t be that uncommon.

Sadly, I think you’re right.  There’s a woman in my ballet class who never wears anything lower than a 3” heel, be it a stiletto or a platform or a wedge.  This same woman also has a long list of foot, ankle, leg, and back problems, to the point where she requires elastic ankle braces on both feet just to dance.  When I suggested one day that the problem just might stem from her torturous footwear, she told me she can’t walk in flats because of tendon problems.

Personally, I never wear anything above a 2” stacked heel, and that only on special occasions.  Most of the time I prefer a 1” to 1 1/2” stacked heel for work and running shoes when I’m not at work.  I already have knee problems and chronic sesamoiditis, thank you - I don’t need anything worse.

About men who won’t swerve for women and ball-spreading legroom/ I crush you! in seating areas: am I a horrible person to believe that, at least part of the time, it’s a convenient way for straight men to have bodily contact with random women? I’ve even had men deliberately swerve into me (and make that gross grunt-moan), so it seems the instinct is there in some people. I’m not denying that privilege and “invisibility” is a huge factor, but there seems to be a lecherous component to this, too. Sometimes.

A few years ago, as an experiment, I decided to stop stepping out of the way of oncoming men on sidewalks or in hallways and let the collision happen.  I expected that most men who didn’t get out of the way in time would react with annoyance or anger (“watch where you’re going!”), but the reaction I most often got was surprise followed by a sincere sounding apology.  I then realized, it’s not that they just assume that I will always defer to them, it’s that they literally don’t even see me.  I’m not sure which is worse.

What a fantastic example of how Not Thinking perpetuates institutionalized bias: it’s not that mamram was any more or less invisible than anyone the men were walking past, it’s just that women step aside for men, while men must step aside for each other. By puncturing this assumption, the men were forced, if only momentarily, to realize that they were complicit. I think more women should do it, and not as an experiment, but as an act of protest.

I think that a big part of the cultural pressure to ignore how awful heels are for women’s feet is supported by our pop-culture selling lies. For example, several years ago, when the 1st Sex & the City movie came out, Sarah Jessica Parker said in an interview that wearing heels for the series and the movies had totally blown-out her knees and that she never wears heels in her day-to-day life like her character. Yet, her character had very much pushed the “$450 Jimmy Choos as reasonable purchase” agenda as symbolic of women climbing the career ladder. Yes, the series also depicted a $70,000 job (columnist job) as if it could afford a $480,000 NYC lifestyle (so, not realistic), but the fact that just wearing the shoes as the actress portraying a character who trampses about NYC in heels ALL THE TIME with no feet issues sure wasn’t honest for a show trying to be radically honest about “sex-talk” (which some of their conversations really were!). SJP blew out her knees for a role that glam’s her high-heel, “fabulous” life and its not even a blip on the pop-culture radar, but talking about what a lonely, horrible and morally bankrupt slut Samantha is—we’ll that’s been dissected to death.

BTW, I’m 5’2’’ and I used to wear high-heels throughout college (to the extent that one friend didn’t know that I was shorter than her sans heels), but I’m heavier now and they are way more uncomfortable when you are over 175lbs and over 25. So, I don’t even wear them for special occasions anymore (especially after 9/11 when I remembered feeling so sorry for all those women having to walk blocks and blocks in those heels).

I’m a relatively tall woman and men still casually expect me to defer to them when it comes to space issues.

Society just needs to raise more men like me, with a neurotic fear of physical contact with strangers, and you wouldn’t have that particular problem.  I’m the guy wedged into the corner seat on the bus, with my bag forming a physical barrier against anybody who might be near me.  The guy who always takes the wall side in a restaurant, because waitresses (and sometimes waiters, but more rarely) think it’s OK to touch whoever’s sitting with their back to the room.  Ok, so possibly it’s not a good idea to introduce more phobias and hang-ups to the general population, but it’s something to contemplate.

Shaenon @107,  this is semi-related, but I find it so weird how even in an environment as anti-social as public transportation (everybody is just trying to stick to their own thoughts and get home in peace) gender dynamics can still affect people’s non-interactions with each other.  I have noticed that most people, when forced to choose between sitting next to a man or a woman, will choose the woman, even if she has bags of groceries or something on the seat next to her.  I have found that the best way to thwart this (if I am particularly enjoying having a double-seat all to myself) is not to spread my stuff around, but to do my best impression of how men occupy their space.  Spread my legs out, rest my elbows on the seat back, and look straight ahead instead of down. 

Again, I don’t think men even realize they’re doing this until they physically bump into the woman next to them.

When I retaliate against men who think they are entitled to half of my seat by doing the same thing to them, they (usually) immediately retreat back into their allotted space.  It’s almost like they are startled to find that, what? There was a PERSON sitting there??

I don’t know what you have observed, but in my experience this can be a risky game, since some men don’t seem to mind the leg contact, which leaves me the choice of either sitting there touching them for the rest of my trip, or sheepishly shrinking back into my seat.  Has that happened to you?

About men who won’t swerve for women and ball-spreading legroom/ I crush you! in seating areas: am I a horrible person to believe that, at least part of the time, it’s a convenient way for straight men to have bodily contact with random women?

Quite probably. I’m the exact reverse: I get massively self-conscious and uncomfortable with any form of mild physical contact with strangers, exactly because I feel ‘intimate’ with a random woman (or man for that matter) if I’m touching them on the bus or for some other reason, and I feel inappropriate because of that. I realize that’s a hangup of mine and may not be shared, but still…

(I’m really not good with crowds. Thankfully when I take the subway home from work I’m going in the opposite direction of the biggest crowds, but if I need to get downtown after work when all you get is standing room in sardine conditions I have to close my eyes, take deep breaths and imagine I’m somewhere else because I’m on the verge of freaking out / suffocating.)

Geez, apparently libdevil and I are related.

I remember reading a female reporter in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11 spent a day walking around in a burqa and she was AMAZED at how many men just plowed into her while she was walking. She was tossing the theory that the burqa made her completely invisible out to the other women, and they basically laughed her down and said “no, by ‘accidentally’ running into us, it’s the only way men can touch us in public.”

I don’t know what you have observed, but in my experience this can be a risky game, since some men don’t seem to mind the leg contact, which leaves me the choice of either sitting there touching them for the rest of my trip, or sheepishly shrinking back into my seat.  Has that happened to you?
Comment #115: mamram on 08/26 at 02:01 PM

If you feel comfortable doing this:  push his leg out of the way with a nudge/jerk, then put your leg back where it belongs.  Every time he touches you, repeat it.  “Get out of my space” might work, too.

oldfeminist, that is certainly what I should do, but I don’t know if I can bring myself to.

“...(Because I will immediately be accused of creating equivalence between foot-binding or FGM and high heels, I’m not.  I’m talking about kind, not degree.)...”

Ah, the parenthetical for idiots.  I feel so privileged as you look askance at the rest of the crowd and then lean in and whisper to me, “Pssst.  You’re a fucking idiot.  Don’t load up my comments with shit I never said.”  I feel so warm inside.

Dan, that’s pretty good bitterness and butthurt-ness. Also a good strawfeminist there, talking down to the poor put-upon mens, you really make me feel the resentment. The inner warmth bit might be TMI though.

Overall, I give you 5/10.

mamram, understood.  I would absolutely never demand you go outside your safe-feeling zone on this.  Unlike certain three-letter individuals here.

Why is it so hard to relegate high heels to special occasions, and view flats as the only appropriate everyday wear? 

Er, I dunno.  What happens if you just do thia?  I’m not going to make a flip remark about some sort of Shoe Police, but what exact enforcement mechanism is there stopping women from putting their comfort first? What happens in your lived experience?

Thanks for this article and the comments. It inspired a blog post of my own.

Here’s an interesting side effect of the men’s shoe phenomenon: some men have been so ingrained with the idea that they should never, ever, have to give two seconds thought to footwear, that it holds them back or even hurts them. I know guys who will wear their one pair of shoes for all activities even if they end up with blisters, foot cramps, or just ruining the shoes. Or they won’t engage in certain activities due to lack of appropriate footwear. Because owning or caring about more than one pair of shoes would taint them with femininity. But they probably don’t even think of it like that. They’re just being guy-ish.

Man, that graphic is one crap piece of Photoshopping.  Hasn’t the ‘artist’ ever noticed that things cast shadows?

It’s not like s/he went with “I’m PLAYING with the idea of crap Photoshopping”.  It’s just bad.

I don’t find flats comfortable at all.  They rip up the back of my feet.  And it’s not like I buy cheap shoes.  I think they’re cute, and I’d wear them more if I could find comfortable ones.  The problem is, they seem comfortable until you have walked around in them for about an hour.  I seem to do best, comfort-wise, with the wedge.  I think that’s why so many of the women in that article are loving that Kate Spade wedge.  They probably are really comfortable for those women.  You can definitely do a lower wedge too, I have them.  A 2 1/2 wedge is pretty much perfect for me.  Other than my Sketchers of course.  But men don’t wear Sketchers with their suits either.  It’s easy to say men have to it so easy, but it really depends where they work.

Eric_RoM, there are shadows. Look at it again. You can see the shadows of the nails, also of the feet.

“i am amazed that women allow themselves to be sucked into wearing heels and panty hose, on a daily basis. “

*glares*

my $9/hr job at a bookstore required that I wear pantyhose if I was ever showing any leg.  Should I have quit over it?  and found what job in it’s place?  or should I have never worn skirts?  or capris? and really, of all the things they required of me, THIS is the one I should have rebelled at?

You know what I’m amazed at? That so many people can be such assholes even after it’s been pointed out again and again that not only are the heels and shit NOT ALWAYS OPTIONAL, but, in fact, the whole “not optional” aspect of it all is kinda THE FUCKING POINT.

I agree with Eric_ROM, atheist, because the shopper did not take into account that the ring would crease into the ankle, and it’s totally clashing with the shoes, which could just be someone tacking junky jewelry onto the anklet if it weren’t for the crease issue.

But most telling is that you’d never see a designed piece of jewelry look like that B unless the designer doesn’t know the roman alphabet.  Probably not even then.  The bling B is made of stacked D’s, so there’s two layers of rhinestones all the way to the vertical.  Google Image search for rhinestone B and you’ll see what I mean.

Most of the criticism I’ve received in my life for minor failures to live up to patriarchal beauty standards have been from men.

10 years ago I put myself on a rigid diet/exercise regimen and got myself from a curvy size 9/10 down to a buffed size 4.  I got a few nice compliments from women but the men I worked and socialized with would Not. Shut. Up. about how great I looked at the time, in comparison to what a fat pig I was before.  They would do it loudly and publicly, embarrassing the shit out of me.  I went off on a few of the guys, letting them know in no uncertain terms that my weight was not an appropriate topic of discussion.  Most of the time, though, I’d stare at the dude for several seconds, as if he’d just farted in my general direction.  Definitely not the effusive gratitude they were expecting for their dudely praise of my new appearance.

Oh fuck that, I will never wear another pair of pantyhose.  I haven’t worn them in probably a decade.  My legs are pretty much always tan from cycling and in the spring, summer, and even fall, I wear skirts and dresses bare-legged.  Come winter, I wear pants.

I feel bad for you Jenny that you were forced to wear them to keep a job.  I hate them.

Someone above suggested Crocs: I don’t care if they perfume the air they pass thru, lengthen your life, increase your income, and give you an orgasm with every step: those are still the ugliest fucking ‘shoes’ on the planet.

Eric, your opinion is dully noted.  I will give it due consideration as I arrange my daily life.

(and yes, I do know dully is not duly)

Like Phoenician, I’m kind of confused about which careers we’re stipulating as being ones where one “has” to wear heels. Are there environments where the boss will pull you aside for not meeting dress code if you don’t wear heels? What about really fancy flats, like these ones:

http://www.endless.com/Sam-Edelman-Womens-Isador-Flat/dp/B0017PTQAC/
http://www.endless.com/Giuseppe-Zanotti-Womens-I06102-Ballet/dp/B0033WTM3I/
http://www.endless.com/Giuseppe-Zanotti-Womens-I06028-Ballerina/dp/B0033WTLUM
http://www.endless.com/Tibi-Lyon-Womens-Flat/dp/B003EIIZXY/
http://www.endless.com/LOEFFLER-RANDALL-Womens-Alice-Flat/dp/B003RWSA7I/

I was purposefully looking for expensive ones, to see if anyone made high-fashion flats. They exist! As do way-cheaper knock-off flats.

I do believe that some people probably have sexist bosses who make demands that women wear heels, but maybe in that case it’s worth talking to the HR dept. and showing them some studies about the effect heels can have on women’s legs/feet. Or even a note from one’s doctor. Surely if it’s a medical issue, they’re bound to concede the point.

Or maybe I have no idea what I’m talking about. That is a distinct possibility! I’d be interested to hear some anecdotal evidence (I actually rather like anecdotal evidence ...) from people with jobs where heels are required. By which I mean, you’re fired if you don’t wear ‘em. Not just “oh there is social pressure to wear them here”—I mean, literally fired. Can refusing to wear heels ever be grounds for firing? How is that legal???

Maybe if you work in the fashion industry? Or if you’re a model, I guess. Hmm.

Yeah, what you wear on a daily basis may have a lot to do with your job and the societal expectations for that job, and women are more stringently policed than men. I’ve had office jobs where I didn’t interact with the public AT ALL, and yet I was chewed out for wearing black sneakers instead of flats or heels. Currently, I’m pretty lucky in that I work in an industry (video games) where the expectation IS that you get to wear whatever’s comfy as long as it is clean, not too torn up, and not overtly obscene. So, yeah, I get to wear sneakers and jeans to work, but not everyone has that choice. Plenty of work environments, particularly in retail or service, are very strict. My best friend also has a job where she is required to wear hosiery, and all of her professional clothing fits in a very narrow window. Can’t be too feminine because she won’t be perceived as serious, but still gets stuck with 1 inch heels and hose.

Just recently I have really wanted to cut my hair.  It’s funny that Amanda was writing about that when she wrote about Madmen on Tuesday.  It really hit a nerve with me.  I have long, really naturally wavy hair.  I kept it really long as a teen, but that was the 80’s and that was the style.  I cut it off in my mid-20’s in the early 90’s when 90210 and Melrose Place made that so popular for young women.  I remember how much I loved it.  Now it’s really long again, and everyone always tells me how beautiful my hair is.  Anytime i say I want to cut it, people say “oh no you can’t cut it’  Do you know that even my hairdresser doesn’t want to cut it?  I mean, I’m sure he would, but he highly discourages it.  I am in my early 40’s now, and really strong and some would say aggressive.  But for some reason, I’m insecure about cutting my hair. 

I guess this doesn’t belong on the shoe thread, but for some reason I really wanted to write it.

#124 PiatoR:  Have you not read any of the comments about how they are required as part of professional dress for a lot of women, or are part of corporate dress codes?  Or the fact that women who don’t conform often get passed up for promotion. 

It’s nice to make a stand if you know you won’t get fired or can afford not getting that raise.  If you need the job or the money?  Not so much. 

It’s like an anarchist buddy of mine, who had a trust fund.  Yeah, anarchy and sticking it to the Man is great, if you know Daddy’s going to bail you out, if for no other reason than to avoid public embarassment.  But when you don’t have a rich dad or trust fund to save your ass when you get hauled to the pokey, and damn well may lose your job, and then your home, car, etc… revolution doesn’t look quite so enticing.

@GeekGirlsRule

Getting passed up for a promotion because you don’t wear heels? Yeah, that would be a hard one to measure but I guess you’re right. That probably does happen. Ugh. Never mind, forget I asked.

Samus, I have a friend who has very oddly shaped feet.  She generally owns 2 pairs of shoes that fit at a time, and makes them last as long as possible.  She was fired from a customer service job where she was behind a counter all day; the reason given was that she did not wear “professional” enough shoes.  I believe they were black Oxfords, like these:
http://www.onlinebootstore.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=C112&Category_Code=ConverseOx&Store_Code=obs

AngScarlett: The hair thing drives me up a wall too. I have naturally red hair, very thick, and anytime I want to change it (dye it, cut it), choruses of Noooos spring up. (As with everything else, The Boy is supportive of whatever I’m comfortable with.) My benchmark for male douchebaggery re: the hair belongs to my father, who once sulked for three days because my mother cut her hair. BLECH.

It probably is illegal, but despite my suggestion about going to HR, I probably wouldn’t have the nerve to stand up for myself either if I were in that situation. If any brave women do, though, I’m guessing HR would back you up if you put up a fuss about it. But then, of course, you might have to suffer through more bullshit afterward just for having been a person who put up a fuss about something as frivolous as what shoes you wear ... lose-lose. :(

(I’m really not good with crowds. Thankfully when I take the subway home from work I’m going in the opposite direction of the biggest crowds, but if I need to get downtown after work when all you get is standing room in sardine conditions I have to close my eyes, take deep breaths and imagine I’m somewhere else because I’m on the verge of freaking out / suffocating.)

I’m the same way.  I can not stand to have my personal space invaded by people I don’t know.  Concerts, public transportation, fairs/festivals, etc.—all of that is awful for me.  I’ve been known to freak the fuck out in really crowded places.

#144 Samus I’m guessing HR would back you up if you put up a fuss about it.

Guess again.

Pixelfish, I have definitely experienced men who react the way your dad did to your mom.  I bet most women have gone through this hair crap.

My Dad lost his shit when my mom, sister and I all cut our butt-length hair off when I was 14.  Mom took hers very short, mine barely brushed my shoulders, and my sister’s was just past her shoulders. 

He didn’t speak to any of us for over a week.

The shoe thing is a horse of different color than just about any women’s fashion issue.  I scratch my head at how little progress has been made by feminism on the foot-and-other-body-part-damaging high heel fetish.  Several women friends who are strong feminists on most issues still buy and wear heels.  They just call it their guilty pleasure.  They certainly don’t consciously wear them to please men. 

As my wife climbed her way through the legal profession she wore heels (not too stiletto but not too low) and pantyhose to conform to what was expected of her by the male owners of the firm and the business clients they wanted to keep and attract.  She may not have been a pioneer of feminism in the profession but she certainly was (and still is) a trooper (if not a foot soldier) of it.  Now that she’s #2 lawyer in her Fortune 500 company she almost always wears flats, nylon sockies and pantsuits and she does not demand or expect that women lawyers under her conform to the old shoe model. 

If the shoe thing has been thrashed enough, does anyone want to tackle pierced ears?

MiddleageLiberal:  I actually know more guys with pierced ears than women.  So, what about pierced ears?

If the shoe thing has been thrashed enough, does anyone want to tackle pierced ears?
Comment #149: MiddleageLiberal on 08/26 at 04:10 PM

I have pierced ears because otherwise you have to use pressure to hold the damn things on—a spring or a screw.  If you can even find anything you like that’s not pierced.

Unless you’re talking about the really heavy or big earrings that can rip the piercing, which I don’t get.  If it hurts I’m not going to hang it from my ear.

I’ve had my ears pierced since the 1980s, at which time guys were just starting to get them pierced too.  My husband had one of his ears pierced until an accident ripped the earring out.  He’s thought about getting it redone, or possibly both, but he’s out of work, and doesn’t want to do it while he’s going to job interviews.

Shaenon and others:

I also started not going out of my way as much for men, clomping to and from work in my 3-hole Docs (still have to change them at work though). I make a point of making eye contact with any man who’s walking right towards me (and 90% of the time it’s a man) so we get out of each other’s way, though there are still some jerks who are yammering on their cells or whatever and don’t even notice. In those cases I move just enough not to hit them (though my bag might), and scowl and grumble as I pass them - it makes me feel better and just maybe might get through to them (though my hopes aren’t high).
Other than heels, the patriarchal beauty standard that frustrates me the most is smooth legs - I have fair skin, dark wavy thick hair, and HATE wasting time and money on shaving. But I just can’t bring myself to go out in shorts/skirt with obviously hairy legs. It sucks.

Pierced ears don’t hurt, though. They are, of course, a good example of a way in which women are expected to be ornamental. (And in some cultures they fulfill the role top-to-toe pink clothes go in ours, of marking a baby as a girl.)

There was a brouhaha about heels in the UK last year when someone proposed legislation that would ban employers from making high heels part of women’s uniform in situations where they might be a safety hazard. Which was a bit crap; forcing women to injure themselves on pain of dismissal ought to be banned altogether. Even that halfhearted effort was shouted down by the tabloids with headlines like “Killjoy Unions Want To Ban Heels”. It was thorougly depressing.

GGR, I see guys with pierced ears, too and I’m OK with it, though I will still sometimes do a double take when I see a guy over 40 with one, even Harrison Ford.  Increasing common as it is to see them on one side, it’s still pretty rare to see guys with two.  But in my observation, pierced ears among American women over 22 is way over 50% and among men more like 10% or less.  I daresay that wearing earrings is a fashion standard for most women and not for most men.  And it’s a fashion standard more prevalent than any other kind of jewelry.  Sure, poking more or less permanent holes in yourself for fashion is not as potentially debilitating as walking on 3-4 inch high heels 40+ hours a week, but it’s still self-mutilation, minor as it may be, for fashion. 

I get the convenience of pierced ears, both for comfort and availability of earrings.  But why wear earrings at all?  A lot of women my generation faced opposition from their parents to ear piercing because in the 50’s and mid-60’s it was a sign of being either a loose woman or a savage (a la National Geographic).  So there was not an established patriarchal structure pressuring women to pierce their ears although maybe there was and is to wear some sort of earring.  Back in those days it was something of a rebellion to get them pierced, but given that nearly all adult women wore, and still wear, earrings, the convenience and post-healing comfort of pierced became obvious even to most of our mothers.

I have had my ears pierced since I payed my own money at age 7 to get them done.  I don’t wear earrings all the time though - this is a take it/leave it situation.  Are there workplaces where earrings are required like heels are?

I also wonder why people are allowed to have young children’s ears pierced.  I’d think that a two year old cannot consent.

A few years ago, as an experiment, I decided to stop stepping out of the way of oncoming men on sidewalks or in hallways and let the collision happen.

A few years ago, when I got my current horse, I got all into the natural horsemanship thing.  It didn’t turn my horse into a fabulous show horse, but it did do wonders for his ground manners. Where he once would have merrily stepped all over me, now he gets out of my way with a look.  Though this may sound sorta “woo-ish,” it’s a matter of changing my energy.

Anyway, I have tried this with people, male and female.  And, yeah, even men will usually get out of my way.  (I’m about 5’4” and petite).  I guess if I can move a 1200 pound animal will just a hard glance, a 200 pound man is nothing at all.

Heels.  Never wear ‘em worn except for a night out.  Back when I was a grown up, I worked in IT and technical fields and nobody cared what I wore.  Nowadays, my idea of dress shoes is my pair of pink Vans.

My mother wouldn’t let me get my ears pierced for the longest time, so I got very familiar with clip-ons, with how ugly they are and how painful they are to wear.

I do think it’s tacky for parents to pierce their babies’ or toddlers’ ears though.  Talk about seeing girls/women as not being much more than ornamental.

MiddleageLiberal:  I just don’t see pierced ears as quite as “standard” or “required” as heels are in many arenas.  I just don’t see it as equivalent.  While I have seen corporate dress codes limiting the size or number of ear piercings you can have, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that either outlawed them entirely or stated them as a requirement. 

Back to dress codes, when I was working IT the head honchos from corporate announced that all women would wear either nice slacks or skirts and pantyhose.  I went to my regional manager and asked him if they were high, because I crawled under desks for a living.  So unless they wanted to give me a clothing/pantyhose allowance everything I would ruin crawling over their staple-infested carpets, no way in hell was I wearing either skirts and pantyhose or nice slacks. 

I was granted exemption from the dress code (which also mentioned shoes) and to celebrate wore my Bugs Bunny slippers to work every day for a week.

Why would pierced ears be a feminist issue? They’re not mandatory in the same way that heels are. You can always wear clip-ons.

First off, no one should be required by dress codes or society to wear any shoes that are uncomfortable to them.

I was pigeon toed as a very young child (which was “corrected” with casts that I have no memory of) and now I my toes point outward instead.  I’ve always hated flats (and have a particular hatred for sneakers) because when I walk the heels constantly bang into or rub against each other.  It hurts and makes me feel like I am about to trip over my own feet.  I like flip-flops and under 2 inch heels because that doesn’t happen and so they are more comfortable to me. 

I don’t know how my wearing heels will affect my body long-term, but I am unwilling to be uncomfortable every single day because of what might happen in the future.  I hated walking up until I left for college and no longer had to fight with my mother over what shoes were going on my feet.  She didn’t allow me to wear heels when I was younger and refused to purchase them for me when I started wearing them occasionally in high school.  Since I’ve been buying my own comfortable (which took some trial and error) heels, I love to walk and normally have no trouble walking for miles at a time in my heels.

So, I don’t care that 3letterjon thinks I look ridiculous, but I do exist (Amanda in 47), I am not too fat for them (Thealogian in 113) and, unless that’s what’s causing my heels to clunk together instead of a poorly corrected condition, my defense of heels (for me!) is not because I have internalized the patriarchy (3letterjon in 36, Caren in 52).

Earrings aren’t mandatory work attire. I’ve never been issued earrings with a uniform or even seen earrings mentioned in a dress code except to stipulate that if you do wear them, they can’t be too big or dangly.

I also wonder why people are allowed to have young children’s ears pierced.  I’d think that a two year old cannot consent.

One of the reasons I refuse to patronize those piercing-gun places. An actual piercing studio is much more likely to have ethical rules about who they will and won’t pierce and an emphasis on consent. “My” piercer, for instance, requires that a child tell her they want to be pierced without prompting from a parent, and then they must climb onto the table themselves and be able to sit for the piercing on their own, not in a parent’s lap or in any way that they could be restrained.

My daughter had her ears pierced for her 5th birthday after waiting and nagging me for almost 6 months about it (5 was the youngest the piercer was comfortable with doing). She changed her mind after the first ear was done—the piercer and I both said “OK, up to you”. Then she walked as far as the studio door (with one ear pierced, LOL) before changing her mind again, going back and sitting for the second ear to be pierced. It was as completely pressure-free as I could make it, and it still made me feel terrible when she yelped, so I have no idea how anyone can be okay with actually making a small child get it done. I boycott Claire’s after finding out that the store policy where I am is that they will pierce a small child who’s crying and protesting, if the parent still wants it done.

Some of us don’t have a choice about making a stand on this.  I have disabilities that make it even more damaging than normal to wear heels.  I can’t wear them.  Thankfully I’ve never had a job where this was a problem, but if I do, you better believe I will bring ADA down on their asses like an anvil of righteousness.

shorter men don’t wear high heeled shoes.  And taller women do.

IMO, shorter men do wear high heeled shoes. They just aren’t called high heels. Think: cowboy boots, Red Wings, Timberlands, Harley boots, Doc Martens…..short men love the hell out of 2” stacked heels. I almost never see a man under 5’8” wearing anything without a stack heel.

I live in Chicago, and I notice lots of people (men and women) walking to work in the mornings wearing business suits and sneakers, and carrying large bags that I assume hold their more useless shoes to wear in the office.

I count myself lucky that I’ve never had a job requiring heels. I used to wear them to parties when I lived in California and you drive everywhere, but now that I live in a city and I take public transit to parties, I’m not even willing to wear heels then. Too much walking to get to the party, not worth it.

I do wear those sneaker-flats (mine are from Skechers), which are a good compromise between dress shoes and sneakers. They are basically nice flats on the top, but sneakers on the bottom, so you have some arch support and padding on the bottom, but you don’t really have any ankle support. They’re not running shoes, but if you’re walking and standing all day they’re comfortable enough. No one is making me wear them, but I do like having shoes that are slightly dressier looking than sneakers, to wear with skirts.

I gave up on very high heels in my early twenties. I came home from Filene’s Basement with another pair of sexy black four-inch heels and showed my boyfriend who looked at me a little sadly and said “Those are cute, but you’re feet always hurt and then you get blisters and then you’re grumpy and make me carry you home.” And I couldn’t really say anything because it was 100% true. I resolved never to wear shoes that hurt my feet again, beyond the odd breaking-in blister.

I get a kick out of the fact that my 60-year-old mother is wearing a lot of 3-inch heeled boots these days. She couldn’t stand heels when she was younger, but then she developed bursitis in her hip and discovered that heels make her more comfortable. She looks amazing in them.

...is ear-piercing really that big a thing, institutionally?  All the dress code language about it I’ve seen have been restrictions on it (not too big, not too many, jewelry must be less than so big or so noticeable), or, before it started being pretty normal for guys to get their ears pierced, banning earrings outright to put the kaibosh on male employees wearing them without incurring a gender discrimination complaint.  All the crazypants religious people I grew up around’s big thing was not letting their (teenaged) daughters get their ears pierced because something something whores.  It was in the same category as not letting them wear fashionable clothes or have cosmetics.  I didn’t think the professional dress codes that were all “don’t be too frumpy but for the love of god do not ever be sexy, no those terms will not be concretely defined, we know it when we see it” tended to demand specific types of jewelry so long as the female employees in question signaled their commitment to being decorative by wearing some discrete non-sexy-but-also-non-frumpy jewelry.

To someone upthread who suggested going to HR - who do you think makes and enforces the dress code? Most of us have this fantasy of HR as the people who uphold fairness in the workplace and are there to stick up for us if some workplace injustice is happening, but in reality they are there to protect the interests of the organization. Unfortunately, HR is there to keep the status quo and maybe to make sure no one gets fucked with badly enough to bring a lawsuit, not to be agents of change. I used to work in an organization with a horribly outdated dress code that everyone from VPs on down hated and who do you think was obstructing all efforts to update some of the sillier provisions? Yep, the head of HR.

Now that I think about it, I’ve worked in places with strict dress codes and busybody managers who felt it was their personal duty to eyeball every person’s outfit as folks trickled into the office in the morning, but the only policy I’ve encountered that explicitly dealt with shoes was the “no open-toe” policy in the office with the outdated dress code. Which prompted one of the (female) VPs to quip, “Toe cleavage: where sin begins.” That’s the thing with professional dress codes for women - the details might be vague and never stated explicitly, but we all know what has to be done to succeed. And it’s always that line between “sexy” and “not so sexy as not to be taken seriously.” Whatever the fuck that is. At least in the corporate world; yet another reason I’m in non-profits.

When I first met my now-wife 15 years ago I was the one in high heels. Size 15.

Heels- I never trained myself to endure foot pain so my shoe wardrobe (which is extensive) has only two pairs of heels in it, both of which are weirdly comfortable to wear- the weight is evenly balanced between the heel and ball so you don’t end up with the ball-pain and blister problem.  It is possible but it’s really uncommon /end digression

BUT I have a lot of cute mary-janes and ankle boots which are my work footwear. I’m professional looking and comfortable.

But my personal bugbear is POCKETS. I want professional looking womens clothing with POCKETS that you can PUT THINGS INTO without completely ruining the line. Guys’ tailoring can manage this- why not womens? I don’t always want to carry a bag.

But they usually won’t do it if another man sits next to them.  It’s bizarre.

I’m a man, and they do it to me all the time. It’s uncomfortable, infuriating and even humiliating (which probably has to do with sensing that my use of space is insufficiently manly). To be clear, I’m a small guy - 5’5” and 125 lbs or so - and this kind of thing is only too familiar to me. And it makes me especially crazy as a feminist man, since I am aware that I am STILL taller than about 50% of American women, and I am still a man, with requisite privilege. But I’m sitting there, uncomfortable and annoyed as hell with this guy who (at best) has never given any thought to his relationship to space and how intrusive it is, or (at worst) actively takes up as much space as possible to make smaller people realize how Awesome and Manly he is. There are plenty of large men who are totally aware of the privilege granted by their size, and they enjoy the fuck out of it. They suck. I like who I am, but shortness really can be frustrating when people don’t think that your opinions are as important, or (and this is the one that really gets me steamed) don’t seem to understand that I’m a fully-grown adult and expect to be treated as such. Napolean was pissed off for a reason. And again, it’s frightening to think that, as frustrating as it is for me, approximately one quarter to one third of the population is shorter than me and doesn’t get the buttressing of male privilege that I do.

short men love the hell out of 2” stacked heels. I almost never see a man under 5’8” wearing anything without a stack heel.

Well, this comment pissed me right off and I was going to fire off an angry retort, but then I thought about it a bit, and realized that, as a white, middle-class man, I don’t often have the joy of hearing other people tell me with great certainty what I like or want or do because I happen to belong to Arbitrary Group X. And so, while this comment still pisses me off, it has educational value, which I appreciate.

I will point out, however, that you may or may not be aware that MANY mens’ shoes that are not sneakers or lounging shoes have stacked heels to one extent or another: boots of any kind, dress shoes, running shoes (because of the cushioning under the heel), etc. There are a lot of men OVER 5’8” who are wearing shoes with stacked heels. I end up with some of these, but I certainly don’t go looking for them, because what’s the fucking point? Even 2”, which is rather high for a mens’ shoe, gets me to 5’7”. Yeah, that’s towering, all right. And of course, because lots of mens’ shoes have some lift to them, it’s not going to do me any favors. And finally, because I just don’t give a shit. I am what I am, and I’m perfectly happy with it. It’s the rest of the world that seems to think my being short is some kind of personality defect.

thirstygirl, I’m totally sympathetic to the pocket thing. What really blows my mind is when I see womens’ pants that have stitching or even patches that look like pockets, but are non-functional, or actual pockets that are too small to be useful. Utter craziness. Is it because most of these companies make or are part of a larger corporate umbrella with a company that makes purses, and they’re worried that women will cease buying purses en masse if they make it possible to carry anything larger than a nickel in a pocket?

There’s some connection between debilitation, class, sexual purity, and femininity-compliance - and thus, beauty-compliance - which is where I think the compulsion for high heels comes from. Intentional debilitation in women is a display of class status, and the perception of class status by way of debilitation goes hand-in-hand with sexual purity.

Back in the day of corsets, the more well-to-do the woman, the tighter the corset. A 17-inch waist was an indicator of a “good” woman of class, not one of those dirty poor women who needed to breathe and move freely because they had to work for a living. Which brings it around to sexual purity, because the conventional wisdom of the corset days was that poor women were public property, but the “good” upper-class girls indicated by their cinched waists were private property, which makes women’s self-debilitation a matter of personal protection against rape. And still today, there’s some conflation when it comes to women between working-class and slutty.

I know less about the cultures that have enforced foot-binding and neck rings than I do about the cultures that have enforced corsets and high heels, but from what I’ve read, it’s pretty much the same deal. Debilitation = class status and sexual purity = marriageable private property off-limits for rape.

@48: rea - or what she said, except I think it does have to do with sex.

And since we’re exchanging personal anecdotes, I can’t walk in heels without looking like a baby giraffe taking its first steps. And yes men DO police beauty and femininity compliance in women.

I’d like to see high heels go the way of fur:  only seen on the runway, mostly worn by spoiled rich people, and “normal” women wouldn’t dream of wearing them every day, if they even owned a pair.  (Yes I know Europeans still wear lots of fur.  So do Alaskans.  But most of America isn’t as cold as Russia.) 

Fortunately, I’ve got the double bonus:  I’m in the “crunchy Northwest” as one poster said, so comfortable footwear is almost a requirement, and I also work in construction.  If I wear workboots to the office, everyone will just think I’m going to the jobsite later, no problem.  And if I do decide to wear a skirt, everyone will think I’m looking for a job, so I don’t wear skirts to work.  Ever.

I’m very impressed that everyone has kept this long thread so fun and civil!  Yay for bonding against beauty standards!

During high school and college, I thought the blisters and pain I got from heels meant I was an utter failure at femininity.  Since I’m an extremist in my day-to-day life, I decided this meant I should emphatically not wear heels and chose to become a barefoot hippie instead.  My boss in the Senate even had to call me out for not wearing shoes in my office, then he called me out for wearing flip-flops.  At that point, I think he was just happy I was wearing shoes and didn’t have the emotional reserves to call me out for not wearing a specific type of dress shoe. 

I’m now at a point where I know how to act like a grown up in the workplace (I even wear shoes 75% of the day like a big girl) and this has given me confidence to decide what I Will Not wear under any circumstances.  Pantyhose, heels, mandatory skirts, and mandatory make-up being the main ones.  I think one supervisor tried to cajole me into wearing pantyhose but she was so evasive about it that I’m still not sure what the conversation was about.  I thought we were bonding over how much they suck so I started talking about this horrific yeast infection I once got and that was the end of that.  (No, this doesn’t negate me knowing how to act like a grown up.  When you hire women, their bodies come with them.  If you intend to tell them what to put over their bodies, you will receive a response that informs you of the problems with the policy.  If you want bodies that can be placed in pantyhose, you’ll have to make sure those bodies don’t come with finicky vaginas.)

My ear piercing story is thus:  I was 7 and I needed them pierced in the way that only 7 year olds need things.  Went to the mall with my mom and her BFF, chickened out.  Went to the mall a second time, chickened out.  Went a third time, the BFF asked if I’d want to sit on her lap and she can hold me down until it’s done.  I thought this was brilliant and that’s what we did.  I sat on her lap screamed like a mother fucking banshee while she pinned me down until it was over.  Then I had my mom buy her a pair of earrings as a thank you from me.  While I intellectually appreciate that this should have caused severe emotional distress for me, I’ve always loved her for doing it.  Such is life.

Regarding walking by men in streets:  when I stopped growing vertically at 5 foot even, I realized I was probably going to be metaphorically patted on the head for most of my life.  I don’t really have the gall to intentionally run into men, but I do come to a complete standstill on a sidewalk if they’re heading straight for me.  On low-confidence days I might dodge them, but most days, I tell myself that I have a right to exist in the space I’m occupying and force myself to claim it.

I have pierced ears because otherwise you have to use pressure to hold the damn things on

Well, sure.  And I wear high heels because otherwise you have to walk around on tippy-toes trying not to fall over.

And I got a boob job because otherwise you have to stuff your bra with tissues every morning.

And I got botox because otherwise you have to walk around holding your forehead still with your fingertips so nobody can see your facial expressions.

What?  You have to.

It’s okay to LIKE earrings.

Some of the comments on this thread remind me of how I used to love to watch the freak out at Feministing if someone said they douched.

“THE VAGINA IS SELF-CLEANING!!”

“YOU SHOULD SEE A DOCTOR!!”

grolby @ #177:

Sorry to have offended you; I thought it would be understood that I meant not all short men everywhere, always wear stacked heel shoes….just that it’s a common everyday sight. More common in my area (Illinois) than say, seeing women who wear makeup. Granted, people tend to be taller here on average (at 5’5”, I’m almost always the shortest woman in the room), which may put added pressure on short men’s shoe choices, but still. I’m not blaming them; there is a real pay-rate premium for taller men on the job—-even if the job in question isn’t “basketball player” (the only job I can think of where height is a bona-fide requirement).

Point being, is that short men (unlike women, short or not) can choose to wear sneakers or flats without being considered “unmasculine”, and likewise they can choose to wear high heels without those shoes being called high heels, and without being considered “unmasculine”. Their shoes aren’t a sociopolitical statement. FWIW, I don’t wear stiletto heels. I wear sneakers, flip-flops, or stacked heel shoes (Harley boots or Frye boots or something similar, never more than 2” heels) when I’m not on the job (I work construction, so it’s steel-toed Red Wings that look kinda like hiking boots when I’m working).

And for some reason, my shoe choices are supposed to be some Grand Statement about my rejection of femininity, rather than (a) comfortable, (b) attractive, (c) practical, and (d) good for my feet. Hell, YES I’m jealous of men being able to choose practicality, comfort and good construction without the clothing police having something to say about it.

Just came to mind—I wonder if dance shoes are a good choice for looks and wearability?  Dancers have to look good but can’t go flinging their mules out into the audience.

if you must wear heels, ballroom dancing shoes are the best option, but only if you don’t encounter wet surfaces a lot, since the bottoms aren’t waterproof and will dissolve rather quickly.

Anytime i say I want to cut it, people say “oh no you can’t cut it’ Do you know that even my hairdresser doesn’t want to cut it?  I mean, I’m sure he would, but he highly discourages it.  I am in my early 40’s now, and really strong and some would say aggressive.  But for some reason, I’m insecure about cutting my hair.

yup; I’ve had long hair for 10 years, and finally cut it because it was too hot and the hair was getting too tangled and I got sick of it. I posted about it on facebook, and actually got a “noooooooo!!” comment. As if cutting my hair is some sort of tragedy… it was odd.

Which brings it around to sexual purity, because the conventional wisdom of the corset days was that poor women were public property, but the “good” upper-class girls indicated by their cinched waists were private property,

yup; “loose woman” literally meant one with a loosely tied corset.

If the shoe thing has been thrashed enough, does anyone want to tackle pierced ears?

I have pierced ears, and went thru a phase of really liking all sorts of dangly earrings… but now I barely ever wear any earrings at all. OTOH I have a tongue-piercing I really like, and would like to get my eyebrows pierced. Those appeal to me so much more than pierced ears.
In general, the thing with pierced ears tht does bother me is that it’s usually done before a girl can reasonably consent to it.

There was a brouhaha about heels in the UK last year when someone proposed legislation that would ban employers from making high heels part of women’s uniform in situations where they might be a safety hazard. Which was a bit crap; forcing women to injure themselves on pain of dismissal ought to be banned altogether. Even that halfhearted effort was shouted down by the tabloids with headlines like “Killjoy Unions Want To Ban Heels”. It was thorougly depressing.

ugh… yeah that is fucking depressing :-(

thirstygirl, I’m totally sympathetic to the pocket thing. What really blows my mind is when I see womens’ pants that have stitching or even patches that look like pockets, but are non-functional, or actual pockets that are too small to be useful. Utter craziness. Is it because most of these companies make or are part of a larger corporate umbrella with a company that makes purses, and they’re worried that women will cease buying purses en masse if they make it possible to carry anything larger than a nickel in a pocket?

well, I would if I could. Whenever I wear cargo [pants, I skip the extra luggage and carry everything in my pockets. However, there don’t seem to be any other kind of pants that women can wear that have enough pockets for this. Hell, women’s cargo pnts/shorts don’t, either. Which is why I prefer men’s cargo pants/shorts.

Yes I know Europeans still wear lots of fur.

they do? when? where?

Right, Sophonisba. Nobody should ever want to dress up or wear anything frivolous. That just makes us all Tools Of The Patriarchy™.

BTW, I hardly ever wear jewelry, dress shoes, pantyhose, or makeup. I’m just tired of that sort of radfem more-feminist-than-thou bullshit.

I used to wear heeled boots for looks, pretty much all the time. I remember walking home from school (thanks so much, hole in the bus service) in them, downhill for a substantial chunk of a mile, every day, and they hurt, but it never did occur to me to switch styles of shoes, at least not until my tastes altered.

Nowadays I live in flat-heeled boots of one kind or another (most often the steel-toed work boot kind), and if I have to dress up I wear ballet flats and fuck anyone who thinks they aren’t sufficiently professional. I still sort of like the look of certain heels, but at the same time they’re highly ridiculous in most situations. I like to be comfortable, and also highly value the ability to manage in some degree of comfort when the car doesn’t start and I have a surprise four-mile walk home with the more perishable groceries, or a flat tire, or a situation that requires running, or what-have-you.

<BLOCKQUOTE>This is why I don’t understand the Crocs hatred I’ve seen on this feminist blog (and others).</BLOCKQUOTES>

I don’t give a SHIT what other people think about Crocs, I’m wearing mine til I’m dead.

When I hurt my plantar fascia in dance class two years ago, my doc wrote me a scrip for them.  Within a month, the pain was gone, no surgery required.  Ugly?  Yup.  Don’t care.  If I go out of the house, that’s what I wear.  At home and in the homes of friends and family, I go barefoot.

On pockets in women’s clothes: I’m fat and pear-shaped. The only pockets that actually conform to my body and don’t stick out are jean “pork chop” pockets and those little horizontal slash pockets. Do women’s dress pants ever have them? No. They have diagonal slash pockets which jut out from my hips.

Furthermore, I’ve always found it ridiculous that they put pockets at the widest part of most women’s bodies - the hip line - just because it’s where you put men’s pockets. Why not have pockets that start below the widest part of the hip?

Finally, on Crocs: I live about three blocks from a Croc store, and some of the styles aren’t bad. I just hate the clogs. Actually, I hate clogs in general, but that’s because I’ve never figured out how to walk in the things.

On pockets in women’s clothes: I’m fat and pear-shaped. The only pockets that actually conform to my body and don’t stick out are jean “pork chop” pockets and those little horizontal slash pockets. Do women’s dress pants ever have them? No. They have diagonal slash pockets which jut out from my hips.

I have the exact same problem.  It is really fucking difficult to find pants with pockets that lay flat.  I actually did manage to find one style (NY & Co 7th Ave pants, size 16 tall—I buy all my pants there because they carry tall sizes in the store and are reasonably priced) this year and I bought three pairs, because I know that it’ll be another 5-6 year wait before I find them again.  And hopefully I don’t get any bigger between now and then, because right now I’m at the top end of the sizes at that particular store.

After I moved to Sydney I tried to buy a pair of what *I* call dancing shoes- you know, shoes for dancing in. I was in the Fancy-Pants Trainers Store and they still tried to direct me to the small section of extremely high heels because that’s what women wear out FOR DANCING in this city.

I finally said to the shop assistant- “Think of me as a gay guy looking for dancing shoes.” Once he wasn’t putting me in the mental category he had for women, he quickly found some extremely cute but comfortable pair of old-school trainers. When I hit the dancefloor some of the girls actually POINTED AND LAUGHED at my shoes, but hey, I was still dancing four hours later.

Sometimes this city does my head in.  There’s a lot of Gender Performance from both men and women.

I believe the reason why it is under-discussed is because, contrary to the comments here, it is not an issue worthy of being discussed.

There aren’t any jobs that require women to wear high heels. If you say that men will punish women who do not wear high heels because these men are sexist—which is certainly true in some cases, though the commenters here are saying ALL men are like this—then high heels are the least important part of the problem. If you are arguing that men in the workplace are sexist and judge women based on looks, then their physical attractiveness is going to be the key factor, not the shoes.

As a side note, men suffer 93% of workplace fatalities, and society seems to turn a blind eye to that. So I’m not surprised that shoes are also ignored.

http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfch0008.pdf (page 10)

@76: oldfeminist

In the past, many women on the street wore hats with feathers and other height-extenders.  Old movies depict haughty women as having very tall hats, often with big feathers, or tulle, sticking way up.  Maybe that was the same instinct.  Taller is more important.

That too, was intentional debilitation to display class status and mark oneself as private property. You can’t move around too freely when there’s literally pinned to your head a big-ass hat with twenty pounds of froofy shit on it.

On that note, I’m kind of unreasonably grateful to Coco Chanel for bringing menswear comfort and practicality into women’s fashion, at least to some extent, and putting corsets and ridiculous hats out of style. Did you know if you look at datelines of maternal mortality rates in western countries, they plummet right around the time corsets went out of style? Of course the patriarchal medical industrial complex will blame high maternal mortality rates of that time on midwives not washing their hands and credit the drop to the intervention of male doctors and their machines that go “ping.”

@159: keshmeshi

I do think it’s tacky for parents to pierce their babies’ or toddlers’ ears though.  Talk about seeing girls/women as not being much more than ornamental.

What burns my ass with the fire of a thousand suns are those elasticized bow headbands people put on baby girls, because god forbid a 2-month-old be taken out in public if she’s not gender-stamped.

I wonder if being socially deficient is a privilege sometimes. Sure, I never fit in, and my career prospects won’t be boosted by it (but then, chronic health problems kill most careers anyhow). But when people at work tried to get me to wear makeup or heels by complimenting my appearance in weird ways when I dressed for interviews, I just thought they were damn rude, instead of blaming myself for not fulfilling my feminine role better. “You’re pretty with make-up!” they’d say, and I’d reply, “I was always pretty, I guess you needed make-up to outline it for you.”

I have weak ankles. I wear mostly flats, sometimes wedges. This could be a problem in that ballroom dance is the only sport I’d like to eventually take up, but I’m sure if the day comes, I’ll find a pair of shoes with a modest heel and enough straps to keep me from injury.

None of this is a criticism of women who give into or agree with demands they wear such things as heels and make-up on a regular basis. I just think it’s an interesting off-shoot of my quirks that I can’t grasp subtle pressures. (I also am immune to hard sell sales techniques)

As a side note, men suffer 93% of workplace fatalities, and society seems to turn a blind eye to that. So I’m not surprised that shoes are also ignored.
Comment #196: Celda on 08/26 at 10:52 PM

Aww.  Concern troll is concerned.

Ooh, #196, all I need is a “feminists ruined child custody for everyone”  or a “women trick men into believing they’re fathers” for a bingo!

men suffer 93% of workplace fatalities

They should be more careful.

“Aww.  Concern troll is concerned.”

“a concern troll is someone who is on one side of the discussion, but pretends to be a supporter of the other side with “concerns.”

What I said was that high heels (a female problem) are not really an issue when compared to workplace fatalities (a male problem). So by saying I am a concern troll, you are saying that in reality I am supporting the side of high heels being the real problem?

“They should be more careful.”

Of course this is a troll, but for those who actually don’t know, men are the ones that work the dangerous (but necessary) jobs like logging, mining, construction, crabbing in Alaska, etc.

So unless you are suggesting that we can do without wood products, do without houses / buildings, or you know a way to make these jobs safer than they are, or suggesting that women doing the same job would die at a lower rate…

We’re talking about shoes, not workplace fatalities.

@205 - I don’t suppose you have any idea what the rate of on-the-job injury is for hotel chambermaids. Or sexual assault on female real estate agents.

@204 - It might seem like we’re pissing in the wind, but just talking to each other about all these weird little gendered expectations - how they started, how they manifest in our day-to-day lives, what we do to work around them or challenge them - does help.

What are you doing complaining about workplace fatalities in the US when millions of people are dying of cancer?

Wait, what am I doing giving a shit about cancer, when there are children dying of starvation?  They don’t even live long enough to GET cancer!!

Wait a minute!  What about the snowflake babies who die unborn from evil abortions??

WAIT.  What about all the miscarriages!! 

BUT HOLD ON.  There are entire SPECIES of animals going EXTINCT as we SPEAK!

FUCK THAT SHIT.  There are STARS EXPLODING that are destroying entire SOLAR SYSTEMS that could house entire PLANETS full of life!  Life that we’ll never even know existed!  One of those aliens could have grown up to cure AGING!

Man.  May as well not fucking blog at all.

I don’t suppose the troll also has any idea of the workplace injuries of women miners, female police officers and firefighters, or women in the military.

Who also in their private lives, get social pressure to wear shoes that can disfigure their feet and create other health problems, that the men in the same professions don’t.

Apples and pineapples are his comparisons.

@206 I understand that, and I am not proposing we start discussing about workplace fatalities.

This is what I am saying: It seems ridiculous for Amanda to be surprised that “society turns a blind eye” to the problem of high heels and why it “isn’t dwelt upon more by feminist writers”—why should that be surprising when a much greater problem about workplace health (fatalities) is also ignored?

“@205 - I don’t suppose you have any idea what the rate of on-the-job injury is for hotel chambermaids. Or sexual assault on female real estate agents.”

I don’t, but if you have some information then why didn’t you post it?

Further, are there any jobs that actually require high heels? By that I mean are a mandatory part of the dress code.

Celda is the weakest link.

@210 Naturally women working in dangerous jobs face equal, perhaps greater danger of injury and death as their male counterparts (Of course, according to snobographer these women should just be more careful).

However, the fact remains that 92-93% of workplace fatalities are by men. Therefore, that makes it a male problem. You know, like how although men do get raped or sexually asaulted, and some men even get raped by women, but by the stats rape is a female problem.

“Who also in their private lives, get social pressure to wear shoes that can disfigure their feet and create other health problems, that the men in the same professions don’t.”

Wait, didn’t you just say we were discussing workplace health / injuries / safety? For you to bring in social situations, well, that’s like…comparing apples and oranges.

Actually, the feminist dialogue about clothing may have influenced, for the better, women’s dress, over the last half century.

Compare the wardrobe expectations of the Mad Men (and earlier) eras for women: I remember my grandmother’s trips to the podiatrist, her bunions and corns, her disfigured feet from six decades of “women’s” shoes from the early 20th Century.

None of which I’ve been burdened with, because I’ve had the options of loafers and sneakers, primarily, in the ‘60s, exercise shoes from the ‘70s on, and comfy, but stylish shoes now. (I’ve worn spikes occasionally, more platforms or wedges, which may not be nearly as damaging, maybe.)

My life in heels has been limited in comparison to my grandmother’s, who died in 1960, and damn it, I think part of the reason reasonable footwear has been available for women in the later half of the 20th century and 21st, is feminism.

The towering heels of the 21st century are a throwback, but still, other options are available, and socially sanctioned, that weren’t for the women before second wave feminism.

All of which is why this discussion about gender expectations in footwear is so valuable.

Celda, I’m not sure crabbing in Alaska is the best example of a job that’s necessary for life as we know it. It’s mission-critical for the ratings of the Discovery Channel and the surf & turf industry, but it’s not exactly a cornerstone of the U.S. economy.

@211 - why don’t you google it yourself?

Anyway as feminists chip away at the social acceptability of excluding women from jobs like police work, firefighting, and construction, the gender-stats on work-related deaths on those jobs start to even out. So it seems the solution to your problem there is to support feminism.

Celda, I don’t believe 92% of workplace fatalities being men is that big of a deal, that’s why I’m not talking about it.  It’s not a topic I know much about, it’s not a population I concern myself with, and I don’t really care enough to go outside of my area of interest to do otherwise.  Clearly, you agree with me, or else you’d be saying more interesting things about the topic instead of telling us what we already know:  that we’re not talking about it.  Pot calling the kettle black doesn’t really boil the water that’s inside.

@214

However, the fact remains that 92-93% of workplace fatalities are by men. Therefore, that makes it a male problem. You know, like how although men do get raped or sexually asaulted, and some men even get raped by women, but by the stats rape is a female problem.

So men die (presumably because of complete accidents or negligence on the part of the men they work with in their male-dominated industries) and that makes it a male problem.  Men rape and that makes it a female problem?  Women wear high heels and incur injuries (because of pressure from men and women) and that makes it not a problem because no men are involved?  And you wonder why we think you are completely off-topic and trolling?  Do you listen to yourself when you speak/type?

Workplace accidents will be a much bigger feminist issue when women finally get equal access to those professions currently dominated by men.  Until then, I am not going to cry for the men who fight so hard to reserve the jobs that will get them killed or injured for themselves.

There are absolutely jobs where high heels are part of the dress code. It’s part of the uniform for many cocktail waitresses, for example. A couple months ago, a trade union council in the UK wrote a position paper on high heels as an occupational health and safety issue.

Say what you will about Boomer women (and you will, sigh) it was the great mass of Boomer women who had the expectation that a majority chunk of American women would both get a college education, and work in a “man’s” world.

And I think that’s one of the reasons things like girdles disappeared, and women’s shoes have gotten more comfortable.

(Don’t care what you think about Spanx, haven’t tried ‘em, but I’ve looked them over, and they are no where near constricting as that long-line panty girdle I somehow felt compelled to wear at 16 in 1966 when I weighed about 86 pounds.)

I have pierced ears as I’m part of a ‘culture’ that used to mark female children using pierced ears, although male children are more likely to have pierced ears nowadays as well.*

*I’m a black american.

Santino Rice and Austin Scarlet are on Lifetime right this moment talking to a woman who works in a brick factory, and about to enter a Brick Fest mother-daughter beauty pageant.

Mom is currently wearing tee shirt and jeans, and exercise shoes: but about to be “dolled up.”

Ah, why not have your fun, honey?

Three thoughts:

1. Crocs, in my opinion, are good for two things, and medical footwear is by far the most significant (after all, what other shoe can you literally just hose out?). They also apparently make comfortable, street-wearable slippers (especially for people like Maggie B who have persistent foot injuries).

2. High heels… I used to be more or less indifferent to shoes (as a somewhat overly laid-back guy, I mostly wear sneakers unless I absolutely have to wear something nicer), but when I found out how much pressure even a fairly small woman puts on the average heel spike, they started to weird me out.

3. For several years I’ve been considering getting a pair of Doc Martens. I don’t normally care for boots, but if they’re as comfortable as I’ve heard…

@217 Alaskan crabbing, not so important. Regular commercial fishing, which if you read the article is still extremely dangerous, is pretty important to anyone who likes to eat seafood.

If you look at the other jobs on the list, I’d say industries like logging, construction, and sanitation (garbage, recycling) are pretty important as well. 

@218 Are you seriously telling me to go prove a statement that YOU made? How about you consider the negative health effects of REQUIRED safety equipment that people wear in certain jobs that are male-dominated, and go look it up for me. Sounds good?

@220 Neither feminists nor women in general are clamoring to join fields like construction, roofing, or garbage collecting, as you claim. Moreover, as for things police work and firefighting, there are indeed feminist groups who push for female inclusion (which is good) but women as a whole do not aspire to these industries.

Are you seriously trying to tell us that women are begging to be allowed to become garbage collectors or farmers, but cannot because men are stopping them?

“So men die (presumably because of complete accidents or negligence on the part of the men they work with in their male-dominated industries) and that makes it a male problem.  Men rape and that makes it a female problem?  Women wear high heels and incur injuries (because of pressure from men and women)”

You’re kidding, right?

In the Schrodinger’s Rapist article, you can see dozens of women say something like:

“Though men do get sexually assaulted, women are the ones that have to live in fear of rape or sexual assault. Men cannot understand what it’s like to be a woman in this regard, it is a female problem.”

By the way, I’d love to see some proof that there is indeed pressure that forces women to wear high heels against their will.

For example, someone brought up the UK unions who were agitating for high heels to REMAIN—something like that (except the opposite) would be good support.

Re. #111: it’s a convenient way for straight men to have bodily contact with random women?

I have thought of this too!  It creates a dilemma when a man does that - do I stand my ground, which means sitting there with his thigh pressed against mine, which might have been his intention in the first place (eeeew) or do I move and let him have 1/3 of my seat?  There’s no right answer.

What the fuck is wrong with Celda?

Anyone have a clue?

What an asshole, is my first thought.

But there also seems to be some entitled male derangement, “It’s ABOUT MEN, DAMMIT, EVERYTHING IS ABOUT MEN, SO SHUT UP ABOUT YOUR FUCKING SHOES!”

Not that facts would shake Celda, whoever the fuck that is, but there are indeed women farmers, women in the fishing industry (A Perfect Storm, anyone?), women miners, in the military and so on and so forth.

In in my lifetime, I’ve watched women having to fight to get into construction, fight to be allowed in combat, fight to become miners—and the fight isn’t over.

That they had to fight, and still do, for those jobs that still aren’t considered “feminine” shows there was, and is, yes, male resistance.

But like I said, facts are foolish things to Celda, WHO KNOWS ALL, AND WANTS US TO SHUT UP ABOUT SHOES, WHEN MEN ARE DYING SOMEWHERE (AND IT DOESN’T MATTER THAT WOMEN ARE DYING IN THE SAME PROFESSIONS, IT JUST DOESN’T BECAUSE THEY DON’T COUNT) AND SHUT UP ABOUT SHOES!

Celda, your, um—well they’re not really logical arguments, so I hesitate to call them that—your rants—or whatever they are, reveal more about what’s inside your addled cranium, and a screwed up attitudes about men and women, than reality in the real world.

Gilliam, not true.  When non-verbal communication isn’t working, then you escalate to verbal communication.  Meaning:  use your words.  Tell him to stop touching you.  (And by “you,” I obviously mean “me.”  I’ve never had the nerve to have that awkward conversation, but I’m a bit motivated to try, next time.)

I have rosacea that gets pissed off if I wear makeup too many days in a row, so I mostly don’t wear makeup anymore.  A year ago, I developed agonizing plantar fasciitis in my right foot, so it’s arch-support orthotic shoes for me 90% of the time, mainly Danskos clogs.

Not being able to wear shoes that look right with my different outfits has bothered me much more than not being able to wear makeup.  The Danskos have been a lifesaver - they’re the only shoes that give me any relief at all - but damn, they’re not exactly things of beauty.  What I don’t understand is why they can’t make cute, low-heeled shoes with good arch support.  There are ways to make shoes good for your feet while still looking nice, but most shoe manufacturers haven’t seemed to twig to that fact yet.  It’s either super-comfy and ugly as hell, or cute foot-torture devices.  I wish I could find a happy medium.

Celda,

Neither feminists nor women in general are clamoring to join fields like construction, roofing, or garbage collecting, as you claim.

Oops.  Silly female me.  I forgot that when feminists advocated for full equality they meant for full equality except in icky fields that our vaginas don’t like.  Those are the jobs for the big strong penis-bearers.  How else can you hammer a nail or spread tar or drive a big truck?

By the way, I’d love to see some proof that there is indeed pressure that forces women to wear high heels against their will.

Did you try actually reading the thread?

Those are the jobs for the big strong penis-bearers.  How else can you hammer a nail or spread tar or drive a big truck?

Well, I point out that you don’t actually need a penis to drive a truck.  Although it does come in mighty handy for changing gears while keeping both hands on the wheel.

Rumblelizard- may I pimp Clarks, Rockport, or Vivo Barefoot? I don’t know if you can get them out of the Antipodes but Diana Ferrari are work appropriate and comfortable.

NZ ref alert: Both Minnie Cooper and the David Elman Pied a Terre range are the female equivalent of good guy’s shoes- well made, comfortable, built to last for years, neutral enough to weather fashion but with a subtly stylish edge that pulls an outfit together.

I may have been spoilt- NZ was rife with women wearing cute comfortable flats. There are just too many to choose from because in Wellington the base assumption is that you are going to be walking and don’t want to change shoes all the time. Which is why Sydney was such a shock to the system.

@PIATOR

BIG truck.  Anyone can drive a truck, but a penis helps you keep control of the largeness of the vehicle.  It’s been implied that they are related in some way….

I never much wore heels, always with teh honest cop out that I’m graceless enough just in flats.  Once I became and engineer, especially after the first field work where I was required to wear the same steel toed boots as the guys, I’ve never again worn dressy type shoes for work. 
I’m with Pixelfish (I think) who said she would just say no.  No to any job that requires I wear those things.  I am priveledged to have the option to make that choice and not have to worry about not having my job, and know it.

Nope, was Phoebe Fae way back @49 (sorry for the mix up)

bad Jim @ #232:

I can’t speak for everyone who wants a little bit of heel and arch supports, but my guess is foot construction and how one’s foot strikes the ground. I have high arches, and a long day (say, 18 hours) of being on my feet (work + recreational activites + household chores) kills me if I don’t have shoes with good arch supports. It’s not hiking, but I am still on my feet all day. Add in my style of walking (heavier strike on the heel instead of the ball of my foot—-I’m a short person with a long stride) and yeah—-no “flat” flats for me. I’ll wear moccasins (the kind without reinforced soles—-just suede bottoms; I like the shearling kind) around the house on a lazy Saturday, or in the evenings on cold winter nights, but as a general practice—-ouch.

Neither feminists nor women in general are clamoring to join fields like construction, roofing, or garbage collecting, as you claim.

And concern troll has proven that the stick is smarter!

In the places I can afford to shop for shoes (Ross, Payless), it’s damn hard to find anything stylish at all that doesn’t have a pointy toe or a big spindly heel on it. I’ll scan for round or square toes, find like four pairs, and when I pull down the box, there’s the big spikey heel. It’s a big reason I never wear skirts anymore, because all I can find that doesn’t have the pointy toe and/or the spiky heel are loafers that only work with pants. There used to be a time I could find dressy shoes with short, sturdy heels but that species appears to be nearly extinct.
The jobs I’m qualified for (I’m unemployed and looking right now) don’t usually require me to dress up, and my state (CA) actually prohibits employers from stipulating skirts for female employees in their dress codes (I think it might be the only one that does so far) but mixing it up once in a while would help in my advancement.

Regarding sidewalk chicken, what I do is keep to the right and, if necessary, hold my left arm at a 90-degree angle to block anybody who veers into me. I have had to nudge a man or two off my path. They don’t like it, but I don’t like being considered part of the sidewalk, so there’s that. There haven’t been any confrontations, just WTF faces.

And concern troll has proven that the stick is smarter!

The stick has learned the valuable lesson that it’s better to shut up and be thought stupid than to open your mouth and remove any doubts. The trolls not so much.

Well, I point out that you don’t actually need a penis to drive a truck.  Although it does come in mighty handy for changing gears while keeping both hands on the wheel.

Um… maybe this is TMI, but mine is neither large enough to reach the gear shift lever, nor prehensile.  What the hell is going on in NZ?

thirstygirl @176:
Pockets, yeah.  For awhile I stopped buying any women’s clothes that did not have usable pockets.  Then I went with the okay, if spouse was along, just a pocket big enough for an ID.  Now I am back to buying dressy women’s clothes without pockets, if it is specifically for going out with the spouse.  I own 3 bags - all small - and haven’t carried one as a regular thing in more than a decade.  How do I do that?  I am lucky enough to be able to get away with buying men’s clothes, even for business-lite.  My favorite winter dress pants are mens’ and have great pockets; most of the time bus-casual is acceptable in my office and I go with nice cargos with a polo or a tunic top.
Not a possibility for everyone due to job/employer requirements or body types, but it’s working for me.  Yes, I recognise I am lucky (and purposefully oblivious to most indirect clothing pressures).

Celda, as a female engineer who has worked in construction - FUCK YOU.

Long hair - I go through cycles.  Really short, grow it out to really long, really short.  I discovered I liked the shock it caused people when I did it the first time, but have added the explaination that I grow it out and donate it to Locks of Love (or another charity I used but can’t remember the name of) that make wigs for cancer patients.  I usually let the freak out go bit first, because anyone rude enough to have it ought to feel guilty and most do when I tell them I donated the hair.

Again, if you’re looking for affordable quality and comfortable shoes, I recommend going to the local high end department store (Nordstrom’s, in California) with a good shoe section, trying on until you find what you want and what fits (you can specifically ask for the “comfortable” brands, clerks in a high end store will know what you mean.)

Then order them for up to half the price from a website like Zappos, or even Ebay.

Works for me.

I really don’t mean this in a judgmental way, (and I know this is off topic, sorry) but is it generally kosher to have a commissioned salesperson spend time helping you figure out what you want if you know you’re just going to go buy it somewhere else?  I would feel kind of guilty doing that, in the same way that I would feel awful if I ate at a restaurant and didn’t leave the server a tip. 

And while that might be a workable way to obtain affordable, comfortable, “professional”-looking shoes, a person shouldn’t have to go through that much trouble just to find a pair of acceptable work shoes that won’t leave her feet/legs/spine mangled.

I would just add that I don’t think politicians DO have to wear heels to look professional, and that I think that a big chunk of what’s going on here is that they DO instead often have to wear them in order to look appropriately submissive to patriarchal norms. But that would just be wacky for the NYT to delve into, right?

Also, as someone who used to shop at Remix’s store in LA which carries a fucking fabulous selection of deadstock vintage shoes, my feeling is that women’s shoes used to a fuckload better job of looking stylish and comfortable. I used to have this pair of 1930’s pumps with a two inch heel that was also very wide and stable. I got compliments on those shoes all fucking day long, and they were completely fucking comfortable. Those were probably the prettiest shoes I’ve ever owned, but every vintage shoe that I bought there was a fuckload more comfortable while also being cute as hell. It also struck me that they were made more in the mode of men’s shoes- probably more initially expensive but super solid in construction and clearly designed to last. Part of the problem here is that women’s fashion is now designed for constant disposability, so you aren’t getting the same level of construction quality in shoes. It’s insulting as hell to think that women are supposed to be buying a completely different shoe wardrobe every two years, and our feet are paying the price for that fashion industry strategy.

I do wear heels, and I’ve read some moderate, reasonable change in heel height is actually good for your feet. I think it’s fun as hell to be two inches taller one day and back to 5’ 8” the next. I like change, and I like clothes. But the idea that we have to be in heels every fucking day is sick as hell, and as I’ve said, very much part of the backlash. This was by NO means always the case for women, although it’s being presented by the NYT as if it were long ago etched into some type of Rosetta Stone.

Back in the 60s my Barbie doll had tiny high heeled feet and I was so glad real shoes were not like hers…now 30 odd years later women are wearing the shoes my Barbie wore all those years ago in the age before the third wave of feminism. I’ve often walked down NYC streets behind women wobbling along in their stillettoes and noticed how ugly some of them looked from the back as the leg muscles seemed to be trying to pop out of their skin - so much for the making-their-legs-look-good-reasoning. When they wear pants with just a little bit of toe sticking out it reminds me of the lotus feet fetish that justified Chinese foot binding for millennia. And the high platform shoes bring to mind the chopines Venetian prostitutes wore that were so tall they required assistance to walk. We seem to have gone a few steps forward only to take several steps back.

When I was young I realized my mother’s toes were deformed due to her wearing heels that were probably never higher than 2” and swore my feet would never end up looking like that. I wear mostly flats and one-inch heels and occasionally I will wear two inch heels for special occasions but never higher. If you read only Vogue and Bazaar and the other high end fashion magazines you’d never know that shoes came in other styles than flats or stillettoes. Thank heavens for Zappos and similar sites that let you hunt for footwear by heel height.

Re pockets: my best friend loves to wear her scrubs as the type she wears has 4 pockets on the top and an additional 4 pockets on the pants. At the airport on my way to visit her I saw a fashionable young woman wearing pants that had sling-type pockets that went from the front to the back and I tried to catch up to her to ask her where she’d bought them thinking of all the stuff I could put in them and thereby ditch having to tote around a large handbag but alas she went through a gate before I could catch her. Maybe they’ll become a trend and pop up all over.

I have plantar fasciitis. I got it because after wearing heels 24/7 except for work-outs, I decided to switch to flats and wear heels only on special occasions.  I made an immediate, drastic switch and it antagonized my feet and brought me to my current condition. If I had done it gradually, there wouldn’t have been an issue. Heels never bothered me but I don’t wear stilettos - I wear platforms that elevate the entire foot and walk very comfortably in them.

Luckily I work at home and can wear my New Balance sneakers as much as I need to. But I worked once in an office where women were written up as being “unprofessional” if they didn’t dress femininely enough, and had their “hygiene” criticized if they were extremely overweight. So after review time, you’d see these butch women still in khakis and polo shirts but also wearing lipstick, earrings and heels, and honestly they looked ridiculous. I myself kept getting urged to “put my best foot forward” and was confused - I dressed very well - until someone clued me in that my boss preferred women to wear skirts and dresses. Fucking ridiculous. I don’t know what I would do now if I had to return to that kind of environment - I need to wear supportive, unsexy shoes all day for the sake of my health. I am not a decorative object.

Oh, and in addition to my New Balance shoes, I’ve found quite a few support sandals out there. Born makes some good ones. Crocs aren’t pretty but they are great for walking around the house, since I can’t go barefoot on my tile floors due to my PF.

I really don’t mean this in a judgmental way, (and I know this is off topic, sorry) but is it generally kosher to have a commissioned salesperson spend time helping you figure out what you want if you know you’re just going to go buy it somewhere else?  I would feel kind of guilty doing that, in the same way that I would feel awful if I ate at a restaurant and didn’t leave the server a tip.

Having worked on commission in the past, I’d ask that people avoid going to a store with commissioned sales staff and then buying online.  Particularly if you know you’ll be taking up a lot of the salesperson’s time. 

I’ve had people pull this trick, and it is bread from my mouth.  Not only does the salesperson not get a commission from you, they also can’t be helping other customers, and are loosing out on those commissions. 

Even if business is slow, many stores have a rotation for which salesperson helps customers as they walk through the door.  You may see several salespeople sitting around - but the one helping you was at the top of the list for the next customer, and goes to the bottom of the list when you leave.  On a slow day, you might only see a few customers, and they’re stuck with you, who isn’t intending to buy, instead of the next customer through the door who is buying.

I’m a supervisor at my workplace, and I’d never dream of telling anyone to dress in a more feminine way.  Not just because I work at a prison, but because it’s not something I want to make my business.

But it is my business to some degree.  I have suggested to one of the workers that she might want to wear shoes that she can run in.  She responded that most of her pants are hemmed for high heels since she used to be a cosmetics saleswoman.  I’m not about to tell her to get a new wardrobe, but I do feel as if there’s a potential safety issue with high heels.  Am I wrong to NOT tell her to wear flats?  I’ve told her my worry, didn’t mention it to anyone else, and no one else seems bothered, but there might be some liability issue if I don’t make her change.  Part of me says “Tell her what to do for her own good” while a bigger part says “It’s her business.”  Anyone have any thoughts on this?

I have suggested to one of the workers that she might want to wear shoes that she can run in.  She responded that most of her pants are hemmed for high heels since she used to be a cosmetics saleswoman.  I’m not about to tell her to get a new wardrobe, but I do feel as if there’s a potential safety issue with high heels.  Am I wrong to NOT tell her to wear flats?  I’ve told her my worry, didn’t mention it to anyone else, and no one else seems bothered, but there might be some liability issue if I don’t make her change.  Part of me says “Tell her what to do for her own good” while a bigger part says “It’s her business.” Anyone have any thoughts on this?

1. “High heels” is not the same as “not able to run.”  She may be better able to move quickly if she’s wearing heels suitable for the hem of her pants than in flats and tripping over the hems.  Likewise, flats are not always good for running or safety. They may have smooth soles so that you slip easily, or be poorly fitted.  Have you checked the soles of all the men’s dress shoe to be sure they have good grip for running rather than being smooth?

2.  Why is running needed in your workplace?  I know of few workplaces where you genuinely have to run, rather than the occasional quick walk.  My suspicion is that you’re imagining a requirement that isn’t really part of the job.

3.  If it is a safety issue, then I’d say it is your job to provide suitable safety equipment and standards for everyone.  Rather than picking on one woman for heels, make up a dress code that applies to everyone, and provide some sort of reimbursement for any employees who have extra costs (e.g., buying shoes, getting pants re-hemmed) in adjusting the wardrobe for the new dress code.  If you look at the situation in general safety terms, there are probably people with equally bad but less noticeable issues with their wardrobes.

4.  If it is a safety issue, perhaps you should hire a consultant to evaluate your workplace for safety and find out everything that needs to be done?  Making one woman buy a new wardrobe won’t do much for your safety liability if you think she’s needing flats because the floors are slippery or there is a hazard she’d have to run from.  Fix the problem, rather than blaming the employee. 

***

Just focusing on heels/flats for one woman is a sign that you’re looking at the situation in a discriminatory way.  You’ve happened to notice her, but safety issues apply to all employees, not just those whose wardrobes you notice.

It’s a prison, Ms. L.  Running isn’t part of everyday, but I’d hate to have someone become a hostage over a footwear selection.  On the other hand, if she’s comfortable it’s probably not a problem.  Unless it is, but thanks for your input.

3letterjon, I don’t know what this woman does that makes heels more dangerous or potentially harmful than they normally are, or why she should wear shoes she can run in, but she’s probably aware of the risks associated with heels, especially since you expressed your concerns to her.

Also, I’m told to evaluate my employees based on “professionalism” and that specifically includes attire.  And since I have two employees and she’s actually mentioned her shoes before I did, I don’t think I’m singling her out in any significant way.

As a matter of fact, others have suggested that I tell her to tone down her clothing and dress in a manner that is less provocative.  They’ve also suggested that I not assign her to high-custody prison units since she’s young and attractive and such.  I’ve asked what reasons they have other than her youth and attractiveness and am not at all shocked to find that no one wants to say that via email or in writing.  Someone once suggested that she not wear colored contact lenses since they might make the inmates look at her more.  I asked where they should look at her.  I’ve told her about all of these suggestions that were made to me, but I don’t think she’s in a hostile work environment if she doesn’t want to file any grievances.  I’ve asked, she’s said no.

What does she do?  She does what everyone else in a prison does: 90% telling inmates No the second time, 5% telling inmates how to get to Yes and what they want, and 5% telling inmates No and if they ask again they’ll be reported.  It’s a slightly different ratio for the officers, but still the same job.

This is no good for foot health.

3letterjon As a matter of fact, others have suggested that I tell her to tone down her clothing and dress in a manner that is less provocative.  They’ve also suggested that I not assign her to high-custody prison units since she’s young and attractive and such.

Sounds like your place of employment has a more-than-potential sexual harassment problem, if you’ve got other employees making nasty, sexist comments about her “provocative dress” and you as their supervisor tacitly condoning their sexist comments & harassing her for what & how she wears.

I feel sorry for your employee, with a shit of a boss like you.

Bears out everything I ever heard about US prison staff: crappy treatment of women, whether as prisoners or as employees.

Jesurgislac wrote:

Sounds like your place of employment has a more-than-potential sexual harassment problem, if you’ve got other employees making nasty, sexist comments about her “provocative dress” and you as their supervisor tacitly condoning their sexist comments & harassing her for what & how she wears.

I feel sorry for your employee, with a shit of a boss like you.

Jon runs a prison: it’s not like he has a high-quality customer base.  The lady in question apparently has direct contact with the prisoners, men who are convicted criminals, possibly violent, otherwise isolated from women, and in no form of society which is going to be either polite or politically correct to the staff.  Just plain common sense tells you that the rules for employees are going to be different from working in an insurance office.

And, to top it all off, if this lady were ever assaulted by a prisoner, she’d be able to sue the prison management for allowing the assault to occur, and could even sue on the grounds that they allowed her to wear footwear she couldn’t escape in or clothing which might have been provocative.

I don’t know exactly what this lady’s position is, but it sounds like employees who aren’t uniformed officers should still have a uniform of sorts, like khaki pants and a golf shirt, with decent, stable shoes.

I live near a business school, and I have one of those laugh-or-cry moments whenever I see the female students entering and leaving the building. Somebody has obviously told them that “professional dress” equals skirt, jacket, and heels, but it’s equally obvious that that’s ALL they’ve been told. Most of them wear skirts so tight you can clearly see both cheeks and so short you pray they’ve been taught to cross their legs, jackets that won’t close across their chests, and gaudy, three-inch stripper heels with straps and open toes that they can’t walk in.

If I was hiring a junior executive, and one female candidate was wearing conservative pumps with a half-inch heel, while an equally-qualified one was wearing sandals with a four-inch heel, I’d consider the first one to be more professional-looking.

I was taught to walk in heels by a gay male voice teacher, and I think I do a good job of it when I choose to. But most of the time I wear a conservative short-heeled dress shoe, and look more polished than my teetering colleagues.

I would love to see a study comparing female heel height to confidence and earning power. My guess is that it’s a strawman.

I don’t tacitly condone the statements, as I call people out on their comments and they back down.  She likes my approach, and I consulted with her about the issues.  We discuss these issues quite a bit, and I’d like to think she’s completely okay with telling me if she wants me to handle things differently.

I could make complaints on her behalf, but I don’t think it’s my place as long as she doesn’t think the working environment is hostile.  You’re right, Jesurglislac, that women get treated crappily in prison, but from what I’ve seen it’s mostly the inmates who create the problems while the staff overreacts to the inmates making problems.  Which doesn’t make it okay, but my employee knows how do deal with things when it matters enough for her.

As for the comments being nasty and sexist, I’ll go with the second but not so much the first adjective.  There is an element of protectiveness others have for her, and it’s not a “nasty” thing to worry about someone.  Working among convicted felons isn’t always the safest place, and it’s the other convicted felons not wanting their day messed up that keeps most of them in line.  And with the huge numbers of inmates receiving psychiatric medication each day, it’s not always up to the prison heads whether or not individual inmates act according to the rules.  Think what you like about our prison system (I’m still the biggest advocate I know for a complete overhaul,) but know that most of the inmates worked hard to get there.

And do I harass her for what she wears?  I asked her about wearing different shoes, she said her pants would need to get different hems or replaced.  I explained the issues, she understood them, and she continued wearing high heels on some days.  If that’s harassment, then I guess I’m Dabney Coleman in Nine to Five.  I could ding her on her performance review, but I’m not going to do that over something I consider minor and not entirely important.  As for what she wears, she rolled her eyes when I told her what was said.  Someone who is a size zero is going to get attention wearing anything, was more or less her response.  I figure my job as her supervisor is to tell her what people are saying about her, tell her to obey the policy, and then let her do her job.  And since she’s the best librarian on the staff, and I include myself in that, I’m not about to make her hate her job any more.

The department would say I’m a shit of a boss for not making her wear different shoes and clothing, but I choose to be the shit of a boss who allows her to wear what she wants to wear.  Sorry I mentioned it, though it’s nice to see that asking a real-world question only leads to name-calling and other bullshit.  By policy, “form-fitting” clothing is prohibited.  I’m not playing that game, I’m living it.  Thanks for no suggestions.  I’ll carry on.

You GOT suggestions, you just don’t LIKE them. Go off in a huff already, wouldja?

The suggestions were:

1. I shouldn’t look at her outfit. (But according to workplace policy, I should.)
2. I shouldn’t condone the opinions of others.  (Irrelevant, since I don’t follow their suggestions and I call them on their sexism.)
3. Where do you work, again? (Answered in my original question.)
4. Hire a consultant.  (The workplace rules are made 110 miles away in the State Capital, and we’re broke to the point where we all get unpaid furlough days.  Perfect time to hire an outside expert.)
5. Don’t worry about it since I’ve told her my concerns and she’s aware of them.  (I’m going with this one.)
6. You are a sexist shit.  Die already.  (No.)

Thanks for the input.

Jon, if there is a policy and her attire is within the confines of that policy, then it is your job to help her understand and stay within that policy and tell the other employees to STFU about personnel issues.

In case Celda is still here—it appears the death rate for female sex workers is much higher than that for even fishermen.

“The murder rate for an American prostitute is 204 out of every 100,000 making it the most dangerous job in America.”  Fishermen have a rate of only 129 out of every 100,000.
http://www.onlineschools.org/blog/stats-on-prostitution/

Actually looking up the numbers it’s even worse, 229 is just for homicide, not counting AIDS or drugs:
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/159/8/778

In this study, the authors estimated overall and cause-specific mortality among prostitute women. They recorded information on prostitute women identified by police and health department surveillance in Colorado Springs, Colorado, from 1967 to 1999. The authors assessed cause-specific mortality in this open cohort of 1,969 women using the Social Security Death Index and the National Death Index, augmented by individual investigations. They identified 117 definite or probable deaths and had sufficient information on 100 to calculate a crude mortality rate (CMR) of 391 per 100,000 (95% confidence interval (CI): 314, 471). In comparison with the general population, the standardized mortality ratio (SMR), adjusted for age and race, was 1.9 (95% CI: 1.5, 2.3). For the period of presumed active prostitution only, the CMR was 459 per 100,000 (95% CI: 246, 695) and the SMR was 5.9 (95% CI: 3.2, 9.0). Violence and drug use were the predominant causes of death, both during periods of prostitution and during the whole observation period. The CMR for death by homicide among active prostitutes was 229 per 100,000 (95% CI: 79, 378), and the SMR was 17.7 (95% CI: 6.2, 29.3). Deaths from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome occurred exclusively among prostitutes who admitted to injecting drug use or were inferred to have a history of it.

Celda would take solace in the fact that partially-male sex workers are probably even more likely to be killed, but that’s good info to keep in mind when men bitch about dangerous jobs.

And Ms Kate, thanks.  That’s pretty much what I do, think, and say.  I’m glad I’m not really missing anything other than my obvious sexist shit-being.