Sometimes when I'm reading an article about the Cheney madministration, written in what sounds to my jaded ear to be a bemused, or at the very least incuriously detached, tone, my self-preservation instincts kick in, and I get lost in a reverie of public stoning shaming, history judging, Hague trialing, and justice serving. Ahhh. When I come to though, the reality is so shockingly unsatisfying and morally indefensible that I think, This is simply not awful enough. I need more awfulness.
Which is when I turn to the ever-reliable NYT, which this evening provided this woeful example of class privilege meets the Fashion Industrial Complex. And before I could stick forks into my eyes to dull the pain, I read this far:
Even for someone who is used to wearing stilettos and monster platforms, the shoes for spring present a special challenge. You just can't escape the fact that they are taller, more outrageous, involving a great deal more design and expense but also, it must be said, a great many more opportunities to humiliate yourself. Who pictures herself on a gurney? And how do you explain it?
"It's not like you broke your leg skiing in St. Moritz," Candy Pratts Price, the executive fashion director of Style.com, said the other night. "That's a good story. But 'I fell off my platforms'?" Ms. Price smirked.
The desire to be taller, amazonian, seems to fit with a society that likes things pumped up — lips and S.U.V.'s, for example — but that is only a conjecture. A lot of women, in truth, don't need a McLuhan-like explanation of why they want the new shoes.
I am sorry to report you back to school, sisters, but some of y'all desperately need a McLuhan-like explanation (coupled w/ a radical feminist excoriation) of why you want the new shoes.
Oh my God, where to begin? With the egregious class snobbery (I'll see you on the slopes in St. Moritz!), or with the hair-tearing non-dilemma of choosing to wear the modern equivalent of Chinese footbinding (at a cost of $800 a pop), or is the answer behind door #3 and the reference to a "society that likes things pumped up"? Fake lips and stupid cars. Fake and stupid? Where do I sign!
I do think it interesting (as in, we live in interesting times) that these shoes are generally associated w/ two groups who express an exaggerated femininity through fetishized costuming: drag queens and prostitutes. Curious. I wonder if that is relevant somehow.
Oh, but there is always more, including this illuminating tidbit in which the author of this dreck is reduced to asking what the point is of having such shoes -- what, indeed! -- just before she assures us that they don't hurt if you don't breathe move.
At Avenue of the Americas and 55th Street I got out of a taxi. Taking the R train there was out of the question: not only are the heels high and slanted, but they also taper to a point the size of a nailhead. I had thought to take along a pair of ballet flats, which many bright women in New York on their way to a date or a party have no trouble rationalizing. It's like having a limousine without the expense and bother.
I mounted the curb. Now six feet tall, I suddenly felt less invincible than wretchedly vulnerable, to gross stares and gusts of wind. Michael's, barely half a block away, seemed a journey of several miles.
I clumped toward the big "Love" sculpture. I thought: "This won't do. Lunch will be over by the time I get there." Looking around — oh, what was the point! — I ducked behind a pillar and put on my ballet flats. Then I hurried on to Michael's, bolting past Ms. Wintour and the noontime crowd.
In other circumstances, like walking on the wall-to-wall at the office or at a party where I mostly stood, the Lanvins were actually comfortable, and I enjoyed my new height and the giddy looks of fright on the men in the office.
In reality you don't wear a pair of shoes like that if you carry a book bag and share trains with commuters. You invite looks of pity. Shoes like that serve a different purpose: seduction, fun, making men bark.
A friend of mine compared their glamorous constraint to wearing a tight Hedi Slimane suit to a party. "All you can do is lean at the bar," she said. "And make sure your drink comes with a straw."
One does wonder what is "fun" about being imprisoned by one's footwear and rendered immobile or what is "seductive" about tripping, tipping over, or galumphing along like a drunk and teetering giraffe. As for men barking, I know not of these things, though, frankly, it doesn't sound terribly appealing.
Why we have created a culture in which women pay the equivalent of about 1/10th the annual income of a person living in poverty for "glamorous constraint" to be hobbled by fetishized trappings of the most cartoonish femininity -- and for what, lord, what?? -- is something that'll have to be addressed another day when I am feeling much, much, much stronger, say, in 2048.
