After every woman of our generation ruined their feet, now the fashion designers want to do it again..I think they are in bed with the podiatrists...LOL
Head over high heels
Putting your foot down about fashion
By Annie Culver
From UnderWire
Who’d think a chat with Frederick of Hollywood more than 20 years ago could change a woman’s walk in life?
The late Frederick Mellinger created an empire from fantasies of how the ideal woman should look. Five-inch heels were a key part of his vision.
“High heels,” he told me in a fateful interview, “throw a woman’s weight forward, elongate the legs, slim the ankles, accentuate the calves and give a woman a delightfully coquettish walk.” If that wasn’t enough, he added, “I always love to see a woman in high heels because she looks so helpless up there on those stilts.”
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Stilts, indeed. Shoes as political commentary? The next day, I scooped up the pumps that lingered in my closet and delivered them to Goodwill. It was my simple yet proud protest. For the next decade, my shoes were flat and built for comfort. I opted for the likes of silver oxfords that set off airport metal detectors.
In the late ‘80s, I took off my blinders and noticed many savvy professional women strutting about on stilts once more. Maybe they weren’t five inches high, which could have thrown the wearer’s confidence off balance, but they were spike heels nonetheless. I watched how these women walked. Hardly helpless. Heels somehow softened the manly look of the padded-shoulder power suits we felt we had to wear to get ahead.
Added to that, men scarred by the Vietnam War and the mayhem of campus demonstrations (where not even Jane Fonda wore high heels) began to turn their heads once more at women who relinquished utilitarian footwear to be up there on those teetery stilettos once again.
Then one day my Pisces (read: latent foot fetishist) boyfriend lamented, “How come you never wear high heels?” He gave me a blank blink when I told him about Frederick of Hollywood.
So I corralled a girlfriend (because I knew I’d have the cunning to rationalize a wedge into a spike and buy the wrong thing) and vowed to shop for heels at least three inches high. The more I tried on, the more I felt like I was on the observation deck of a skyscraper.
The shoe clerk and my girlfriend had just about lost their patience when the clerk said, “I’m going to bring out the ones women wear for comfort. These are for women who have to stand on their feet all day.”
I shrugged. “Why would anybody stand around in high heels all day?” I never did get an answer to that question, but I toted home a pair of surprisingly comfortable black patent slingbacks that cost a bundle.
The odd thing was, nobody at work even noticed. So I bought a pair in fire-engine red. Still, nary a word. What’s the point if nobody pays attention?
The foot fetishist in my life finally ‘fessed up that he only liked heels with closed toes and heels. It was more of a mystery that way, he said. This time I gave him the blank blink.
I found myself thinking through my day planner each day to see if heels would fit what I had on tap. If I knew I’d spend the day at my desk, heels were easy, but who’d see them? If I was meeting with Julia Child and Richard Simmons for back-to-back interviews, probably not. And if I’d be out with a photographer on an enterprise assignment, it would definitely call for cowpie-kickers.
When I went to work for myself, I started wearing slippers most of the time, saving heels for first meetings with new clients. Otherwise, I put ‘em on when I’d play dress-up for a guy or pluck the ones with closed toes from the closet when all the champagne glasses were in the dishwasher.
I was not the least surprised to find a de rigueur scoop on ruby-red-rhinestone stilettos in a recent issue of a fashion mag. Originally designed for Marilyn Monroe back in 1953, these limited-edition reissues feature 1,600 twinkles per shoe and currently sell for $1,100 a pair at Neiman Marcus and Saks. Think of all the crystal champagne glasses that’d buy. No, this is a quantum leap I’m not quite ready to make.
The New York Times recently featured a profile of the controversial sociologist Shere Hite (remember The Hite Report?) and noted that Hite showed up for the interview at Britain’s staid Institute of Directors wearing a tight skirt and “impossibly high” shoes. The high heel is gaining momentum once more.
My girlfriends, it turns out, are of two minds on the subject: those who routinely wear heels to work and those who only slip them on in the bedroom. Oddly, their politics are not all that different. Pro-choice liberals, without exception. It’s their career choices that separate them. The gal pals who choose an elevated view for work are engaged in fairly traditional occupations. Several are in managerial positions. Those who restrict heels to the boudoir engage in more artistic endeavors (in more ways than one, I guess). And then there are the crossovers, like me, who can see the value of spikes on the bed or in the boardroom.
Some workplaces, however, don’t lend themselves to heels. It’s rare you’ll see a woman wearing heels at Microsoft, for example. I once wore a pair of high-heeled boots to a lunch meeting with one of my editors at UnderWire and nearly broke an ankle negotiating a steep, coarse gravel path to the cafeteria. That gravel almost destroyed a fine pair of boots, too.
Over the last couple of decades, I’ve tempered my feminist reactions to the likes of Frederick of Hollywood. Besides, how much credence can you give to a guy who touted racy get-ups for women and wore plain white boxers himself? Yep, when I inquired about his underwear during our interview in his Milwaukee hotel suite, he bared his double standard: a dresser drawer full of neatly folded white boxers.
I still think of Frederick Mellinger when I put on my stilts. And the less I wear them, the more I feel like a coquette when I do. A fleeting coquettish moment can make a woman feel good. Provided it’s not misconstrued as sheer helplessness, that is.
Annie Culver is a Seattle writer and editor whose work also appears in CitySearch.com and Salon.com. She is a regular contributor to UnderWire. |
