The politics of shoes

Naomi Wolf 's thesis in The Beauty Myth (1991) was that the 'beauty industry' keeps women down by demanding the attention to our appearances that it does. It siphons off physical and mental energy from other pursuits. It drains our purses. Sometimes, as in the case of cosmetic surgery, it kills us. Her book asks questions like:

• What could we accomplish with the 45 minutes we spend every morning doing our hair and putting on makeup if we put that same time and energy into our careers? Or politics?
  
• How many battered women's shelters could we fund with the money we spend on face cream?

Right after Geraldine Ferraro was nominated for Vice President, a shoe company ran an ad in a women's fashion magazine with the tag line, "Every woman needs a platform to speak from," over a picture of an admittedly hot shoe with a three-inch platform. I knew right then that Ferraro was going to lose. A 3-inch heel, be it platform or spike, is, it goes without saying, most emphatically not the sort of platform we needed. The advertiser viciously trivialized the platform Ferraro was running on. The ad's creators overtly sought to channel all our political ambitions into a "suitable" direction for women and girls, and away from real power--as Wolf points out, much in our consumer society does. It's almost as if the shoe guys were saying,

"It's ok girls. You aren't ready for the White House, but here's this cool consolation prize--a pair of shoes you could break your ankle falling off of. Be careful when you walk, but hey. At least you'll look sexy! which is all you girls really want out of life anyway, right? Not to mention that we guys are much more comfortable if you stay in that space, ok?"

Now Dr. Isis has some truly hot shoes in a recent post. I bet she looks spectacular in them. And I am not, repeat not, criticizing her for wearing them. I like them. And given her station in life, they are obviously not the consolation prize. But Dr. Isis and I grew up in very different times. I was just coming of age when the second wave of feminism hit young women of my generation like a tsunami, and that, believe it or not, has a lot to do with how I feel about shoes.

Rape crisis centers and battered women's shelters sprang up everywhere in the '70s, as did self-defense classes for women. And one of the things I learned early on was that high heels are literally crippling. For one thing, they actually damage your feet, legs, and back. No biggie--lots of things we consider fun or fashionable are not good for us. Take chocolate, for example.

But feminists back then equated spike heels in particular with the ancient Chinese practice of foot-binding. If it was hard for a woman to walk, and her activities were thereby severely restricted, it was obviously going to be easier to keep her in her place--to wit, submissive and dependent. And as the women who ran the self-defense classes pointed out, it is damn difficult to run, kick, or fight wearing spikes. (Although removed from the foot, they do make pretty good weapons.)

So to me shoes are important to mobility. If I'm not mobile in them, I won't buy them. These are my office and classroom shoes. They are simply the most stable, comfortable shoes I have ever owned. They are Brooks and you can buy them here (although I got mine cheaper on e-bay). I have two pair (the other pair is tan) and if they ever start making them in purple, Dr. Isis, I shall have a pair of them, too!

Second Life, mainly

I should blog on shoes more often. That one's gotten more hits than anything else I've done--but no comments. Leave some comments about my shoes, ladies!

But. As promised, here are my thoughts on Second Life:

1. I spent about two hours the first night building an avatar. That's two hours of my life I will never get back. So thought number one is that Second Life is (a) time consuming, and (b) consumes time that might be better spent elsewhere (see #6).
2. It was frustrating from the very first, because if I were going to have a Second Life (hereinafter referred to, for the sake of brevity, as SL) I would want it to be a truly mind bending experience. I would want to experience life from a totally different point of view. I would want to really learn something. I would want to be a dog. SL won't let you do that. You can "build" a dog and "script" it to follow you around, but you can't be one. Which makes thought two that people don't really want a Second Life. They want a do-over of the first one.
3. I am not (and cannot be within the limits of SL) satisfied with my avatar. She neither looks like me nor looks like what I might like to look like if I were, say, able-bodied, or simply just better-looking. So thought number three is that other avatars I saw on line are probably imperfect expressions of their owners as well, and therefore SL might not be too effective insofar as it's intended to let people live out a fantasy.
4. The avatars I saw were indeed fantastic. A lot of them looked like fantasy fiction or sci fi characters. Some may have belonged to the kind of people who hang out at medieval festivals--caped and bearded and booted and all that. Although I didn't see any avatars with wings, I understand that you can add them! Thought number four, therefore, is that SL is inhabited by people who are not happy--or at least not fully satisfied--being who they are, where they are, when they are.
5. Some people have businesses and make money on SL. My first thought is that I would open a psychotherapy practice: Some of those people probably still need therapy! So the fifth thought on SL is that people who are happy with their lives will more or less replicate it on SL, which makes it sort of redundant, and therefore unnecessary. Which is why I won't be back after today.
   
6. Or I could open a bookstore. But I make a choice every day to continue to be a psychologist because I like what I do. Thought six, therefore, is that people on SL would rather do something else. Which raises the question, then why don't they? Might not all the effort (and money--you can spend some real bucks "in world") be better spent making your only real life count for something?
7. But here's the real kicker. Research, clinical, and my own experience all tell me that in life (specifically, in group therapy, the transference, the workplace, and the family) people will sooner or later reenact whatever issues they have going on elsewhere. Sure enough, in just a few hours on SL the other night, I saw people rejected, ignored, pestered, and one guy suggested that "everybody get naked". So my final thought on SL is that even if you don't want it to, your personal frustrations and limitations are going to follow you onto "the grid" and you will inevitably find yourself disappointed in the same ways that you are in life (so take the advice offered in #6 and put your energy into working through your issues in the here and now!).

There were 57,646 people logged onto the grid when I got there. That's kind of scary.

Shoes

But before I get to Second Life, I just have to weigh in on this shoe thing.

Here are my favorites:

These are so awesomely comfortable that I feel guilty wearing them to work, which undoubtedly limits the range of Hotness I can aspire to on RateMyProfessors.com.

See, to me, the real revolution is when we can wear comfortable shoes (like men do) without being accused of being dumpy, frumpy, dorky, or otherwise not feminine enough.