The whole beginning of this piece is about a lady in Palo Alto who objected to the emoji her phone suggested when she typed "shoe":
“It was the first time I noticed and stopped in my virtual tracks and stared at the stiletto heel that auto-populated,” [Florie] Hutchinson said. “It was the emoji that broke the camel’s back.”I didn't know the word "auto-populate" or that there was something called the Unicode Consortium’s emoji subcommittee that you could write to about your objections to emojis. The Palo Alto woman recommended "a ballet flat, a shoe that reads as female but not seductive or sexualized." She was especially concerned about children seeing the stiletto shoe:
“My daughters are already being confronted by these gender-stereotypical norms, totally subconsciously,” Ms. Hutchinson said, “while all of us are having this very vocal conversation about gender biases.”Anyway, let's scroll past the history of high heels — men wore them too* — and look at the end. Does it say that The Reckoning will cause high heels to become unwearable? They've always been hard to wear, because they are uncomfortable and hobbling, but they may become impossible to wear because they say something that — like sexy remarks in the workplace — you won't want to say anymore.
But that's not where the NYT article goes:
Last year, in The New Yorker, the writer Mary Karr called for the uninvention of high heels. It seems more likely that they will be reinvented. Two companies led by women have developed ergonomic high heels whose insoles are designed to promote stability and even weight distribution, and prevent heel-related hospital visits....I clicked through both to the Mary Karr article and the supposedly "ergonomic" high heels. I didn't see any reason to believe "ergonomic" high heels are anything but somewhat less bad high heels, so let me try to end this with a bit from Mary Karr's piece:
Oh, womenfolk, as we once burned our bras could we not torch the footwear crucifying us?... Our feet and spines will unknot, and high heels will fade from consciousness along with foot-binding and rib removal to shrink your waist. The species may stop reproducing, but who the hell cares.No question mark. Who the hell cares.
By the way, "The species may stop reproducing" makes me notice that no one says "Fuck-me shoes" anymore, or so it seems to me, but "Fuck-me shoes" has its own Wikipedia page. Excerpt:
Prominent feminist Germaine Greer brought what had been an "obscure" term to more mainstream notoriety when she used it in 1995. Greer used the term in referring to British journalist Suzanne Moore's alleged "hair bird's-nested all over the place, fuck-me shoes and three fat inches of cleavage." Greer made the remark in response to a column Moore had written about Greer in The Guardian, where Moore had mistakenly repeated an incorrect rumor that Greer had a hysterectomy as a voluntary decision to have herself sterilized....Tripping into that female-on-female aggression makes me assume that the weapon, the stiletto,** will be kept as an option for a long time to come.
___________________________
* Would Prince be alive today if he hadn't worn high heels?
** The arm that is the foot.
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81 comments:
Maybe this is just a swipe at Melania.
People who opt out of reproduction just opt out of the next generation. So many liberals are opting out of reproduction it gives me hope for the future.
The assumption that I want symbols instead of words is really annoying. Cruse you first world problems.
Amy Winehouse sang it. Do we miss her, or what?
Drag Queens will give up their high heels when you pry them from their cold, dead fingers.
She was especially concerned about children seeing the stiletto shoe
I hope she didn't have a panic attack.
Just last night I laid awake in bed worrying about weaponized high heels and social justice for women. Then I thought about getting a new chain for my chainsaw and was able to return to sleep. It was a rough night.
Thankfully, today is Sunday and I got to sleep in.
And "no", I don't miss Amy Winehouse.
"Amy Winehouse sang it."
Thanks for the link to the video. The song is discussed in the Wikipedia article, but watching the video made me want to read the lyrics carefully. It's certainly not a celebration of the shoes. The lyrics are very critical of the women who wear them. Notice women attacking women: The shoes are used as a weapon by women to beat out other women and they are used as a basis for criticizing women, as you can see in the lyrics:
'Cause you all look the same..
But you end up with one-nights-stands...
In the morning you're vexed
He's onto the next...
Every week it gets worse
At least your breasts cost more than hers...
Without girls like you
There's no nightlife
All those men just go home to their wives...
You should have known from the job
That you always get dumped
So dust off your fuck me pumps
Just yesterday, wearing stilettos and having sex with men at work was the ultimate in feminism- see Sex and the City. But now, it is the sign of repression.
Man, society is traveling fast.
So one other thing we know about this poor lady in Palo Alto - she never trained or danced ballet.
If there is a more physically and socially unhealthy place for womenI am not aware of it.
Assuming that the universe of possibilities is white. And aspirational middle class.
Sheesh, she can't even Snowflake well.
Maybe she should have insisted on Toms.
-XC
I can't be the only man on the planet that reads nothing sexual into women's shoes, and wonders why they don't always choose footwear appropriate to the task at hand.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the task at hand.
Go long unisex gray smocks. You heard it here first.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the task at hand.
Maybe the hand is not where the task is.
I think Amy Winehouse is fabulous. A singular unique talent in a pool of talent-less Clone Katy Perry Stepford Wife pop-stars.
has it's own
Watch out, auto-correct actually forces this error now.
Long before Prince, high heels were de rigour in the Restoration Court of Charles the Second: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_II_of_England_409151.jpg
In the Middle Ages, I understand, the Church had sumptuary police to ensure that the lower classes did not wear styles or colors to which they were not entitled, especially shoes with curly toes.
The mid-Twenty First Century will see the advent of feminist sumptuary police, to strip women of shoes with too-high heels and padded bras.
Cleavage, heels and yoga pants are harmful triggers that create an overly-sexualized workplace.. They should be abolished.
I can't be the only man on the planet that reads nothing sexual into women's shoes,
You've obviously never seen shoe fetish magazines.
The question about them I have is who reads them ? Men or women?
My mother lived to 103. When she was in her middle 90s, her two nieces, one of whom was 80 at the time, were complaining about the ravages of old age. Her retort was, "When I was 80, I was wearing high heels."
She had her own apartment until she was 100 when she moved in with my sister.
The high-healed night life --it's not so glamorous.
Maybee -@ 8:24 - excellent. I think Sex and the City was written by a gay man. I watched Sex in the City for entertainment. It left me thinking -I don't know women who behave this way. This is how gay men project how women behave. I could be wrong.
I had a friend who was thrown out of a mafia owned restaurant in Chicago while his date swung a high heeled shoe in defense. Don't underestimate the power of a stiletto ...
The woman with the nice wardrobe and the ample cleavage: I have mentioned that she wears nice shoes: from serious to fun to flirty. On infrequent occasions she wears high heels to the bar. High heels, and even higher heels. This attracts attention.
Apart from the ample cleavage she is slender but not too skinny. So: in high heels and higher heels she cuts an impressive figure. Men stare. They stare more when she crosses the room. Or leans over to take a pool shot. These actions attract still more attention.
I do not profess to know why she decides on a particular day to wear the high or higher heels; she is dressed well, but usually not in a nightclub way. There must be a decision-making process that is layered and faceted. Or it is intuitive, and easily decided upon in the morning when selecting shoes. Either one. Again: I don't profess to know. Or even sound like I might know.
When she sits at the bar she is at her regular, accustomed height. There is no apparent clue to the high and higher heels, other than the guy with the foot fetish is paying even more attention to her feet. Foot fetishes: again, I don't profess to know. Or even sound like I might know.
But when she stands: she is now noticeably taller. High and higher heels will do this to someone's height, I understand the concept on that one. But it is mildly jarring: you are used to a certain height discrepancy, and now it has been changed. She is up here, now. How you carry yourself in conversation adjusts slightly to the new stature, both physically and subconsciously, if you include self-consciously to mean that you are plainly conscious of it. But tyring not to think about it. She is up here now.
And that means the cleavage is up here now, too. Of which it is hard not to be conscious. There seems to be a way she carries herself that is different, too, and not just in the ergonomics. A boost of confidence, perhaps. Yes: boost, high heels, you see what I am doing there. Maybe it is a stature of complex and intersecting dynamics. Because she is dynamic in those heels, high and higher.
- james james
Women shouldn't wear high heels - You'll poke your eye out!
I think I'm just going to hide under the bed until this "Reckoning" thing is over.
Ann Landers said that high heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead.
Hey, hey James James; I wait for the next update from your Seattle Bar.
This week's report sounds straight out of Toby Keith's, I Love This Bar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS44gI9SuHY
"And the girls next door dress-up like movie stars."
High heels aren't going anywhere. They enhance appearance too much.
Women will continue to embrace their chains.
High heels aren't going anywhere. They enhance appearance too much.
Saudi women wear them under burkhas. Of course, once they are home they take off the burkha but I think it is psychological.
A friend at work wondered what the Reckoning would do to the Rapper music industry.
Palo Alto? Ah, here's rich lady doesn't have anything important to worry about. Got it.
You should have known from the job
That you always get dumped
So dust off your fuck me pumps
Friendship with "benefits" or, effectively, polygamy without commitment. I suppose this is why political/social congruence was so selective.
So, war on women, men, or babies, or just collateral damage?
The stiletto high heel is modern woman’s most lethal social weapon. First imagined in the 1930s but not realized until postwar technology made it possible in the early 1950s, the stiletto is a visual slash born to puncture and pierce.
From Design and Violence: The Stiletto Heel, by Camille Paglia.
High heels could be weaponized to fend of unwelcome and welcome (e.g. masochistic pleasures) aggressive advances.
A squirt gun may also be effective. Down, boy, girl, whatever.
Daniel Jackson said...
"Hey, hey James James; I wait for the next update from your Seattle Bar. This week's report..."
Thank you!
Although I post more than weekly: pretty much everyday I post an update here, somewhere in the Althouse Mystery House. The one with strange hidden rooms and the hallways that go to unexpected places.
- james james
"High heels aren't going anywhere. They enhance appearance too much."
Some may think so, but I've always thought they were unattractive. They look uncomfortable to wear and walk in, and their sharp points at toe and heel make them look like fearsome weapons, not sexy attire.
Perhaps my reaction is shaped by the time and place I grew up: I was born in Indiana but grew up from age 8 in Florida, hitting my teens at the tail end of the 60s. The females I found attractive, girls my age, did not, in that era or that environment, wear high heels. That was what "old" women wore...it was old-fashioned clothing.
(Another fashion item I've always found hideous, and also because I associate it with old, "mean" women, are cat-eye glasses frames. They're also pointy, for what that's worth. Maybe I just have castration anxiety.)
Philippe Sollers's _Women_ offers countless readings of the current situation. Apparently France went through it years ago. ...'s in original
"I can see her now one summer day, lying on the bed ... Our first time ... She hardly knew how to make love. She kept shouting "No! no!" just as I was about to enter her ... I was taken aback ... How could someone so advanced, well-informed and subversive be so ignorant of the details? It was too true for her ... But what astonishing progress soon afterwards ... What amazing progress into vice ... What a convincing proof that vice and purity are one and the same force, in which the devil immediately recognizes his own ... The devil ... That's to say, god's most valuable ally, his complete unconscious double ... So very quickly Flora became an expert on passion ... As earnest as if she were engaged in some special kind of ascesis ... In a political or even a military campaign ... Bravely into the breach ... She started buying enticing underwear, which I imagine she tracked down through specialist magazines ... She went to see films; she did research; she systematically set out to make up for lost time ... I was the sorcerer's apprentice ... The conductor unable to control his crazed orchestra ... Now, hardly had I arrived at her place when she jumped on me, closed my mouth, and came and sat on my lap, and attacked me as no doubt she supposed a man must do with a woman ... I had to be a woman ... What she wanted to avoid at all costs was not only thinking about what was happening, but also seeing me rather than herself ... I was just a projection of herself ... One of her pseudopods ..."
p 34-35
Fun fact: Tina Brown, left the New Yorker to start Talk magazine with...Harvey Weinstein and his money.
Whoa, extra, comma
Maybe I just have castration anxiety.
Now we're getting somewhere in your therapy, Cookie! ;-)
Weapons of female competition.
Women blame men for what women do to each other, or themselves.
Men, other than in rare cases, as noted above often homosexual or not very masculine, rarely notice anything but truly overt sexual signals from attractive women.
And women doing the sexual signalling get offended when they draw attention from the wrong men.
I read where all the women are wearing black to one of the awards shows. This is to protest sexual harassment. This will probably be a lean year for nip slips, but there are some little black dresses that are more an enticement to than a protest against sexual harassment.......A more effective form of protest would be to wear LaVar Ball's five hundred dollars sneakers to the red carpet. They're ergonomic and what better way to demonstrate against racism, sexism and Trump than by wearing overpriced sneakers.
Weapons of female competition.
Women blame men for what women do to each other, or themselves.
Men, other than in rare cases, as noted above often homosexual or not very masculine, rarely notice anything but truly overt sexual signals from attractive women.
And women doing the sexual signalling get offended when they draw attention from the wrong men.
Buwaya gets it. As usual.
The Reckoning may be the end of high heels, but high heels won't be the end of the Reckoning.
Since may women don't know what they want, and don't seem to want what other women want, and often change their minds about what they think they want, there can be no end to the Reckoning.
Since may women don't know what they want, and don't seem to want what other women want, and often change their minds about what they think they want, there can be no end to the Reckoning.
I reckon you're right.
“tim in vermont said...
People who opt out of reproduction just opt out of the next generation. So many liberals are opting out of reproduction it gives me hope for the future.”
Liberals control education, popular culture, and the government. They don’t have to bother with the expense, hassle, and work of raising their own kids. All they have to do is convert yours.
The species will stop reproducing because male/female interactions will be made illegal by the #MeToo movement, not by banning high heels. Still, nice to see them admitting that was their goal all along.
[Adora treads heavily on Moist's foot with her boot]
Adora Belle Dearheart: What's sticking into your foot is a steel-tipped four-inch stiletto heel, the most dangerous footwear in the world. Now I know what you're thinking. Could she push it all the way through to the floor?
Moist Von Lipwig: [groaning] No...
Adora Belle Dearheart: To tell you the truth, I'm not sure about that myself. But I'm going to give it a damn good try.
- from Terry Pratchett's "Going Postal"
A lot of stepping around the obvious.
It's all 'bout that bass, 'bout that bass, no treble
Back in my college days (1982-ish) the feminist group on campus had a "Stamp out High Heels" campaign, complete with a flyer with a well-rendered, cartoon-style image of a woman's foot in a pump with an insanely high heel, very much exaggerated for effect. Shoes with heels like the cartoon only existed in strip clubs.
I had several years of not owning a TV; imagine my shock years later when I am watching a late-night talk show for the first time in years and the young female actress of the day walks onto the stage, wearing the 'cartoon heels'! I never thought I'd see the day when a shoe with heels that high would become the norm for anyone. Instead of moving away from such things, women clearly doubled down. Good going feminist celebrities!
My wife used to come home from work, take off her high-heels, and complain about how they hurt her feet. I took advantage of this to rub her feet with lotion to get her to relax for a few minutes. However, throughout our 37 (so far) year marriage, I have always encouraged my wife to wear comfortable shoes. But she thinks they look sexy, and I guess her opinion counts every bit as much as my own.
RNB said...
. . . to strip women of shoes with too-high heels and padded bras.
Shoes with padded bras? That will be interesting. Probably not, though.
And women doing the sexual signalling get offended when they draw attention from the wrong men.
Buwaya's comment bears repeating. Has there been a case of sexual harassment by a woman against a man she had the hots for? Except as as retaliation for being scorned, e.g., Anita Hill, Potiphar's wife, etc.?
High Heels emphasize a slim ankle, reshape the calf and extend the leg, and uplift the buttocks (note the ankle chain...the tramp stamp of the day).
Not all high heels are uncomfortable. Six inch, pointy-toed/thin strappy stilettos, yes, but who wears them very long?
Erica Jong, popularized the zipless fuck in "Fear of Flying" (1973) and come-fuck-me shoes in "Serenissima" (1987) now titled "Shylock's Daughter" (with a very creative ending).
https://youtu.be/MqTkfQtrr5o
@urbane legend...Shoes with padded bras?
Ha! Toe cleavage is a turn on for many.
With a high enough heel, women can’t help but walk like Miss Piggy. I can’t help but snicker.
An Elmore Leonard character in Get Shorty talked about fuck me pumps in 1990 (novel) and a year or two later in the movie.
Ive never understood women's fashion. Why would anyone wear uncomfortable clothes or shoes? Seems stupid to me.
Perhaps the fact that most fashion is the work of gay men has something to do with it? They see women as competition and dress them like this to mock them.
John Henry
Seems like the only 'shoe' emoji that would be appropriate for her attitude is a boot with a swastika emblazoned on it. She wants to go full socialist oppression.
The more acceptable term is "hooker heels". Comparatively.
Darkisland asks: Ive never understood women's fashion. Why would anyone wear uncomfortable clothes or shoes? Seems stupid to me.
Fair enough. But why do men wear ties? Some kind of phallic symbol?
But why do men wear ties? Some kind of phallic symbol?
A bow tie is not a phallic symbol, I hope.
second try
third try
@Mike Albrecht...yeah you are so going to snicker and kick her out of bed.
It ain't rocket science, women wear heels because men respond to them.
Alas for Greer's swish-swashing feministical scullions, stiletto heels do not engender (...)rapier wit.
BJM said...
Ha! Toe cleavage is a turn on for many.
Cleavage with a quite possibly sharp nail on the end? Imagination is a good thing for sex, but that is reaching waaay out there.
Anonymous: :-)
"Cleavage with a quite possibly sharp nail on the end? Imagination is a good thing for sex, but that is reaching waaay out there."
Between the two Big Toes, silly.
She wants the stiletto emoji replaced with the ballet flat.
And what does that sort of shoe signify? Demureness? Ultra-feminiity? Daintiness?
She says the ballet flat is not "seductive or sexualized"? Really?
Ties are artifacts of bibs.
Now, where did I leave my fuck-me tie ?
Liberals control education, popular culture, and the government. They don’t have to bother with the expense, hassle, and work of raising their own kids. All they have to do is convert yours.
That's why it's imperative to keep your children/grandchildren out of the government schools.
Unless she has some physical reason she can't wear them I have yet to see an attractive woman who doesn't wear heels on occasion. The rest are either too old (acceptable reason) or simply not attractive either in physical looks or personality. As for those woman, who gives a crap?
Part of the problem with these neo-fascist feminist is that by paying attention to them is to grant them power they on their own couldn't attain. Its best just to ignore them.
JAYsus, we were calling them CFM pumps in the early 1980s.
" My daughters are already being confronted by these gender-stereotypical norms, totally subconsciously, " <-- Get over it. Gender stereotypes have their roots in genetics,the bell curve distribution of which is immutable no matter how much you don't like the tails.
" Oh, womenfolk, as we once burned our bras could we not torch the footwear crucifying us? " <-- Quite a few of you weren't bright enough to metaphorically take them off first, and then you discovered the "freed" chesticles were quite inconveniently mobile besides. By all means, signal you don't want men to find you to be attractive, do less and less of it.
They won;t find you to be attractive, and then you'll be mad about that.
We called them CMFs too.
Sorry CFM
Very few women look great in stilettos, they don't have Melania's shape, composure or money to afford the congruent costuming.
Maybe there will be another wave of the Ivy / preppy fashions of the 1960's and 1980s, a cycle is due. For a certain crowd the classic American style has always endured. Talk about sensible women's shoes, they are basically feminine versions of men's shoes.
"Another fashion item I've always found hideous, and also because I associate it with old, "mean" women, are cat-eye glasses frames."
High positive correlation between cat-eye eyeglasses and crazy eyes. Definitely want to stay away from crazy eyes.
Well, you don't want to wear them on a boat or on a golf course.
She says the ballet flat is not "seductive or sexualized"?
She obviously doesn't know that ballet is awash in sexual imagery.
A little known fact: Louis XVI created the precursor to modern ballet...in heels.
Louis XIV.
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