She Doesn’t Walk in Beauty

Let's put it in this way: if Lord Byron had lived in our times and had by any chance wandered in the streets of a British city after a certain hour on a Friday or Saturday night he would have never written his poem “She Walks in Beauty”.

It is indeed very easy to meet between 7.30 p.m. and 11.30 p.m. women walking or rather trying to walk in “extreme” high heel platform shoes. Like decadent Cinderellas, after 11.30 p.m., quite a few of them either remove the offending shoes and start walking around barefoot or keep the shoes on while assuming the posture of drunken orangutans.

A few articles published in July on different British newspapers claimed that British women wear the highest heels (10-15cm) in Europe, but what worries me is not the allure of a stiletto heel per se, but the disempowering allure of many contemporary shoes that look very ugly and aren't made for walking.

Aesthetically speaking these shoes do not have any leg-lengthening power, in fact they often make your legs look like trunks, but that is just one aesthetically displeasing problem. What disturbs me is indeed the fact that, while high heels are definitely connected with a sense of empowerment and sensuality (remember how in the past they were a mark of rank and privilege for people belonging to higher classes?), a lot of the shoes on sale at the moment (not only in cheap shops, but also in some trendy high street retailers and luxury shops as well) seem to be designed with male desire and with issues of vulnerability and submission in mind rather than to favour women's empowerment.

In the '50s Dior came up with a heel that quickly became popular in other countries, Italy included, it featured a little sphere and hinted at the fact that women were “on top of the world”.

I've always found this concept pretty interesting: think about today's “extreme” shoes and you will realise that this is still a male dominated world as women are definitely not "on top", as we are walking in shoes that are not made for the vertical position, but are made to lie down and possibly engage in other activities that – though equally entertaining and often more rewarding than a simple stroll in the street – do not have anything to do with walking or proving you are a sexually and financially emancipated and empowered person, but a slave.

Psychologically speaking high heels have always attracted men, some claim they imply suffering for men and physical impairment, components of the seduction game (and of a current S&M hysteria pumped up by superficial media who never read Story of O and are now feeling excited about third rate books such as the 50 Shades trilogy…) but the shoe offer in some shops does not hint at seduction in sensible and elegant high heels, but at extreme and aesthetically displeasing solutions.

Another issue that disturbs me even more is the emphasis on heeled shoes for young girls, a way to brainwash a woman's mind from an extremely young age.

Decades ago you would try on your mum's shoes to look like her, now you can have your own miniature heeled shoes and start feeling like a woman when you're just 4 (I would advise any 4 year old girl to avoid rushing things too much as it's definitely not worth it…).

You're right, high heels provide you with a different view of the world, but that point of view is consistently becoming a disadvantaged one, as we are shifted from the position of "women on top" to "women in a subservient position" (and role). So say no to high heels? Maybe we should start with saying no to things that compromise our femininity in an ugly way: life is too short and the world is already full of so many horrid and dreadful things that we don't really need to fill it in with more ghastly vulgarity.

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