Party Shoes

More shoes here. Truly uncomfortable footwear has a long and well-documented history. The practice of Chinese footbinding immediately springs to mind, though the object there was to produce a tiny foot and a painful, mincing gait. A very small foot was (is) apparently a highly desirable feminine characteristic, which in 19th century China had actual commercial value; the size of a bride's shoe, displayed to the prospective bridegroom and his family, was one of the bargaining points in determining her bride-price. In addition to which, the 'Golden Lotus', or 'Lily Foot', as the bound foot was known, added both high status and a sexual frisson to the effectively crippled subject. It also helpfully rendered her literally unable to run away. We naturally regard such a practice as abhorrent in modern times. Yet we seem to be extremely willing, even eager, to hamper ourselves with the current variation, the high heel. There's no apparent external compunction to wear such shoes, but, as Bernard Rudofsky wrote in his very wonderful essay, 'Are Clothes Modern?' (publ 1947, Paul Theobald), 'modern woman will.. furiously defend her high heeled footwear and her stilted walk because the corruption of foot and walk constitutes- if only unconsciously- a focus of sexual attraction... The discomfort of hampering apparel is compensated for by the collective admiration of the other sex'. Is this still painfully true? Or is the picture of Lady Gaga, obliged to be supported and even carried by her bodyguards because of the extreme 12 inch-plus height of her platforms, a symbol of female empowerment? She can afford those bodyguards, after all!