Is this an issue raised too high?

[ahinton]

I think there is a more compelling stage in the hierarchy that seeks to determine the appropriateness of this or that apparel.

I'm not quite sure that I understand you here but, even if there is one such (whatever it might be), wouldn't you therefore assume that it has been given questionable precedence over Health & Safety concerns?

[jayne lee wilson]

Have to? Surely the issue is the opposite - that people should be free not to wear high heels if they don't want to? (and if they don't impede them in the way they're expected to carry out their work).


It seems to be more of an indictment on people if they say they don't want to have what other people seem to consider fun. Rather like the DCMS research into attitudes to BBC programming where the adjective 'serious' implies adverse criticism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbY_aP-alkw

[Flosshilde]

http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2016/may/16/high-heels-hairdos-womens-fashion-tyrannies-sheridan-smith-british-press

[jayne lee wilson]

http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2...-british-press

Yeah, saw that - the third G-piece in as many days following Deborah Orr and Carole Cadwalladr with only Orr showing much humour or perspective - this media bandwagoning heel-bash following Nicola Thorp's victory was the main reason I posted the heels fashion shoot in the first place, after giving my more balanced views upthread. I love Hadley Freeman's writing & never miss a column, but when she says "there's nothing strong or sexy about shoes that hobble you" I can only agree except: there are plenty of heels that don't, most especially boots. I should know as I spend the winter in them.
(Well - heels in town, wellies in the garden...). Look up, look down - it's all about perspective and proportion.

As for the vulnerability schtick, the "can't get away from an assailant" line... Maybe you can't, but you can try stabbing them in the leg...

[greenilex]

Used to enjoy wearing low "kitten" heels as a teenager but have always found teetering on higher ones a skill I had no wish to master.
Buskins give the speaker a pedestal which has been useful at least since the Greeks. There is also the class status conferred, as with long nails....
No-one so handicapped could ever be ordered to work!

[Richard Tarleton]

(Well - heels in town, wellies in the garden...). Look up, look down - it's all about perspective and proportion.

As for the vulnerability schtick, the "can't get away from an assailant" line... Maybe you can't, but you can try stabbing them in the leg...

Jayne, in #86 I wasn't just thinking of "women being assailed" - there are loads of situations, affecting men and women, most of them occurring in towns, where being sensibly shod would be a definite advantage. You never know how your working day is going to turn out. That receptionist - having to help evacuate people from the building, for example. Vertiginous heels just make me think of Darwin.

[ahinton]

Jayne, in #86 I wasn't just thinking of "women being assailed" - there are loads of situations, affecting men and women, most of them occurring in towns, where being sensibly shod would be a definite advantage. You never know how your working day is going to turn out. That receptionist - having to help evacuate people from the building, for example. Vertiginous heels just make me think of Darwin.

I agree. However, in addition the the extent to which such items impede wearers' ability to move around at what would otherwise be their top speed either as a matter of personal choice or because of any kind of emergency situation, the pain and discomfort factor associated with wearing them and the risk of medium- to long-term physical damage at which habitual wearers place themselves ought between them to ensure that no employer dress code make the wearing of them compulsory; I continue to wonder if those that do so might risk falling foul of employment law and/or Health & Safety at Work provisions. The "sexism" arguments, whilst pertinent (especially in the context of employer dress codes that impose unreasonable conditions on women only), are a separate issue to this, I think.

I don't believe that I've bitten off more than I can Choo in so saying...

[jayne lee wilson]

Jayne, in #86 I wasn't just thinking of "women being assailed" - there are loads of situations, affecting men and women, most of them occurring in towns, where being sensibly shod would be a definite advantage. You never know how your working day is going to turn out. That receptionist - having to help evacuate people from the building, for example. Vertiginous heels just make me think of Darwin.

This is all language-games: "Vertiginous" teetering" 'hobbled" and thought-policing: "you never know how your day will turn out" which is lifeboat-philosophy: make sure you're dressed in case of emergency. Yeah, I wonder just how often I or any given woman may get called upon to "evacuate a building"....
(As for applying heels to Darwin - a classic culture/nature category-mistake - disappointing from a naturalist).

So you start with the right to wear what you want to work (which no-one will dispute) and end up with a given man or woman - victim of the little-learning-is-a-dangerous-thing crude feminism of "women only wear heels to feel vulnerable & please the male gaze" which insults my and many other women's intelligence (not to mention the range of our sexuality) or the health-and-safety-executive strictures misapplied to daily life and thereby restricting freedom and enjoyment - frowning at me in my 3-inch OTKs in the bloody supermarket. Maybe they think of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.

Tut-tutting at heelwearers in Sainsburys? That IS where you're heading. Maybe you do it silently already. God, you're all so right-on.

(I guess it's because no-one else here knows the pleasures of non-man-pleasing streetwise heelwearing. It really is the case that you're talking the talk but you've DEFINITELY never walked the walk. (Sorry, but - behind the bedroom door doesn't count.))

[ahinton]

This is all language-games: "Vertiginous" teetering" 'hobbled" and thought-policing

But "high" was the word used in the thread topic and "hobbled" is surely just one way of saying "walked with some difficulty" (in comparison with walkiong in flats, I mean).

you never know how your day will turn out" which is lifeboat-philosophy: make sure you're dressed in case of emergency. Yeah, I wonder just how often I or any given woman may get called upon to "evacuate a building"...

Evacuating a building is just one exteme example, though - I think what Richard T's referring to (and what I was also) is a more general issue about the fact that walking in these kinds of shoe is less easy than walking in flats, as indeed is running, as someone might want to to for a train, bus, taxi or whatever.

(As for applying heels to Darwin - a classic culture/nature category-mistake - disappointing from a naturalist).

I didn't even understand that reference!

So you start with the right to wear what you want to work (which no-one will dispute) and end up with a given man or woman - victim of the little-learning-is-a-dangerous-thing crude feminism of "women only wear heels to feel vulnerable & please the male gaze" which insults my and many other women's intelligence (not to mention the range of our sexuality), or the health-and-safety-executive strictures misapplied to daily life and thereby restricting freedom and enjoyment - frowning at me in my 3-inch OTKs in the bloody supermarket.

Again, I don't think that Richard T or I are suggesting any of this; for starters, I was referring to H&S issues in the context of employers' dress codes seeking to force women to wear shoes of a type that they might prefer not to do, for whatever reason (including H&S), by observing that such dress codes ought not to provide tht women MUST wear such things. And, for the record, I wouldn't dream of frowning at you anywhere, Jayne!

Tut-tutting at heelwearers in Sainsburys? That IS where you're heading. Maybe you do it silently already.

Well, I for one do nothing of the kind; I don't even do it in Waitrose.

I guess it's because no-one else here knows the pleasures of non-man-pleasing streetwise heelwearing

Again, I'm not sure about that, at least to the extent that the subject that gave rise to this thread is not in any case about women who wish to wear such things but about those who are unreasonably compelled by their employers to do so against their personal wishes!

[Richard Tarleton]

(As for applying heels to Darwin - a classic culture/nature category-mistake - disappointing from a naturalist).

And a disappointingly heavy-handed response jayne - I do of course realise high heels are not genetic. It was a feeble attempt at a joke. I suppose if anything they're a meme - an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means. Nor have I offered any theory as to why women wear high heels, or referred explicitly or implicitly to sexuality in any way. I have no idea why people wear heels, (my observation about being unable to respond to any emergency that might arise was not restricted to high heels, or women), I merely offered a reason why they might not be a good idea. Anyway, enough from me.

[jean]

This is all language-games: "Vertiginous" teetering" 'hobbled" ...

No, just an accurate use of some fairly common words.

...victim of the little-learning-is-a-dangerous-thing crude feminism of "women only wear heels to feel vulnerable & please the male gaze" which insults my and many other women's intelligence (not to mention the range of our sexuality)...

I don't really like having my feminism described as 'crude', and I would want to say (though I can't force anyone else to agree with me) that high heels do cause women to appear helpless/walk in a sexually provocative way which does appeal to (some ) men. And even if women take over the 'look', that's where I believe it started.

(I guess it's because no-one else here knows the pleasures of non-man-pleasing streetwise heelwearing. It really is the case that you're talking the talk but you've DEFINITELY never walked the walk.

I do know what it's like, and when I was very young I thought I had to - but I could never think of it as a pleasure, and was very relieved indeeed when feminism told me I could stop.

One more thing that hasn't been mentioned yet...has no-one here ever seen a beautiful wooden floor pockmarked to destruction after stiletto-heeled women have walked all over it?

[ahinton]

high heels do cause women to appear helpless/walk in a sexually provocative way which does appeal to (some ) men.

"Some" is the vital word here; if anyone could successfully explain to me what's supposedly "sexually provocative" about a woman walking awkwardly in uncomfortable shoes that might make her look as though she's about to fall over, I would be more than a little surprised.

I do know what it's like, and when I was very young I thought I had to - but I could never think of it as a pleasure, and was very relieved indeeed when feminism told me I could stop.

So you didn't decide entirely of your own volition, then?

I get your point(sorry!) about the wooden floor...

[teamsaint]

"Some" is the vital word here; if anyone could successfully explain to me what's supposedly "sexually provocative" about a woman walking awkwardly in uncomfortable shoes that might make her look as though she's about to fall over, I would be more than a little surprised.


So you didn't decide entirely of your own volition, then?

eh? seems fair enough to me .

there are a lot of things I don't understand about the whole heels thing.....

like why women tend to prefer a man taller than them, who they then proceed to tower over in their heels.

I have a colleague who wears flats around town, but carries heels for meetings etc.
so has somebody invented shoes with screw in heels, to save valuable handbag space ?

[french frank]

So you didn't decide entirely of your own volition, then?

I think it might have been a figurative use of the verb 'to tell' …

[ahinton]

I mentioned Yuja Wang upthread and she's not the only pianist who's been seen wearing these things; since my remark was in the context of pedalling, I should perhaps have added that you'd never catch an organist doing so!