BRING TO HEEL
High heels. Our relationship with them is a long and complicated one. More than an object of fashion, high heels have been seen as symbols of power, wealth, and erotica.
Today, in Japan they are being used as a weapon of oppression.
In June, Tokyo artist, writer and feminist Yumi Ishikawa presented a petition to Japan’s Labour Minister, protesting many companies’ requirements that their female staff wear pumps and heels.
He responded that it was “socially accepted” that “women be forced” to wear high heels in the workplace.
Earlier in the year, Ms. Ishikawa had tweeted about being made to wear high heels for a part-time job at a funeral parlor, challenging the “business case” for requiring Japanese women to wear high-heeled shoes, footwear that helps little with professional jobs that didn’t involve “entertainment”.
The petition had 25,000 signatures. Impressive in a country that has been slow to evolve culturally and where the #MeToo movement has not caught on; where speaking out often draws criticism rather than sympathy, even from other women.
#KuToo Campaign
Ms. Ishikawa had no idea that she was about to start a social movement. Japanese women began saying No! To high heels – in what’s been dubbed the #KuToo movement: a pun on the Japanese words for shoe (kutsu) and pain ( kutsuu) with a nod to the #MeToo movement. It’s appropriate that #KuToo alludes to #MeToo, because both causes revolve around choice and consent.
My initial reaction was that this fell somewhere on the border between trivial and laughable. Something that didn’t warrant any more of my attention until something else happened that made me realize that the policing of women went far beyond our attire and none of this was a laughing matter.
Backlash
The U.S. Women’s soccer team, throughout The 2019 World Cup competition, were being criticized for not restraining their euphoria when it came to their victories.
On the subway to work one morning, while the games unfolded, I overheard the conversation of two men--they were fed up watching the American women going to extremes in celebrating their triumphs. Enough now! As if they were doing something rude and unbecoming of women.
Yet such enthusiasm doesn’t seem to be an issue for male athletes. After the 2016 season came to an end, the NFL relaxed the rules surrounding excessive and group performances for post-touchdown celebrations. None of these guys are experiencing backlash for not being more demur in their triumphs.
It’s not just in the sports arena that women experience social and economic penalties for self-promotion. Such behaviour violates female gender stereotypes globally. Yet it is necessary for professional success in any field.
Fuming about women’s lot in life, I invited Elizabeth Semmelhack, Creative Director and Senior Curator at the Bata Shoe Museum, to lunch to get her input.
“It is moments like these that bring the cultural impact of what we wear into stark focus.”
“The high heels that the Japanese Health and Labour Minister feels are so essential to work have long been compulsory office footwear for many women yet what is their function exactly?”
“Nothing in their design is related to the physical demands unique to the business environment.”
In her book, “Shoes: The Meaning of Style”, Ms. Semmelhack wrote that throughout time high heels have been useful tools in perpetuating stereotypes about women; … central to images ranging from depictions of voluptuous women wiggling while they walked to photo documentaries showing women with their heels caught in escalators or manhole covers, suggesting that their choice of footwear reflected their irrational submission to fashion.
According to award winning investigative journalist and author, Summer Brennan, “Rather than reconfiguring the workplace to welcome women, societies across the globe have consistently focused on reconfiguring women to fit into a workplace that wasn’t built for them.”
“Magazine articles and advertising still focus on what women should do, say, wear and buy to be worthy of professional respect. Even terms, such as “women’s empowerment” and “lean in”, place the emphasis on women needing to find, do or become something rather than the need to restructure a system that routinely hurts them.”
#KuToo, #MeToo, United States Women’s Soccer Team – hopefully what we are witnessing is a new generation of women taking a hard look at the suffering many of us have long taken for granted, and the criticism for behaviour unbecoming a women and saying: “it doesn’t have to be like this.”
So in the spirit of Glinda the Good Witch from the Wizard of OZ click your heels together three times and shout out, “I’m tough, I’m ambitious and I know exactly what I want. And I will claim my power in flats!”