To the Point

The first time I became aware of women's shoes, I had to have been about two or three years old. One of my mother's friends had come over for coffee and I was playing on the floor with a truck or something. I think the friend's name was Arlene, and she was wearing a black skirt and black pumps. I was fascinated by the sharpness of the shoes, with a pointed toe and long, stiletto heel. She sat with her legs crossed and I remember being transfixed by that dangling foot. Occasionally Arlene would let the shoe slip off and dangle from her toe.

My mother, her mother, nor my father's mother wore those types of shoes. My maternal grandmother practically invented the orthopedic oxford and she had two pair, black and brown. My paternal grandmother worked in a dress shop, so being on her feet all day comfort was her biggest concern. I also remember her being on the eternal quest for the perfect "navy" or "bone" shoe. I know she went to her grave with that unfulfilled mission. My mother had a couple of pairs of pointy shoes, but when the styles changed to a chunkier heel, she clung to that style like a crack addict at a bible camp. When those shoes went out of style, my mother gave up all hope of being stylish.

So, my fascination with high heels had to be satisfied by television and movies. In particular, I seem to remember not being able to look at anything but the feet of the Bond women. Women in peril in heels. That's what I thought was their natural state.

The fascination faded, but when I went away to college I remember a fellow student who wore nothing but those pointy heels. She had them in every color imaginable. One January, when I quite literally could not afford socks and had a big hole in my nylon running shoe, there was Sue skittering across the ice-covered campus in her three-hundred dollar pair of heels. I asked her about that, and she said that her Achilles tendon had tightened and she couldn't wear anything but heels.

I can't say I thought much about high heels until a decade later when I was cast in a show, playing two characters. In the first act I was a quite, Bible reading father with a brother dying of AIDS, and in the second act I was that brother's drag-queen lover. There were two scenes in which I was to appear in drag.

Now, in Chicago theater, budgets are very tight and each director has his or her priorities on how to spend their pennies. I've always opted for costumes, since the actor is presumably what the audience is looking at most of the time. This director, however, opted for the set. That meant the costumes were pulled either from the actor's closet or the company's stock. Since no one expected me to have drag costumes, they pulled a red acetate caftan with marabou collar, white sling-backs my mother would have sold her soul for, and a snarled, black Cher wig. I've known a few drag queens and not one of them would have used that get up to clean the toilet. I politely offered to come up with my own.

While I'm quite tall, I actually have standard sized feet. Finding heels that fit were not the problem. Finding shoes that didn't say, "big, ugly, fat girl" was a different story. Apparently, if your shoe size is larger than nine, shoe makers assume your feet are so far from your eyes you won't notice how ugly they are. I made it a religious quest looking for the highest heel I could. I began to understand my grandmother on a level most men never reach.

I found both pairs of shoes at Payless. The first were a simple black pump, but they had a two-and-a-half inch heel. They were the largest size they carried and I slipped my feet into them as if they'd been made for me. The second pair were a lower heel, but electric pink. Together, I think they cost less than twenty-five dollars.

Did you know that when you try on shoes, you should actually stand up in them and walk around? I hit on this concept the first time I had to navigate the many levels of the set in those shoes. I took two steps in my shiny black pumps and marvelled that there were not women rioting in the streets over fashions that virtually required these de Sadian treasures. As my costume came together, I became aware of the fact that I was wearing more articles of clothing...hose, girdle, bra, slip, dress, wig...virtually every part of my body was covered except my face, neck, and arms, and yet I felt naked and vulnerable. The fabric of the costumes was filmy and I was unsure of my balance in the heels. I had to balance a wig and earrings.

The first scene was less than five minutes and that had the most elaborate costume. The scene had to be restaged so that I did not have to traverse steps, for fear of breaking a limb. The second scene was a rehearsal scene of my big number. Since it was a torchy ballad, I opted to perform it ala Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys, writhing on the floor in simulated sexual apoplexy. Anything that did not require me to stand.

And of course, that may be the point to those shoes. Beyond the obvious sexual politics, there does seem to be a real political movement in which women are subjugated and kept off balance. We, as enlightened Americans are for the first time seriously considering a female president. Yet we are at war in a region that has had female rulers long before we have. As part of justification for a war against "Islamic fascists" we point to the requirement that women not appear in public without a burka. Yet, our social and stylistic standards in this country are not badges of honor. Heels, diets, make-up...American women have much more rigid standards than Iraqi women. Failure to conform may not result in physical death, (although attempts at conformity might) a woman who does not submit to this stylistic code faces a much more subtle death.

I recently worked with a woman who was very successful in a "man's" career. In a field that hinges on personality, she flirted and build solid relationships as a woman in a man's world. It also didn't hurt that she delivered. I knew her at the zenith of her career, just as she turned sixty. At that age, the coquetry that is almost subliminal at thirty, is almost grotesque and she hadn't really learned any other way to interact. In recent years she's actually lost clients because she made them uncomfortable. Yet she has a sterling record and continues to set the standard for her male colleagues.

When I started working with her, we needed to hire a bi-lingual web designer, who also could troubleshoot hardware issues. It would be easier to find an orangutan who could dance swan lake. Still, I found one. And the candidate was a woman to boot. She spoke Spanish, had designed award-winning websites, and built her own computers. And her asking salary was ten thousand dollars less than my budget. I'd hit the HR manager's jackpot.

My female executive, the one who had cornered me in an office to detail all of the humiliations she'd born as an aging woman in a young man's world, rejected this candidate because she wasn't "attractive." She wouldn't present well to the clients. The woman's orthopedic oxfords were sited as an example of her lack of panache.

So, not only do we have the systemic subjugation of women, we have women who have survived and thrived in spite of the social and professional obstacles, using these same standards against other women. Women who pole dance as a work out, use those their pointy heels as daggers against women who don't.

Thank God in a man's world it's just dog-eat-dog, because the bitches are crazy.