Heels

Don't tell me you're a feminist when you're wearing six inch heels just to look "pretty". For whom? If your answer is "me" fine and good. If it's for the purpose of attracting someone else, uh uh. Granted, The Line looks leaner and taller in those killer heels, but I can bet they hurt like mad. Watching someone walk down a sidewalk or across a room in spikes, is like regarding a tightroper attempting Niagara Falls. You're not sure if there will be an accident with the La Boutins or not, and if so, how graceful will the fall be. When a little girl is old enough to wear hose, her first "girly" hope, is to wear heels. I have know parents who think it's cute for their little ones to begin the art of heel walking at the early age of six or seven. "Oh isn't she adorable in those tiny heels", they coo. Not in my book. I like to see kids as kids and not copies of tartlets, dolled up in ruffles and high heels, hair colour and a "touch" of lip gloss. Unfortunately, children are highly influenced by some parents who try to rush them into their adult idea of what is suitable. Naturally, children adopt the ways their parents direct. It's the nature of offspring to observe and copy. It's how the young learn: not what they are told but what they see. The saying, "monkey see, monkey do" comes to mind even though children are not monkeys. High heels are a kind of rite of passage for girls. I recall being thirteen years old and in my tomboy way, hotly denying the taunt that an older teen boy, Billy Shaw, in my neighbourhood, made. "Oh, you'll be wearing high heels before you're sixteen", he snorkeled. As it turned out, he was wise. At my first high school dance, a formal one, sure enough, I appeared in black patent leather shoes with a one and a half inch heel beneath the bouffant skirt of my long pink dress. My first heels, ah, and I loved them! Later on, my collection of heels became higher and higher along with the discomfort of wearing them. It seemed that to be taller that five three, was the point of it. Fashion magazines all showed the typical underfed six foot female regally aloft in her high heels, the ones models wear for photography only. Seeing them arrive at the studios, we learn they enter in jeans, runners and no make-up. The know that posing attire and paint are for the camera, not for comfort. Unfortunately, most young women who seek to attract lovers also opt for the high heel dream scene and prepare for it in whatever the media dictates is The Fashion of the day. Only when their conquests are met, after the third or fourth date, do they choose comfort over coup. The high heels however remain and seem to take precedent, still, over good sense. Billy Shaw was right!