High Heels at the Oscars



Here is the unvarnished truth.  If you are comfortable inside your own skin and like the person you are, it shows.  People respond to what you feel more than what they see.  I like who I am.  In my mind, I’m Marilyn Monroe so it is always jarring when I see a picture of myself and the person looking back at me is more like Angela Lansbury!  [Not that she wasn’t a saucy little number in her day!] 
            Even at 70 years old there are times when I like to strut a little.  I put on a cocktail dress, three inch heels and feel just plain foxy.  Of course, any heads I turn are much older and grayer than they used to be, but I’m okay with that—I’ve always liked older men! 
            However it seems that our society has entered into a relentlessly joyless phase.  The minute something is totally smile-worthy, the happiness police step in.  Here is the 21st century version of the Puritans.  NO RED PETTICOATS!          
The Washington Post decided to rain on my parade by telling me just what my high heels are doing to my feet, knees, spine and posture.  This is how you know that the editor of the Post is a man.  Any woman who wears high heels knows what they do.  [This is me, knocking on the glass of the editor’s office:  Hello in there.  Why are you wasting valuable print on this?  I wear these heels.  I know exactly how they feel, both when I am wearing them and when I take them off.  I’m not wearing them for me, you fool; I am wearing them for you!]
Women wear these two, three and four-inch torture chambers because men love them.  Pick out any public venue with a good mix of men and women, and lots of open space (like an airport terminal, hotel lobby or shopping mall) and watch the human story unfold.  A woman walking by in high heels is going to clock more, “eye time” than those with, “sensible” shoes.  And not just the men notice, women do as well.  It isn’t like observing a tattoo queen or someone with multiple piercings.  These pathetic body mutilators aren’t looked at as sexy, they are just weird.  No, a woman in heels is measured on a scale of desirability, not revulsion.  I’m not saying it is right, I’m just saying it is reality.  Cleavage works as well, but there is always that fine line between seductive and slutty.  With heels, that is never an issue.  
For women, high heels should be like fast food, a rare indulgence rather than a steady diet, but that isn’t how the world works.  I taught in heels for thirty years because the women in sensible shoes were never promoted.      
If you watch the Academy Awards (I will not) you will see a tribe of women speaking to their personal definition of the power structure with high dudgeon.  But they will all be dressed as sex objects, not intellectual purveyors of thespian legitimacy.  These “liberal” women will be high-heeled, tucked, taped and spanked until they can’t go to the bathroom by themselves.  They will then lecture the rest of us on the war on women.  The men may not be dressed in their favorite garb, but at least they could run to catch a bus. 
            I enjoy getting in my trotting harness as much as the next woman, but I don’t try to fool anyone about what I am doing or why. 
            Put your feet up and keep the faith.

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