Femininity (25 page)

Heels and stockings! As the whalebone corset once was a solemn rite of passage, in
our time the teenage girl has pined and begged for her first grownup pair of high-heeled
shoes. To put them on and try the first few wobbly steps is to enter a new life. The
forward pitch of the knees and backward thrust of the buttocks, which startles the
young initiate, magically induces a leggy, stilted, clickety-click walk, which, she
will hear, is deeply provocative and a delight to behold. From this point on, whenever
she puts on her heels she will be set apart from the rest of the
species, children and men who walk and run and climb with natural ease.

Social critic Bernard Rudofsky has written that a woman is not regarded as seductive
or sophisticated unless she surrenders her locomotive freedom to an impractical shoe:
“By depriving her of a secure walk she becomes an irresistible female. The cheeks
shake, the breasts shake, the body lumbers and hops. The jutting abdomen, the staccato
tripping, it is all delightfully feminine … Every woman knows that to wear ‘walking
shoes’ or ‘sensible shoes’ puts a damper on a man’s ardor. The effect of absurdly
impractical shoes is as intoxicating as a love potion.”

Devices to weigh down the foot or otherwise hamper the female’s natural gait were
known in the time of the prophet Isaiah, who heaped scorn on the daughters of Israel
for wearing gold ankle chains with tinkling bells, which caused them to walk with
mincing steps. Stilted shoes from the Orient became popular in the damp, flooded port
of Venice in the sixteenth century, where chopines, as they were called, sometimes
reached the staggering height of twenty inches. They persisted into the seventeenth
century as the preferred footwear for ladies of leisure. Louis the Fourteenth, a very
short king, popularized high-heeled shoes for men in his court, but the custom was
short-lived, as men felt a greater need for mobility than for artificial elevation.
In the 1920s, when women freed their bodies from corsets and dragging long skirts,
the high-heeled shoe was reintroduced to fashion, partially to emphasize the newly
exposed leg but perhaps unconsciously to offer a new feminine impediment to motion.

An artificial feminine walk seems to gratify many psychological and cultural needs.
The female foot and leg are turned into ornamental objects and the impractical shoe,
which offers little protection against dust, rain and snow, induces helplessness and
dependence. In an interesting double message of the sort that abounds in the exacting
but not quite explicit feminine code, the extra wiggle in the hips, exaggerating a
slight natural tendency, is seen as sexually flirtatious while the smaller steps and
tentative, insecure tread suggest daintiness, modesty and refinement. Finally, the
overall hobbling effect with its sadomasochistic tinge is suggestive of the restraining
leg irons and ankle chains
endured by captive animals, prisoners and slaves who were also festooned with decorative
symbols of their bondage.

Those who doubt the subliminal connection between the feminine style of women’s footwear
and the taming of captives and animals might take a close look at the fancy knee-high
leather boots in their closet. Superfluous buckles and straps resemble nothing but
reins and stirrups, confusing the wearer with horse and rider. It might also be instructive
to take a look at some hardcore pornography, where the honored place of high heels
is secure. One pervasive image is the woman who is bound, gagged and naked except
for a pair of spindly black pumps. Another is the dominatrix with whip in hand, who
also teeters on six-inch stilettos. So compelling is the imagery of the spiked heel
that it serves both ends of the sadomasochistic fantasy, a symbol of immobilized dependence
and a weapon that stomps and hurts. (Similarly, long sharp fingernails, which reduce
the competence of the hand and preclude the making of a fist, are transmogrified into
catlike red claws that scratch and draw blood. Hatpins are another sneaky weapon associated
with feminine effects.)

To qualify as passably feminine a shoe does not absolutely require a high heel. All
it demands is some ingenious handicap to walking more than a half mile on a country
road or on a cobblestone street. A clog, which drags on the foot and offers no support
in the heel, might do (very popular with the counterculture) and so would a platform
sole with string ties (big in Miami and other resorts). A paper-thin sole with no
supportive cushion (the ballet shoe popularized for street wear) is a perennial favorite
of teenage girls, and women of all ages feel chic and fragile in flimsy, strappy,
slingback sandals that are perilous on dirty urban pavements.

A high-heeled, backless, open-toed mule, which manages to combine all the important
impediments to walking, might at first glance appear to win the race for maximum feminine
effect, but few women are willing to go this far. The backless mule is tainted by
an unsubtle image of kimono-clad whores who loll about in brothels; it fails the test
of refined good taste. What a woman puts on her foot reflects, more than anything
else, the historic divisions that separate the lady from the whore. Balancing these
contradictory wings of desirable femininity, as men have defined their desires, a
woman’s shoe walks a crooked line between projections of blatant sexuality and projections
of propriety and class. A “too-high” heel and a too-obvious display of playful hobbling
threaten good taste by tipping the balance in favor of the whore. Seen from the other
perspective, an overemphasis on practicality tips the balance in favor of the dowdy.
The open-toed, high-heeled ankle strap with its sly imitation of a leg fetter, known
in some quarters as the Fuck-me shoe, is another variation on love-slave eroticism
that is a trifle too blatant for a lady’s good taste. The gold ankle chain (“I’m just
a prisoner of love”) is dismissed as cheap for similar reasons.

A feminine shoe means different things to women of differing classes, age and occupation,
but the unifying factors may be pared down to these: the shoe must make the foot look
smaller, it must be light and flimsy in construction, it must incorporate some stylish
hindrance that no man in his right mind would put up with. None of this is accidental.
A feminine shoe deliberately reverses the functional reason why people initially chose
to wear shoes. A feminine shoe is not supposed to serve the foot, leg and hip in the
practical work of moving quickly without trouble or pain. A feminine shoe is not designed
to enable the wearer to cover ground more easily than if she were barefoot. To the
contrary, a feminine shoe insistently drains a certain amount of physical energy by
redirecting a woman’s movements toward the task of holding her body in balance (and
keeping the shoe on her foot) while she avoids the pitfalls of grids on the escalator,
cracks in the pavement, and sidewalk gratings and grills. A feminine shoe imposes
a new problem of grace and self-consciousness on what would otherwise be a simple
act of locomotion, and in this artful handicap lies its subjugation and supposed charm.

“Sensible shoes” announce an unfeminine sensibility, a value system that places physical
comfort above the critical mission of creating a sex difference where one does not
exist in nature. Sensible shoes betray a lack of concern for the esthetic and sexual
feelings of men, or a stubborn unwillingness to compromise graciously in their direction.
Sensible shoes aren’t fun. They hold no promise of exotic mysteries, they neither
hint at
incapacitation nor whisper of ineffectual weaponry. Sensible shoes aren’t sexy. They
betray the unexciting anatomical fact that a woman’s foot follows the basic pattern
of five toes and a heel, a silhouette essentially no different from the foot of a
man. Sensible shoes aren’t dressy. They spoil soft, graceful lines, they contradict
delicate proportions. Sensible shoes don’t glitter and sparkle like bubbly champagne
on New Year’s Eve. They are crisply efficient, providing a firm, stable anchor, a
balanced posture, a sturdy base from which to turn on the heel and quickly move on.

What can a woman do if she doesn’t care to wobble? Stand accused of failing to toe
the mark? Get out of the obstacle race and settle for the role of little old lady
in tennis shoes? Take to wearing sandals summer and winter, like the wily Colette,
and paint her toenails bright red, to point up how different from men she really is?

Like Colette, Gertrude Stein had a fondness for sandals, but unlike Colette, who was
a mistress of feminine illusion even when she was confined to a wheelchair in her
arthritic eighties, it probably never occurred to Stein to enamel her toes. Stein
had no truck with feminine artifice. She wasn’t concerned with enticing men, except
to her evening salon on the Rue de Fleurus. Picasso’s arresting portrait reveals a
short-cropped, heavyset woman in a shapeless skirt, seated with her knees spread apart
in a most unfeminine manner. Here is an individual, the canvas announces, who does
not care a fig about sexual attraction.

I was taught to sit with my knees close together, but I don’t remember if I was given
a reason. Somewhere along the way I heard that boys like to look up girls’ skirts
and that it was our job to keep them from seeing our panties, but I didn’t put much
stock in this vicious slur. “Put your knees together” seemed to be a rule of good
posture like “Sit up straight,” and nothing more. As with other things that became
entrenched in my mind as unquestionably right and feminine, when I thought about it
later on I could find an esthetic reason. The line of a skirt did seem more graceful
when the knees weren’t poking out in different directions. Slanting them together
was the way to avoid looking slovenly in a chair. (Sitting with the legs crossed became
an
acceptably feminine posture only after skirts were shortened in the 1920s.)

Bending over to pick up a piece of paper was fraught with the danger of indecent exposure
during the Sixties miniskirt era, and like other women who believed the minis look
terrifically dashing when we stepped along the street, I had to think twice, compose
myself, and slither down with closed knees if I dropped something. A breed of voyeurs
known as staircase watchers made their appearance during this interesting time. Slowly
it dawned on me that much of feminine movement, the inhibited gestures, the locked
knees, the nervous adjustment of the skirt, was a defensive maneuver against an immodest,
vulgar display that feminine clothing flirted with in deliberate provocation. My feminine
responsibility was to keep both aspects, the provocative and the chaste, in careful
balance, even if it meant avoiding the beautifully designed open stairway in a certain
Fifth Avenue bookshop.

But why did I think of vulgarity when the focal point at issue—I could no longer deny
the obvious—was my very own crotch? And why did I believe that if I switched to trousers,
the problem would be magically solved?

Spreading the legs is a biologically crucial, characteristically female act. Not only
does the female have the anatomical capacity to stretch her legs farther apart than
the average male because of the shape of her pelvis, but a generous amount of leg
spread is necessary to the act of sexual intercourse, to the assertive demand for
pleasure, and to the act of giving birth. There may have been a time in history when
this female posture was celebrated with pride and joy—I am thinking of the Minoan
frescoes on Crete where young women are shown leaping with ease over the horns of
a charging bull (the sexual symbolism of the woman and the bull has been remarked
upon by others)—but in civilization as we know it, female leg spread is identified
with loose, wanton behavior, pornographic imagery, promiscuity, moral laxity, immodest
demeanor and a lack of refinement. In other words, with qualities that the feminine
woman must try to avoid, even as she must try to hint that somewhere within her repertoire
such possibilities exist.

Capacious female leg spread is fundamental to copulation and sexual pleasure, as routine
as the mounting procedure is for the male; in fact, female leg spread must occur first
in the natural order of things if sexual activity is going to take place. By contrast
there is nothing hidden about the male sexual organ. It is a manifest presence; the
legs need not spread to reveal it, nor are they usually positioned as wide apart as
the female’s to accomplish the sexual act. But while copulation and other genital
activity require a generous spread of the thighs in order for a woman to achieve her
pleasure, in the feminine code of behavior she is not supposed to take the initiative
out of her own desire. Her feminine task is to keep her legs firmly together in the
name of modesty and chastity, to guard her “hidden treasure” while waiting for the
one right man (her lawful husband, her persistent lover) to wave the magic wand and
perform the ritual of open sesame. His volition and his action are expected to take
precedence over hers.

Initiative is the issue, and the feminine code of movement is designed to inhibit
the thought. The ideology of feminine sexual passivity relies upon a pair of closed
thighs more intently than it does upon speculative theories of the effects of testosterone
on the libido, aggression and the human brain. Open thighs acknowledge female sexuality
as a positive, assertive force—a force that is capable of making demands to achieve
satisfaction.

Students of Japanese history know that Samurai warriors trained their daughters in
the use of weapons to give them the requisite skill to commit hara-kiri when faced
with disgrace. As part of the training, girls were taught how to tie their lower limbs
securely so they would not embarrass themselves and their family by inadvertently
assuming an immodest position in the agony of death. Traditional Japanese etiquette
pays close attention to the rules of modest posture for women. In the classic squat
position for eating, men are permitted to open their knees a few inches for comfort
but women are not. Men may also sit cross-legged on the floor but women must kneel
with their legs together.