High Heels
During my school days, I longed to wear high heel sandals. It was not because I was short, but I wished to be a part of the fashion of high heelers. Being one of the tall girls in my class during all my school and college days, I was denied to be a part of the high heel culture. It remained a long unaccomplished dream until I fulfilled the desire a few decades ago. What pleasure does it give to be on high sandals! It was a pleasure until my back ached and slowed down my normal physical movement. This added to my respect and admiration for my friends who complied with the heeled fashion.
Fashion lovers of the generation
might find high heels as gendered, especially feminine! Rewinding to the past, the
history of high heels takes us back to the 10th century. You would wonder to
read that it was the men folks who had the habit of wearing high-heeled shoes.
The Persian cavalries found it effective to fasten them to the seat on horseback
and keep their shoes in the stirrups. It gave them the stability they needed to
shoot bows and arrows. It was a symbol of stature and military prowess. The
cowboys would find it admiring because of the fact that their fashion has its
ancestry back to the Persian war heroes!
With the dawn of the seventeenth
century, high heels wore the symbol of money and power. The renowned portrait
of Archduke Albert pronounces how emphatic the fashion of wearing high-heeled
shoes was! The high heel continued to flaunt on men’s feet in the centuries
that followed. This footwear trend further got ornated with colour symbols. Men
on red heels symbolised their richness and royal lineage. One could judge the social
class to which he belonged!
Men stopped wearing the heel around
the 18th century as a reaction against their perceived feminization.
However, some lifestyles still followed high heels. The evolution progressed
and got titled differently. The angled, rounded heel was popular as ‘Cuban Heel’
in contrast to the Hispanic tradition.
During the 1950s, Chelsea boots
took over the world of footwear. The English Rock Band, The Beatles, popularized
‘Beatle Boots’, a variant of Chelsea. The 20th century witnessed a long
queue of revolutionary changes in every walk of life. David Bowie, the leading
figure in the musical industry broke the boundaries of gendered fashion. He
wore all manners of heels! Men stopped wearing high heels when they became a
fashion symbol of women. Whereas men wearing high-heeled shoes were a symbol of
money, power, and masculinity, today they tend to push the boundaries on gender
norms.
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/the-high-life-a-history-of-men-in-heels/iQJCgMgwSKV5Kw
Ms.. Saritha. K
HEad, Department of English,
Al Shifa College of Arts and Science, Kizhattoor, Perinthalmanna
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