[Vol. 43] High Heels Were Masculine Before They Were Feminine
And that's on gendered clothing being an illusion, folks.
Happy Tuesday, ya’ll :) First time saying that!!
When we’re kids, we’re encouraged to ask questions.
Why is the sky blue? Why is the grass green? Why does dessert come after dinner? You get the gist – we’ve all been there, whether we remember it or not.
So what happens when we grow up? Why do we stop asking questions?
You can’t tell me it’s because we got all our answers. Sure, I have a loose answer for why the grass is green and the sky is blue based on basic biology and chemistry, but I wouldn’t stake my life on it. And I have no idea why dessert comes after dinner – that’s one I still have to Google.
So obviously, we still have a lot of unanswered questions. And yet somewhere along the way, as we grew up, we decided to listen to whoever got fed up with our seemingly-endless stream of questions and settle for their half-baked “that’s just the way things are”. Somewhere along the way, we exhausted our last “but why?”
Today, I found a few more “but why’s” in storage, and I’m gonna use them wisely.
As a kid, I was taught that there are a lot of things boys and men can’t wear –
heels, crop tops, dresses, skirts, the list seemed to go on and on. Weirdly enough, I don’t really remember questioning that norm at all; “that’s just the way things are” was good enough for me.
Well not anymore. I’ve got questions, and today I’m gonna get them answered.
Specifically, I want to dig my heel into the high-heel issue. Why don’t men (or I should say, *more men*) wear high heels? Why are high-heels seen as a women’s shoe? Has it always been that way, or, as I suspect, did it become that way over time?
Why is our footwear even gendered??
Let’s break it down, in style (pun fully intended).
As it turns out, men did wear high heels – for centuries, actually.
According to a BBC article detailing the long history of high heeled footwear, high heels were once worn by Persian* soldiers in combat. Yah, you read that right.
*Persia = Modern day Iran
Now I know it sounds ridiculous to wear a heel into combat given most people don’t even choose to wear them out to the club (although you could argue that a night out at the club in heels is also a form of combat), so let me clarify.
Apparently, male Persian soldiers wore high heels on horseback as a way of locking themselves into the stirrups – that way they could stand up and let an arrow fly without … ya know, flying off the horse.
Putting myself in dangerous territory of sounding like a total horse girl here – that’s fucking awesome.
So anyways, news of the Persian’s badass horseback bow and arrow-slinging army made its way to Western Europe in the early 1600s, where all things Persian soon became all the rage.
Now get this (it’s v ironic): Male aristocrats in Western Europe adopted the culture of wearing high heels from the Persians because they wanted that “masculine edge”.
That’s right, high heels were 1) combat gear, 2) a masculine fashion accessory.
And folks, you can curse Western Europeans for making high heels so damn uncomfortable to walk in, because they’re the ones that made them higher and tighter, all in an effort to send a simple message – “I’m rich enough to not care about the practicality of the shoes on my feet” (AKA “These boots are not, in fact, made for walking”)
Ok, so how did we get from Louis XIV in louboutins to where we are today? When did high heels become “feminine”?
In the 1630s, there was a craze in women’s fashion to start adopting men’s fashion elements – chopping off your hair, smoking pipes (which somehow was a fashion element at the time?), wearing “masculine” hats (whatever the fuck that means), and overall just masculinizing your look was hot, hot, hot at the time.
And for the women hopping on the trend to masculinize their wardrobe, a set of high heels were a must. Yup, women started wearing high heels in the mid-1600s/early-1700s because, like the men before them, they wanted to appear more masculine.
And so began a peaceful period of unisex shoe fashion. Ah the bliss of it all.
Everything changed when the fire nation attacked …
Ok no, but if you get that reference, you’re a real one 😉
The peaceful period couldn’t last forever, and so the Age of Enlightenment came to stir the pot. I know we all read about the Enlightenment in a dusty old textbook at some point, but here’s the two sentence summary for those of us with foggier memories (me included, big time): The Enlightenment was a 17th/18th century intellectual and philosophical movement in Europe that idolized reason and rational thinking. The idea was that if you could master these skills/govern your people by them, you had your key to greater knowledge, freedom, and happiness.
So, what does an obsession with rational thinking have to do with the heel on your shoe? I’m glad you asked.
It was near the end of the Age of Enlightenment that men, apparently, started to undergo the Great Male Renunciation. I know. If it sounds unnecessarily dramatic, it’s because it is. Men are dramatic, we all know this.
Basically, aristocratic men started abandoning all the shiny and colorful and flashy fashion elements they once used to make themselves stand out from the general public. That meant no more jewelry, no more bright colors, and, eventually, no more high heels. The post-Age of Enlightenment idealized man was one that kept his wardrobe rational - he couldn’t wear heels if he wanted to look like he was managing his country estate all day.
This is when unisex fashion split in Europe – men’s fashion became more utilitarian (and dull) whereas women’s fashion became more impractical (but colorful).
The split was also, in part, due to some pretty blatant sexism in the Enlightenment movement. Whereas men were encouraged to be self-educated, rational thinkers, women were regarded as “emotional, sentimental, and uneducatable.” It was not, needless to say, an equal opportunity revolution; in fact, it secured the last nail in the coffin for that blissful age of unisex fashion in Europe.
Soon, high heels - associated with that irrational thinking – were seen as foolish and effeminate by men. By 1740, you’d be hard pressed to find a heel in any man’s wardrobe.
It wasn’t long before they fell out of favor in women’s wardrobes too, and (this fact surprised me) it wasn’t actually until the mid-19th century that heels came back into fashion at all. The more ya know.
So what’s the moral of this whole heel story? Gendered clothing is an illusion.
I know that sounds radical, but considering the history of the high heel, how could it not be true?
High heels went from Persian artifact-of-war to European aristocrat’s power-accessory to something I’ve only seen a man wear a handful of times in my life – most of which were in drag or as a joke. Thank god that’s changing before our eyes already.
The ultimate truth is, I think, that no one item of clothing is any more masculine or feminine than the next. Just like the high heel, our clothing is only gendered in so much as we (as a society) give it gender.
This is why we have to question everything – especially the things people tell us are “just the way things are”.
Nothing is just the way it is. It’s become this way for a reason, and it can change again. Our norms are not set in stone – least of all our fashion norms, which seem to changing at record speed these days.
Besides, fashion is cyclical. Wear whatever the fuck you want to wear; in 50 years time, people won’t bat an eye (and you’ll have been ahead of your time 😉 ).
WEDNESDAY 05/17 – It Was International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia Yesterday
If you didn’t know, don’t worry, I didn’t either.
I only found out yesterday, as I was taking a much needed break from my big screen (my laptop) on my little screen (my iPhone) and scrolling through social media.
Yup, May 17 is officially International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, and it has been since 2004.
According to the day’s official site, the date was marked in the calendar to “draw the attention to the violence and discrimination experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex people and all other people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities or expressions, and sex characteristics.”
And fun fact, May 17th was actually chosen because it was on that date in the year 1990 that the World Health Organization announced its decision to declassify “homosexuality” as a mental disorder. Jeez, I’m glad to see how far we’ve come but it’s wild to think that this was only 30ish years ago …
Although the day is appreciated by many I’m sure (including myself) I want to reiterate here that everyday is a good day to stand against LGBTQ+ hate. If not for us, do it for you; hate is heavy, you don’t want to be carrying it around with you all the time.
Matt Bernstein, an LGBTQ+ advocate (and dare I say, icon) I follow on Instagram, I think, said it best:
That’s all for today, folks. #lovewins , always
And that was That’s Gay, Volume 43.
See you in Volume 44, folks!
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