Actually, that’s killer heels. But what’s the difference? Fashion or not, they look like medieval instruments of torture – and I’m guessing they feel that way too. One – more – step – crush, pinch, nooooooo.
That’s one reason I don’t wear them. I have such ungainly slabs of meat feet I get cramp wearing Birkenstock for heaven’s sake. So why am I bothered if other, more twinkle-toed people do? I don’t suppose I am really, but yesterday, there I was, minding my own business, clicking through the broadsheets’ various bitch-slap columnists (who only just rise above tabloid ones because they use fewer exclamation marks!) when I came across a quick dig at Gwyneth. Again. Why? Why is poor dear Gwynny always in the firing line?
First she was mocked – boo hoo hoo – for drowning the entire Academy Awards audience, then for lifestyle blog Goop and now for... well, I’m not sure really, but it looks as if it might be because she stepped out in front of the fashionable crowds wearing, um, current fashion. Yes, I think that was enough to warrant the next rotten tomato, too, but that's a personal angle. Here's the real news: apparently she was vamped. Vamped, I tell you. Not demure and wispy like her mother, not pastel and merchant ivory – she was definitely vamped, and wearing something that barely skimmed her thighs...
Excuse me, but if I had a Paltrow of a backside I’d be basquing in the glory, I tell you. Give me something else to hang her with. Oh, what, okay, she couldn’t walk in her high heels?... Well stick a stiletto in my eye and call me an ambulance if I’m not totally gobsmacked by the insanity of that last comment. Gwyneth just can’t do right for doing wrong. Because she was doing right. Bored with cuts from military to air hostess with colours from tender taupe (thanks Clinique) to black-is-back-(again), tired of high hems, low cuts, waisting-away belts and nicotine-stained vintage lace, fashion has let the feet do the talking. And Gwynny was, too. She was wearing the fashion symbol of 2009 – the killer heel.
For anyone out there who may think it had something, vaguely to do with the late Barbara Woodhouse – the killer heel is a shoe of substance, a shoe of business, a social ladder-climbing shoe (although frankly who needs ladders with a six inch piece of scaffolding under your foot?).
I love them, I do. They're like these chunks of art which hold woman aloft higher than any Raphael – literally; they’re like an underfoot construction of feminism and femininity: I’m going to make my legs look longer, because I know that’s what you like, boys, but see that point? See that? That point is making a point. Touch it – hurts doesn’t it? Yeah, well, femininity costs and right here’s where you start paying in small-man syndrome and penis envy. You want a heel that long? Well, you can’t have it, little dick. Not unless you have some serious spin and a wife named Posh.
I have NO idea where I was going with that. It was probably brought on by reading somewhere that killer heels meant power to the woman. Let’s get back to reality shall we?
The reality is that they are kind of fun to look at. In photo shoots; I think Nigella sported some red-hot devil pokers for a racy shoot and Christina Aguillera may have posed in a few prick-teasing stilettos – and they were seriously fun. But when you see people walking about in them, you tend to wince. Is that what these fashion victims are hoping for when they select the day’s wardrobe? Now... I’d like something to complement my eyes, a low neckline to show off my new job and, um, what about something to make people wince? Ah yes, my killer heels.
I feel for Gwyneth, being hawked and criticised for her teeter by the very fashionistas that told her Amazonian heels were in. And I’m starting to believe it’s just another of cotton-floss media’s cruel ploys; pushing the heel as not just a fashion symbol of 2009, but THE fashion symbol of 2009, is a great way of building celebrity up – who’s wearing Vuitton’s tribal towers, Choo’s cha-chas on high, Louboutin’s eight inches – before pointing fingers and cameras at the poor loves, ready to catch them teetering like teetotallers after fives pints of Stella and self-correcting like so many malfunctioning robots. Build them up and tear them down, while safely grounded in a pair of trainers. Kill her heels, indeed.
Part of me does think: hey, Gwyneth’s tall already, surely adding inches has got to be greedy. But most of me says you’re a mum who probably has to go get scripts for conjunctivitis for your kids like every other, always manages to splash oil of your clothes even when you’re not cooking with it; and possibly you feel you’ve lost your identity now that you’re getting older, getting victimised by seedy insatiable tabloid journalists and getting called mum 24/7, which invariably causes some shrinkage. When the days of hanging out at the catwalks with chums like Madonna seem so far away, every girl could do with a lift. Every mum could do with getting back a bit of that vavoom - sometimes to rise above the inane tellytubby-go-round, only a very high shoe will do.
It’s probably something I should think about, getting out more. More than the need to get out - I need to get out of my old clothes more. Last week I went out for a rare cocktail splurge wearing a pair of trousers I’d owned for 10 years and a top I found in a charity shop – nice but two sizes too big; it will do, I thought. I didn't feel great though - mainly because I couldn't locate any heels, none at all, not even kitten, cuban or Clarke's comfy. I went out in Caterpillars. If I'd gone looking dressed to kill I might have come back with a bigger smile on my face (come to think of it, I might not have come back at all...).
Sometimes, although fashion hurts, we need to endure it to feel complete again. Ironically I’d need to have my small toes removed in order to wear killer heels and then I wouldn’t be complete... I'm going to push for the killer bangle or something, because at just 5ft and a little bit not even I would sacrifice my pinkies for an extra eight inches.
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