The high-heeled shoe, or a shoe whose heel is higher than the toe, is a matter of contentious and hot argument. Footwear in general have generally served as markers of gender, class, race, and ethnicity. Both the feet and the footwear have been imbued with strong phallic and virility emblems as evidenced with the present day practice of attaching shoes to the car of a newlywed couple. No other shoe, however, has gestured toward leisure, libido, and sophistication as much as the high-heeled shoe.
Filled with contradiction, high heels paradoxically restrict movements in order to maximize it, at the least in appearance. Standing in heels, a woman offers herself already half-walking while in the very same time reducing the length of her step, cultivating the illusion of speed while indicating the promise of an impending fall. The higher and more unstable the heel, the far more obviously these contradictions are expressed . Health professionals and scholars alike have debated in regards to the physical and cultural impact, each good and bad, that high heels have had not only on women, but on culture overall.
Precursors to the High-Heeled Shoe
Almost all of the lower class in ancient Egypt walked without footwear, but figures on murals dating from three thousand five hundred B.C. illustrate an early version of shoes worn mostly by the higher classes. These were actually leather pieces held together with lacing that was often arranged to look like the symbol of ?Ankh,? which represents life. But there are also some depictions of both upper-class males and females wearing heels, most likely for ceremonial purposes. Egyptian butchers also wore heels, to help them walk above the blood of dead beasts.
In ancient Greece and Rome, platform sandals referred to as kothorni, later called buskins in the Renaissance, were shoes with high wood or cork soles that were preferred particularly amongst actors who would wear shoes of various heights to indicated varying social status or importance of characters. In ancient Rome, sex trade wasn?t unlawful and female prostitutes were immediately identified by their high heels.
In my next article I will be looking at the development of shoes in the Middle Ages, when high heels were extremely high, as much as thirty inches in some instances!
A Background of High Heel Shoes: The Very Beginning
Jan Griffiths is truly a shoe lover and hoarder and provides cheap shoes online specialising in ladies? as well as cheap wedding shoes.
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