The Clothed Body

The Clothed Body
It is certainly true that the shoe has a special symbolic function: the story
of Cinderella is itself a metaphor, whereby the shoe, according to one widely
accepted anthropological-psychoanalytical interpretation, represents the
young girl’s rite of passage from puberty to sexual maturity. Yet Cinderella’s
shoe is also a garment whose identity is established a priori: the shoe fits her
and only her, with no pity for the cruel stepsisters, one of whom even cuts
off part of her foot to make it fit, but in vain. This says a lot about the normative
function of fairytales for both children and grown-ups.
In the same way a lot can be said about the relation between shoes and
identity: the word ‘shoe’ may even indicate a social or hierarchical role, as
in the phrase ‘to put yourself in someone else’s shoes’. In the fairytale The
Red Shoes the rather sadistic Hans Christian Andersen makes the main
character pay, with the amputation of her feet, for the sin of wanting to
wear red shoes, like the king’s daughter, on the day of her Confirmation,
instead of sober black ones. Indeed, when she puts on the forbidden shoes
she is at first swept away in an unstoppable St Vitus’ Dance and then her
feet are themselves transformed into shoes, which is why she has to resort
to cutting them off and ends her days in a convent. The moral of the story
is clearly that everyone should stay ‘in their own shoes’. Perhaps after
reading it these objects, which are a fetish for many people and of which
many have entire collections, seem less tantalizing.
In the West we are shocked by the oriental custom of foot-binding. Yet
this custom is one of many ritual techniques which reshape the body
through using articles of clothing, be they the necklaces of the African
‘giraffe women’, earrings to lengthen earlobes, corsets in the nineteenth
century, or the skin-tight jeans and narrow shoes we use today. 2
Stilettos have populated the imagery of fashion in successive waves,
which recently has been invaded by an explicit fetish for high heels, as high
and thin as possible. They represent an object with an irresistible appeal,
even though it is now well known that their prolonged use leads to severe
arthritis of the knee. Amongst the explanations for this preference there is
one which seems particularly interesting: stilettos give an unstable gait to
the woman wearing them, a gait which assumes a different cast, depending
on the pressure exerted by different body types on feet in high heels. In this
way a synergy is created between the body and the garment, between the
organic and the inorganic, a synergy which has a unique attraction. Is this
an over-intellectual explanation, or merely an attempt to detect the important
link between body signs and sensory perception through a fashion
item?
Despite their being what is usually referred to as accessories, the fact
remains that shoes are a symbol of the utmost importance, both because of
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