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Sensuality and freedom, naturalness and comfort, confidence and a desire for diversity – shoes reflect all these values of a modern woman. Just look at your feet!
It must be admitted: women and shoes are a whole story. The fair sex attaches such importance to this accessory that it sometimes dictates the choice of clothing. Freud believed that the foot for a woman symbolically has the same meaning as the penis for a man*. That is, it is associated with inner strength, confidence, the ability to act, the desire to move forward.
With the help of our experts, we will try to lift the veil on the complex, intriguing relationship between a woman and her shoes and figure out how rough boots can coexist in the same wardrobe with pointed pumps.
Edges of reality
“The foot is the area of contact of our body with the world, its material, earthly component,” says social psychologist Yulia Fedotova. “It is also the support of the whole body: physical balance and emotional balance depend on how well we feel the “ground under our feet.”
“Since our feet give us support and a connection with reality, shoes – clothing for the feet – characterize this reality as accurately as possible,” adds Gestalt therapist Maria Andreeva. – Let’s remember Cinderella: the glass slipper connects her with the reality of the princess. All other attributes of the princess disappear – only the shoe remains the object that allows you to identify the princess in it. And thanks to which she remains a princess – in whatever clothes she may be.
Perhaps it is this magical property that sometimes pushes women to extravagant acts, prompting them to buy “glass shoes” that will be in the closet almost all the time.
Role symbol
Preferring one or another shoe, we choose an image, a character with which we relate ourselves at the moment.
“Thinking about the symbolic meanings of shoes, let’s remember three pairs of iron shoes that the fairy-tale heroine has to wear to achieve her goal,” comments Maria Andreeva. “The new shoes of Gerda, who went to look for Kai, the magic shoes of the girl Ellie … Each new life task, a change in life path means a change in shoes.”
This remains true in real life: mastering new social roles, modern women adapt, adapt to themselves all types of men’s shoes – from army boots to over the knee boots.
Today, women share with men absolutely all spheres of activity, all possible life paths, but, despite this, they still retained – exclusively for themselves – an impractical high-heeled ball shoe.
Fragile and graceful
It is believed that heels visually lengthen the leg, visually reduce the foot, enhancing the overall impression of grace and fragility, which correspond to our ideas about female beauty.
“In the era of long skirts, the legs were completely hidden and only the edge of the foot was visible to the male gaze,” states Yulia Fedotova. “Hidden means intimate, intimate means desirable.”
As a result, shoes are endowed with an erotic meaning.
“It is impossible not to notice the fact that women’s clothing itself – whether it’s an Indian sari, a Japanese kimono or a dress with crinoline – has been restricting freedom of movement for centuries, especially the legs and lower body,” notes Maria Andreeva. “In a patriarchal society, passivity was prescribed for women, which was inextricably linked with ideas about femininity.”
High heels literally do not give a woman grounds for independence, broadcasting the need to be worn on her hands. “Studs are looking for a patron, they are an embodied sex appeal,” says Yulia Fedotova. And this is with all the acquired female freedom …
Loss of femininity or a symbol of independence?
“Recently, rough boots, incredibly comfortable, have been very popular among fashionistas,” says Roza Kamenev, owner of the Cara & Co concept store. – Two radically opposite types of women can afford them. The first includes sexy, self-confident and beautiful “goddesses” (or those who consider themselves as such).
They can afford some negligence, do not complex about height, length of legs, lack of sexual clatter of heels. They know how to play with contrast. To the second – those who do not need anything but convenience and do not care.
Beauty at the expense of convenience… or vice versa?
Beautiful and comfortable
It seems that these two qualities represent two opposite poles of our perception: beauty as an attribute of femininity, suggesting passivity, or practicality, rather associated with masculine qualities, activity. But between these poles there is a huge field of possibilities for choosing, creating your own image.
“When talking about shoes, we can find several pairs of meanings, several oppositions,” Yulia Fedotova explains. – For example, “lightness – heaviness.” The first speaks not only of the desire for change and impressions, but also of a certain superficiality (think about the sound of the word “light-footed”).
And the second is about the thirst for stability, solidity (“heavy on the rise”). The pair “open – closed” indicates the degree of trust in the world, the readiness to present oneself to it or, on the contrary, hide. And finally, a pair of opposites, the existence of which seems ridiculous to many: “beauty – convenience.” In terms of meaning, it refers to another – “extroversion – introversion”, that is, inward or outward orientation, the desire to appear (for others) or to be (for oneself).
But maybe it’s worth making a choice towards diversity? With pointy pumps, sexy sandals, loafers, Chelsea and comfortable moccasins in her wardrobe, a woman can play with all these meanings, placing accents at her discretion and according to the occasion. Not making a radical choice between beauty and convenience, but always feeling comfortable.
What is chosen in Russia
Perhaps, experts say, the most interesting fact from the point of view of analysis and interpretation is that in modern Russia, taste preferences in relation to shoes … in general, have not developed. “You can describe what kind of shoes are worn in Germany, what kind of shoes they prefer in Italy, Spain, what kind of shoes in Kazakhstan or Belarus. In Russia, shoes that are worn in Moscow are not bought in Kazan, and the habit of Novosibirsk ladies to walk in high heels in winter causes some bewilderment among Muscovites, – says Alexander Greb, head of advertising and public relations at Ralf Ringer. – In the shoe market, this is explained by the specifics of the country: an extremely extended territory, many nationalities, different climatic conditions, etc. But it is unlikely that everything can be explained only by geography. St. Petersburg and Moscow are separated by several hundred kilometers, but footwear in the capitals is markedly different. There is another explanation: we are only moving from the Soviet system of consumption to the civilized market, and today the nation does not have a formed system of values. And, accordingly, a certain unified taste in relation to a number of product categories.
In general, Russian women tend to sacrifice comfort for the aesthetic merits of high-heeled shoes. Probably, we owe the features of such a “national choice” to our socialist past, psychologist Maria Andreeva believes. “In Soviet times, women had neither opportunities nor an appropriate assortment. The “aesthetic hunger” left over from those times is inherent even to those who were born in the post-perestroika period. Such a high popularity of heels contains a kind of “call for passivity”, characteristic of patriarchal societies. And the farther inland, the farther from the center to the periphery, the louder this call seems.”
* Z. Freud “Essays on the Theory of Sexuality”, Potpourri, 2008.