Daily Times

You needn’t look beyond politician Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to understand this paradox – the more powerful a woman is, the more we pay attention to her outfits!

In January, The New York Times wrote that Hillary Clinton ended the clothing conversation by opting for practical, inoffensive looks – black slacks, thigh-length blazers, scoop-necked blouses and nearly flat shoes.

The fact that the piece was considered newsworthy at all indicates that the conversation had not ended and indeed it hasn’t – pantsuit digs and pantsuit think pieces are slung in equal measure. Meanwhile, politician Bernie Sanders’s unremarkable sartorial decisions remain, well, un-remarked upon. Although her shoes aren’t the topic of as much discussion as the rest of her wardrobe, Clinton’s choice to wear flats is a bold assertion of her unbending confidence. The decision to don practical footwear may seem like common sense for someone whose job demands thinking on her feet, but it’s a step away from the rules outlined by power women in pop culture, and on the covers of magazines – that is, the women, who are often perceived of as role models.

If Clinton followed the lead of the power women portrayed in political dramas and sitcoms like ‘House Of Cards’ or ‘Veep’, she would know that elevated heels are still linked with elevated status, comfort be damned.

Some of these shows are more realistic in their portrayal of driven women. Selena Meyer, the strong-willed protagonist on ‘Veep’, might be the subject of clickity walk-and-talk pans, but the camera follows her home, where she kicks off her heels, exhales, unwinds. Claire Underwood, on the other hand, might as well have her heels welded to the balls of her feet, completing the fusion of her stilettos and her identity.

Megan Garber wrote a piece for The Atlantic about the strangeness of the character’s poorly conceived lifestyle choices, which include walking around her own home in her very high heels. She even seems to sleep in them. “No woman has walked around her home in stilettos. No woman ever!” she wrote. “Heels may lengthen the leg and swagger the walk and do all manner of aesthetically pleasing things to the lower limbs of the human body; they achieve all this, however, by creating in their wearer a step-by-step discomfort.” That any article of clothing, be it a restrictive bra or an uncomfortable shoe, would need to be cast aside once the wearer is alone, shows that the desire to wear it is linked with how it makes her feel in public, and how she’s publicly perceived. Certainly it shows that the garment is physically uncomfortable, which is why, for the average American woman, the decades-long trend of heel-wearing is tumbling, especially in the workplace.

According to the Spine Health Institute, 72 percent of women wear heels some of the time. But, on average, heel-wearing dropped 21 percent between 1986 and 2003. Only 31 percent of women, who wear heels, reported wearing them to work – most others only reserves them for special occasions. This is because heels are proven to put a strain on your body – one-inch heels exert 54 percent less pressure on your feet than three-inch heels, for example.

It is perhaps due to these reasons, health and general discomfort that, in the short history of women’s workplace attire, high heels have not always been worn. Even a non-scientific survey of power women from sitcoms of decades past indicates that expectations in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s were lower – at least in terms of heel height. When a wide-eyed Mary Tyler Moore spun in circles, casting her hat jubilantly into the air at the start of each episode, it was her low-heeled boots that enabled such mobility. Her success as a producer isn’t hindered by her practical fashion choices. Neither is Murphy Brown’s, whose ambitious character was most often seen in a loose-fitting suit and a pair of tennis shoes or ballet flats.

If fictional women like Murphy Brown didn’t need high heels to reach through the glass ceiling, and real women didn’t catwalk into the workplace wiggling in their stilettos, where did they come from, and why have they become married to the way we think of feminine power?

In short, heels have been around for centuries, but they began as a practical choice for eastern horseback riders, who benefitted from the heel, which prevented a stirrup slip-up. By the time of Louis XVI’s reign, the shoe had become a fashionable class signifier, worn by both genders, including Louis XVI himself.