This week the UK’s Independent reports a new dismal trend, this one involving my old enemy—high heels:
Asda, GapKids and Next are among the High Street brands who offer heels for young girls.
Justine Roberts of Mumsnet, the parenting forum, said: “Some of the shoes I have seen on sale look more suited to a lap-dancing club than the feet of a young girl. The items in question are prematurely sexualising young children. We are saying to retailers, ‘Have a look at your range and ask yourselves if these items are appropriate. Some of the school shoes Tesco sells have got a two-inch heel. You shouldn’t have a high heel if your feet are developing.
“It’s not about being Mary Whitehouse. It’s about not sleepwalking into a world where this is normal.”
Mumsnet is running a campaign, Let Girls Be Girls, asking retailers to sign up to a code of practice and given an undertaking not to sell products which prematurely sexualise children.
This is not a first for British retailers:
In April, Primark withdrew padded bikini tops aimed at girls as young as seven following criticism that the items were sexualising children. [P.M.] David Cameron described the clothing as “completely disgraceful” and condemned the “early commercialisation and sexualisation of our children”.
You could make the argument that heels are not as offensive as padded bikinis, which are meant to give pre-pubescent girls the appearance of adult breasts. But high heels’ only purpose is to look sexy or—more euphemistically, glamourous—and attract male sexual attention. Adult-looking sexy clothes are never appropriate for young children. EVER. This applies to high heels, padded bikinis or midriff-baring dance outfits with lacy thigh-highs.
In addition, high heels are just plain bad for the body. Last year the British Trade Union Congress proposed that they be banned from the workplace because of they negatively affect health and safety for women employees (and also that they’re “demeaning to women.”) The New York Times also published a (subtly sexist) article in their Health section cautioning women against wearing heels because of the long-term damage they do to the feet, legs and back. Retailers do not seem to care about this aspect of the problem either.
A spokesman for Asda, which is currently selling a pair of (ed: OMG, vomit) Disney Princess children’s sandals with a 3cm heel, said the retailer had received no customer complaints. A Next spokesman said: “Their popularity suggests many parents agree we’ve come up with a look that’s special without seeming inappropriately grown up.” GapKids said their child heels had been tested to ensure safety.
Tested by whom, I wonder?
Nicola Lamond of Netmums, another parenting group, said: “I went shopping with my daughter and was horrified by how many shoes came with a high heel in sizes to fit girls as young as three. These shoes will be harder to walk in than flat shoes so I’d be worried my child would injure themselves.”
Gregor McCoshim, a podiatrist, warned that young children should not wear heels. “The fact children can wear these is worrying. Any heel above 2cm increases the risk of twisting an ankle. Wearing them can cause strains in the back which is a potential problem for their growth and development.”
The backlash has not yet forced retailers to take the kiddie heels off the market. There are apparently still enough people buying kiddie heels for retailers to justify selling them—because anyone in the fashion business knows that the only thing that matters is what you can sell, not what you ought to sell.
But if, like me, you didn’t learn to mince around in heels as a child, the Independent also reports in a separate article that:
The six-week “Sexy Heels In The City” course was offered to 16-year-old students at South Thames College in Wandsworth, Tooting and Merton in South London. (ed: The college is similar to a US vocational or community college.) It claims to prepare young women “for the business world and their social lives”.
Your tax dollars at work! The fact that a school offers classes teaching teens how to look “sexy” for the “business world” flat-out blows my mind. The course’s raison d’ être was explained thusly:
The course is run by Chyna Whyne, a former backing singer, who claims her life was made a misery because she wasn’t taught how to walk in high heels at a young age. (ed: ”Made a misery” because she couldn’t walk in heels when she was in grade school? Bish plz. Get some real problems.)
She said: “At some point, girls from the age of 15 upwards will start wanting to wear high heels. The point, if it’s going to happen, the earlier younger ladies learn how to walk in heels, the better it’s going to be in the long run – with business and social lives.
“The statistics of women with shoe-related injuries and foot problems are unbelievable high.”
It’s for your own good! So you don’t hurt yourself! Plus, the sooner you learn to work the sexy look, the better your life will be! Of course, it’s unthinkable for women to avoid injury simply by wearing flats or low heels—flats might keep them from looking sexy.
The school defends the course:
A spokeswoman for South Thames College said the course – which was run as an extra-curricular activity – aimed to teach women “how to walk in high heels, improve their posture, walk lighter and improve confidence”.
At the end of the six weeks, the course culminated in a spectacular show at Liverpool Street’s prestigious Broad Gate Tower, with the girls showing off their walking ability in a ‘catwalk style’ performance.”
Because that’s really what continuing education is all about—teaching girls to get ahead in life by walking like models. You can’t have confidence unless you’re sexy!
Let me point out the obvious: No man is ever told that he should look sexy—or re-learn how to walk—in order to be more successful in business. This school is endorsing the message that being sexy is essential to a woman’s professional life and is actually spending taxpayer money teaching them how to look the part.
This school’s attitude reflects what’s happening in the wider culture. When it comes to teens—i.e. older children—there’s no attempt to whitewash the fact that high heels are all about being sexy, whereas there’s at least token denial among retailers selling heels to grade-schoolers. But the fact that high heels are being marketed to increasingly younger girls is proof that, at minimum, our culture is okay with making “sexy” the prevailing look for all females, no matter what their age.
Having just been diagnosed with ARTHRITIS and Morton’s neuroma in my left foot I am kicking myself for forcing my feet into “cute” heels for the past 3-5 years. Completely brainwashed by patriarchy! Some of the problem is also from ballet dancing en poitne as a growing girl but I’m prepared to chalk that up to patriarchy too, and kind of wished I’d never gone to that level in ballet. Sexy or not, comfortable shoes must be normalized for girls and women as a priority.
@JD: I’m so sorry to hear that. What are your treatment options?
I must say that I was shocked by the photo in the Independent’s story. It’s NOT cute, people. The more we try to take control of our lives, the more pushback we get, and this is a blatant attempt to capture little girls and indoctrinate them into the big P before they can even formulate their own thoughts on the matter.
Isn’t it odd that our culture encourages the appearance of physical maturity long before it’s appropriate but discourages emotional/mental maturity at any age?
Just a tiny nitpick – the TUC didn’t suggest that heels be banned, but that employers be banned from making them obligatory (eg. part of a uniform). So women who wanted to wear heels would be free to but no one would be obligated. I know this is pedantic! but I’ve already seen one idiotic piece (by deeply thick Tory MP Nadine Dorries) claiming that they would have to prise her Louboutin heels from her cold dead hands, etc…
What I worry about with the padded bras, heels etc isn’t so much girl children being ‘sexualised’ (in the sense of being more likely to be viewed as viable sex objects by adult men) but with them being so radically ‘genderised’ from such a young age. It really does seem as though girls are being inducted, earlier and earlier, into the notion that conforming to a confining, consumerist, (at times literally) toxic and pink-washed version of femininity/beauty is all important.
@woodscolt: Fair nitpick, thanks. I mentioned Nadine Dorries in the post I linked to—she said something completely asinine like “no one will be able to see me if I don’t wear my Louboutins”, as though she’s unable to communicate with her fellow MPs unless she’s looking properly sexy. I’m sure that’s a comfort to her constituents.
@Katherine: I agree that it’s not overtly about making young girls look fuckable—to be crass—but that ultra-femme, pink-washed, hyper-genderized look is still all about looking a certain way to get male approval/attention. I agree that girls are being pushed into that look WAY early, and I find it really alarming.
So if girls have to learn how to walk in heels, how about classes teaching boys how to pull up their pants, hm? *g*
Seriously, what annoys me almost more than little girls being indoctrinated to wear high heels earlier and earlier, is this whole high-heels = professional thing. A friend of mine is a flight attendant, and she’s not allowed to wear flats! Because y’know, it’s totally professional to wear heels on a 14 hour flight on a moving plane… *headdesk*
Grrrrrrrr!!!
No way on God’s green Earth is my daughter going to wear a bikini, a bare midriff shirt, or heels before she’s at least 14, and even then only when locked securely away in her tower!!!!
Yes, a lovely idea: since women are becoming so independent and resistant to patriarchal control, let us begin to indoctrinate very young girls, so we can mold them into a generation of strippers, hookers, and secretaries!
You know this had to be a man’s idea. I am appalled by the other members of my gender, I truly am.
This makes my mother’s rules – no dangling earrings or shoes with heels until 6th grade; no makeup until 7th grade – seem so quaint. I do not envy the parents who have to find a way to navigate their children through all of this crap.
Mischief, treatment options are literally to wear more comfortable shoes with a wider toe box. Advice I should have taken years ago but was blinded by vanity.
The four year old girl next door is obsessed with the Disney Princess line, and owns about three pairs of Princess-y high heels. And the amount of time we adults spend yelling at her not to run in her impractical shoes depresses me. Already, we’re telling her not to play the same way as my son because of her clothes. Of course, her parents do try to convince her to change shoes, but she won’t, and they don’t have firm enough convictions about it to force her, so she’s left not running around like her male best friend.
Also, I didn’t learn to walk in heels till I was almost 30. I wanted to wear really high heels out on a special date with my husband. So that day, I went over to a neighbor’s house, got five minutes worth of advice, and managed. Seriously, I don’t want to devalue the skills that only women have, but a whole class? I have an advantage from dancing en pointe as a girl (Hi JD!), but unless you need to be able to walk on a catwalk, I don’t think it takes anything but advice and practice.
JD Regent: I feel your pain. I used to wear heels to my job as a hotel front desk clerk, standing in them for 8-10 hours a day. Having a painful bunionectomy on both feet at age 23 put a stop to that, and now I am a militant proponent of comfortable footwear. It seems so crazy that we torture ourselves with shoes that literally cripple, deform, and disable us.
aimed to teach women “how to walk in high heels, improve their posture, walk lighter and improve confidence”.
You cannot improve posture by teaching women how to walk “properly” in high heels. These shoes, by their very nature, negatively impact posture and pelvic and spine alignment. Not to mention the potential damage done to feet, legs, etc.
@J.D.Regent: I’m so sorry to hear about your diagnoses and I hope that new shoes will help improve how you feel.
I’m not quite sure how to articulate this thought clearly so I apologize in advance if it isn’t terribly clear. What I find particularly striking about this push to sexualize/genderize young girls is that there seems to be an overlap of people who buy these products for their daughters, encourage their daughters in beauty pageants, and yet who are so quick to make assumptions that other parents are sexualizing their children (e.g. thinking a parent is a pedophile for taking a picture of their young kid in the bathtub). There is such a prudish/prurient dichotomy to this phenomenon that only exacerbates how damaging it is for girls.
Look on the bright side, everyone! Now maybe RuPaul can start a toddler edition of Drag Race!
Oh no, wait, that’d be sick and wrong. Hmm, I wonder why they’re different…
I agree that it’s a problem that girl children are increasingly pushed into being sexualized, and it’s probably not a good idea for kids to wear heels on a regular basis, given that they’re still growing, running around, etc.
But I’m really dubious on the claim that high heels are never ok for kids, honestly. I think it’s totally legitimate to allow kids to play with being adults, to play at being a gender. Dressing up in “sexy” adult clothes is one way to do this, and I think this is an especially important way for trans kids to be able to do it, since, up to a certain age, there aren’t many available ways to play with identity.
I’m all for thinking about how these rules about gender and heels are enforced by normalizing high heels as regular shoes for young girl children, and for encouraging kids not to feel restricted by them. But I think it’s a mistake to say that we should disallow them.
There’s room to screw up boys, too (whatabouthem,huh?). I give you Denim Diapers for the sexy toddler lad. Please join me in a communal dry heave.
I think allowing your kid (whatever its gender) to put on a parent’s heels and clomp around is one thing, and buying them heels of their own (as if to say “these are appropriate for you”) is another.
@MaryBullstonecraft: I agree about not policing too heavily what children like to experiment with or dress up in. But these high heels are not being marketed as costumes for little girls to play dress-up; they’re being sold as daywear that’s preferable to—or at least the same as—sneakers or sandals.
@MaryBullstonecraft – I wasn’t aware that anyone was proposing making these shoes illegal. Stores are allowed to sell them, people are allowed to buy them. Rather, I am of the opinion that people should be strongly discouraged from buying and/or selling these shoes, and social censure is a great way to accomplish that.
@MaryBullstonecraft: I’ll chime in with everyone else that there’s a difference between playing dress-up and wearing heels to pre-school. If the girl next door only wore heels when she put on one of her pretty dresses, it wouldn’t bother me. But she wears them when she’s just playing in the front yard with the other neighborhood kids, and it restricts her play.
A separate issue: When my son comes home from next door in a princess dress, it just amuses me. When the same thing happens with my daughter, I know it will bother me. How do I handle the hypocrisy born of not wanting my daughter to embrace traditional gender roles? (On the other hand, I wouldn’t allow high heels for either of them.)
@baraquiel: This is what I’m disagreeing with:
“Adult-looking sexy clothes are never appropriate for young children. EVER. This applies to high heels, padded bikinis or midriff-baring dance outfits with lacy thigh-highs.”
And I’m not sure why, if people want to, it shouldn’t be ok to buy little girls or boys “dress up” clothes that fit them/that are theirs, instead of letting them play with their own adult clothes, which are typically higher heels/more overtly sexualized, anyway.
@MaryBullstonecraft: I’m curious why you think those clothes are appropriate for children and what kind of message you think it sends when parents dress them that way.
I didn’t say that parents should dress their children in heels. I said that I thought there’s nothing wrong with letting children explore their identities by allowing them different kinds of clothing choices. Especially if (as I alluded to in my first comment) they are kids who were born boys who want to play around with a particular version of femininity.
As for messages, I think it sends the message that identities are open to them, and that if they want to understand themselves or prettiness in this way, they can. Again, I wouldn’t suggest *only* buying these kinds of shoes for kids, any more than I would suggest refusing to let girls wear anything other than dresses. But I think it’s unnecessarily restrictive to put things like that off limits for kids entirely. And I’m concerned that outright suspicion of things like heels and dresses and bras–while often totally well-founded on a concern about reinforcing the idea that ‘this is the only acceptable way to *live* heterosexual femininity’–may unintentionally overlook the importance of allowing for variances in gender expression (whether by trans or high femme), especially for kids who don’t fit ‘our’ expectations.
How are these girls supposed to climb a tree in those shoes? Or ride a bike? Or chase little Tommy down the hall after he pulls her braid? All concerns about health effects and sexualization aside, I find it insidious that these trends would take the spontaneity out of girlhood and channel play instead into structured, sedentary activities. It’s just another form of control when children’s lives (girls’ in particular) are already far too tightly controlled.
@PhDork, I’ll take that dry heave and raise you one lost lunch.
Also, amandaw at FWD/Forward did a better job than I am here making a similar argument, also pointing out the importance of thinking about this w/r/t differences in ability and racialization:
http://disabledfeminists.com/2010/02/28/feminism-objectifies-women/
@MaryBullstonecraft: Good link! Thanks! I think some of Amanda’s points about how able-bodied = sexy are the same as my argument about how “sexy” is constantly being held up as the ideal for females of all ages.
I have some personal experience with this; I grew up with an immediate family member—not going to say who in order to respect her privacy—who was unable to wear “sexy” clothes like heels, bikinis, shorts, etc. because of a congenital medical disorder. Of course, not being able to project “sexy” often made people treat her as though she was invisible—at best. Her experience, which is similar to what Amanda talks about, only serves to reinforce the simple truth that “sexy” is the standard to which women are held, and those of us who don’t meet it are marginalized, despised or ignored.
Now retailers are pushing this “be sexy always!” notion on ever-younger girls. It makes me sick.
Is there an element of privilege/classism at work here? Yes, I’m sure there is given the newspaper I referred to—most discussions of these issues in mainstream media have that slant (especially UK ones). But the stores mentioned in the Independent article are not fancy ones, and the South London college mentioned has a working-class student body, with a large percentage of immigrant and minority students.
Regardless, even if you think that this article or this argument is aimed more at white or middle-class girls, it’s my belief that ALL girls deserve to be protected from early sexualization and negative stereotypes.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Gina Hernandez, Pursuit of Harpyness. Pursuit of Harpyness said: You're Never Too Young To Be Sexy! @ http://bit.ly/d306At [...]
@MaryBullstonecraft: The reason these garments are a terrible idea for children-well, one reason, anyhow-is that they are bad for kids’ bodies. They make it difficult to navigate and, if they’re used as everyday footwear, will damage the feet. This is a western version of foot-binding. It’s deliberately allowing kids’ bodies to be malformed in order to meet some male-created standard of beauty.
It’s also forcing kids to confront and commit to gender way before it’s appropriate or necessary. Why are we so obsessed with shoving gender and sexuality down these kids’ throats when they have other developmental tasks they need to master? Trans kids will figure it out without these shoes-that’s what dress up boxes are for.
@mischiefmanager: But who says people are necessarily shoving this down kids’ throats, or even letting them wear these kinds of clothes every day? Again, I’m objecting to the idea in Becky’s post that this is *never* ok. And I’m pointing out that there are a whole host of reasons that wearing heels (or mid-drifts, or whatever) in some particular contexts is fine, and even fun and helpful for some kids who want to do it–whether because they want to play adult femininity, because they have bodies that aren’t *allowed* to be beautiful, because they don’t have other ways of expressing their non-conforming gender identity, etc. Moreover, I have suggested (and tried to point to other people who have as well) that the inability to see the ways in which this might be good/empowering/liberating/playful for some kids has to do with *unwarranted* assumptions about who these kids/girls are, and what will be damaging or helpful to them. That, to me, is unfair, and smacks of privileged idea that everyone’s experience is like ‘ours.’
And if what we’re really interested in is safety, well it seems to me that heels made specifically for kids are a lot less likely to result in playtime-related accidents than clomping around in mom’s heels (if those are available). Obviously it would probably not be particularly healthy for little kids to wear heels all the time–just as it isn’t for adults–but it’s not an all-or-nothing choice, and imposing some version of restriction is just part of parenting.
“because they have bodies that aren’t *allowed* to be beautiful”
That right there is what I find problematic. Children’s bodies can be beautiful — they should not be beautiful, however, in the same way as the bodies of adult women. They should be beautiful in the manner of children. Children != adults. High heels are symbolic in our culture of many things, and one of the biggest is sexual availability. I agree with Becky that it is *never* appropriate for children to be coded as sexually available.
@MaryBullstonecraft: No expert here, but something seems off about your counterargument re safety concerns. I know anecdote=/=data, but I’ve never known a child who was injured while clomping around in mom’s heels, probably because when you wear a size six children’s and mom wears a size eight adult, you just can’t move very fast without the shoes falling off. Kids wouldn’t, for instance, try to run around outside in mom’s shoes like AvOgadro’s neighbor did in her child-sized heels; it’s physically impossible. The risk of a twisted ankle comes mainly from various activities that just aren’t possible in shoes that are too big. The trouble with kiddie heels is that kids would start wearing them like regular shoes without realizing that they could get hurt (or, worse IMO, they could realize this and refrain from playing as they normally do).
@baraquiel et al.: First, I want to make sure that it was clear that my “because they have bodies that aren’t *allowed* to be beautiful” was in reference to the article/idea I was referencing above, in which amandaw argued that the concern about sexualization actually *isn’t* particularly pressing for many populations of women and girls–particularly for disabled women and girls, whose bodies are figured as asexual or repulsive, and for trans women and girls (or people born boys who are gender non-conforming at an early age), who are forbidden from being beautiful/sexy for other reasons. With that in mind, it’s not at all clear to me that heels necessarily result in being “coded as sexually available” for many such kids–or even for many cis, able-bodied girls (while we’re on the subject, can we maybe wonder a little bit about the suggestion that heels code ANYONE as sexually available? Isn’t this the kind of thinking that we ought to resist?). I think it’s important to ask what else they might do, PARTICULARLY for kids whose identities are denigrated in the ways I suggested.
Can I offer an example? I had a significant disability for a good chunk of my life, which resulted in my needing to use a wheelchair for a while, and then later, to walk with a cane. Because this disability was the result of an accident, I saw a change in the way people treated me and the way the world seemed to work, before and after my accident. And one of the things I noticed is that, beyond strangers being grossly infantilizing (I was a bit older than the kids we’re presumably talking about here) and generally treating me like I was not a human being with thoughts, was that people–my family included–stopped treating me like I was beautiful, stopped acting like I might have any desires for anything other than food, and generally behaved as though my body existed solely to be looked after by doctors. Boys looked right through me, and very small children stared at me as though I were some mix between creepy/fascinating/gross. This, as you might imagine, was not particularly fun. It felt bad. And yes, Becky, part of the reason that it felt bad was that I grew up in a culture in which being valued for having a beautiful body is the most important thing. But it also just felt bad because I was a human being with desires, and people were constantly denying that, just because my body didn’t look or work like theirs.
During this time, one of the things that made me feel good was wearing makeup, getting my hair fixed, and –yes– wearing a heeled shoe on the one foot that wasn’t too damaged to wear it. It made me feel beautiful. It made me feel like myself (even though I’d never worn heels before). I’d wager that it DIDN’T sexualize me very much, given that the chair seemed to distract most people. (And speaking of the chair, when you use one, your risks of heel-wearing-related injuries drop to basically nothing. Just something to think about when we’re worrying about how heels prevent girls from running and playing. WHICH girls are we talking about, and to what extent does this kind of thinking presume a fair amount of ableism?) Anyway, the point, again, is that things like heels DO different things for different kinds of people–and not all women or girls are the same kinds of people. And what I’m really, REALLY trying to get across is the idea that what a little thing like wearing heels could (and does!) do for some little girls and boys who have had different life experiences than some of us is crucial to pay attention to. Because for some people, the blanket claim that heels are sexualizing, and thus bad for children to ever have/wear/play with, just isn’t true, and relies upon a SUPER problematic universalizing of ‘our’ own experiences. For girls who are disabled, for kids who are trans or gender non-conforming, being allowed to have your very own pair of heels to wear around your house, or in your chair, is special. It’s an outlet. It’s a very small thing that says “I can be this person that I’m typically just not allowed to be.” That is, to me, significant. And I think the attempt to say, well, we shouldn’t let you have that kind of enjoyment because it’s predicated on the idea that femininity = heels = sexualization is deeply misguided and a bit hurtful.
This is, again, not to say that parents should push their kids to wear heels. And it isn’t to say that girls can’t feel good about themselves, or even pretty, wearing tennis shoes and t-shirts. It IS to say that it’s worth paying attention to the times that doing something else might be ok, and why it is we insist on saying that the way ‘we’ experience something like heels is THE meaning of them for everyone.
@MaryBullstonecraft: Thank you for sharing. That was really meaningful for me to read.
I think this really gets to the heart of it:
During this time, one of the things that made me feel good was wearing makeup, getting my hair fixed, and –yes– wearing a heeled shoe on the one foot that wasn’t too damaged to wear it. It made me feel beautiful.
I completely agree with your feelings that those things make you feel beautiful—I wear makeup, short skirts and, yes, even high heels for those reasons. Nearly all of us adopt some of those beauty culture talismans because they bring us approval and admiration. I think you’re doing so in a way that’s much more thoughtful and subversive and forces the Patriarchy to acknowledge your attractiveness and sexuality. What concerns me is the way our culture—both with the kiddie heels and the “Sexy Heels in the City” class—just keeps reinforcing the notion that those things are what creates beauty and that people who can’t or don’t wear them are not attractive/unworthy of attention. It’s a vicious circle and to me one of the ways to stop it is to quit glorifying things like heels (and makeup and shaved body parts).