The calendar shoes lately have been fine, but nothing that's really blown my socks off one way or the other. Until today.
Those are FOOT BINDING SHOES. This is a calendar celebrating fun, whacky, crazy, beautiful, and lots of other kinds of shoes. These are not a celebration, these are a representation of torture. Now, if you want, you could make the argument that a lot of shoes are a bit like torture devices, and we don't do our feet or our backs and legs any favors by wearing them. But I wear those by MY choice. There's an element of social construction of beauty in why I wear them, but again, it's my choice to shove my feet into a ridiculous pair of shoes and walk around in them. These shoes represent no choice. They represent breaking the toes of a young girl and binding her feet to ensure that her feet be as tiny as possible, because tiny feet were considered the most attractive. And not just breaking those toes once, but over and over, continuing to wrap the feet tightly to cut off circulation until the toes usually rotted and fell off. This is not a ceremony I want to celebrate. As history, these shoes represent something that we should all be aware of. They represent ridiculous ideals of female beauty and male patriarchy. As beautiful as the workmanship is on these shoes, they will never inspire anything but rage and disgust when I look at them.
Thus endeth my rant. If you've made it this far, please return to your regularly scheduled internet browsing.
DITTO....every word! Jo
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