This is a very late response to Sarah Breck's post, because I've hung back and tried to think about why I feel upset when I read this post. And, well, after some of the kerfuffle of earlier comments... But all the chatter so far seems to have centered on whether or not heels are bad for you, which I think is kind of beside the point. Even if they are, lots of things are bad for you, and if people want to choose them, then they're grown-ups (well, maybe, lol, there was lots of screaming in that one post) and that's their deal. But I have a slightly different set of thoughts on the article, so here goes:
[I just went back and read the article again, and noticed that she has removed the sentence that gave me the most willies, so there's that, but...]
The article was written in a prescriptive tone ("why women SHOULD wear heels") rather than descriptive (here's what I learned from wearing heels), so right away it comes off as... telling people what to do. Telling WOMEN what to do, since that's who it was addressed to.
With that tone set, she identified a singular ideal of beauty, of femininity, and exhorted women to aspire to that ideal of beauty (we are women, and women wear heels, makes you look like a classy lady, and the now-removed comment about how looking better should be reason enough). She conceded that there were times when heels weren't practical, but not wearing them definitely came off as a concession, a reduction in the ideal.
The article seemed to tell a tale of her rebelling against this ideal, and then coming to the realization that she ran from it because it was uncomfortable, and then struggling to embracing it for the purpose of beauty, not dancing, and then finding out it did good things for her dancing.
I think there are two things about this that bother me: 1) that she sets up a singular ideal of beauty and telling all the women readers that they ought to be subscribing to it, and that 2) this beauty ideal is grounded (forgive the pun) in wearing heeled shoes, which are, bluntly, for sexiness. And everybody seems to be OK with this.
I wonder what would happen if somebody wrote a post about how women should wear skirts when they're dancing, because we're women and that's what women wear, and, plus, every follow I've seen looks better in skirts and that should be reason enough. That anybody who doesn't like skirts because they feel stupid in them or not free to use their legs should take time and put in the effort to get over it because skirts will show you what you're doing with your hips and didn't I already say that women look better in skirts? Would our whole community be equally OK with that? I considered that that should be the post I should write on this, but I wanted to be more direct in what I have to say.
I don't especially like Sarah Breck telling me what I should wear to look pretty. (obvious disclosure: it's not often heels.) And I don't think I'm really OK with one of our top name dancers telling all the follows that they should strive to increase their sexiness quotient because that's what women do, and clothe it in it being about the dancing. I think that is a red herring. Sure, heels may show you things about your dancing (in a possibly dangerous way, depending on how far down the stability scale you begin.) I'm kind of skeptical, though, that they'll show you anything that really slick shoes won't show you, or simply looking at pictures or video of yourself dancing to see where you put your weight. Or even just looking at the bottom of your suede shoes- are they equally worn from front to back? Or is it obvious you spend more time on your balls?
Maybe I'm too late on this, but those are some thoughts from a follow who was a little upset when she read that post.
(Further obvious disclosure: "Aren" is a pseudonym. Why? Because I'm not a very good dancer, certainly not anywhere close to as good a dancer as Sarah Breck is. I don't think that makes my ideas invalid, because I'm not talking about dancing technique, but I do think any discussion in a small community of common activity where social standing is based on skill is likely to devolve in to "you don't get to talk because you're not a good [whatever, in this case, dancer]." So, I'll just get conceding this out of the way now. I'm not a good dancer, probably won't ever be as good a dancer as Sarah Breck is already.)
