WOULD you believe there’s actually an Encyclopedia of Feet and Footwear? The editor explains why the topic was considered important enough to merit an entire encyclopedia (even if only one volume): “How we view and treat the kinds of footwear that we wear, and how we view our footwear, tell us a great deal about society and culture.” There is an entry devoted to Imelda Marcos, but the other entries of the encyclopedia convinced me that maybe it’s time we move away from this fixation on Imelda’s shoes and face up to the fact that all throughout the world, people have varying degrees of fixations on footwear, a generic term which includes everything from slippers to sandals to shoes. (I won’t be dealing with feet here, which the encyclopedia shows to be an amazing object of culture as well, with many possible topics from foot-binding to sexual fetishes.) At first glance, footwear is there to protect our feet from dirt and mud, and from the heat. Yet when we buy footwear, even slippers, we go beyond the functional and want our footwear to be nice-looking, eye-catching, or both. Our aesthetics around shoes can become quite complicated as we consider the many social meanings for footwear generated in each culture. The most obvious is how footwear represents wealth. In many places in the world, some people are so poor they can’t even afford slippers. Even in the Philippines, the very poor might have slippers and shoes, but they use them very sparingly. The meanings can shift. The lowly tsinelas and bakya in the Philippines took elevated status when embellished with beads or sequins, so they could be worn by the rich. Who would have predicted that rubber slippers, once considered pedestrian and proletarian, would now command prices of a few hundred or even over a thousand pesos because of brand names or styles? Nope, they’re no longer considered tsinelas (slippers) but flip-flops, Havaianas or one of the many upscale brands of casual footwear. While footwear are status symbols, they also represent our contact with the ground, which is considered “profane” or “dirty” in some cultures. Many places of worships—temples and mosques in particular—require worshippers and visitors to remove their footwear before entering sacred ground. Many cultures, including our own, also require that visitors remove their footwear before entering a home as a sign of respect to the host. As culture goes though, there are many variations on the rules. If the visitor is considered very important or of high status, the owner of the home is required to “exempt” the visitor, “No, no, please keep your shoes on.” The cultural meanings attached to footwear may sometimes be lost across time. Take the men’s shoes with very long pointed toes which are currently in vogue. I never found them particularly appealing and wondered why they’ve become so popular... until I read in the foot-and-footwear encyclopedia about the poulaine, a male shoe that was quite popular in medieval Europe, but which was condemned by the Catholic church as obscene. Yes, the elongated toes were supposed to have been phallic. The poulaine’s toes could extend up to 24 inches, stuffed with wool and horse hair to keep it, well, erect. Men supposedly stood by street corners and would wave their poulaine-clad feet at women (and maybe fellow men?) passing by. Footwear reflects and replicates gender. Notice how men get to be the aggressor with their poulaine. Women, on the other hand, learned to wear all kinds of footwear not just for their own satisfaction but for men’s as well. Sandals and other open-toed shoes provided women occasions to display their feet to men, sometimes seductively as when the feet were brightly pedicured or dressed up with elaborate henna tattoos. Heels, terribly difficult to walk in, were meant to highlight women’s hips and legs especially when they were walking, because as women tried to keep their balance, they would end up swaying, precariously and erotically. The TV series “Sex and the City” had a strong “shoe theme” running through its episodes, its main characters (particularly Carrie Bradshaw) talking all the time about, and shopping for, shoes. The interpretation that appears in the foot encyclopedia was that it represented the shallowness, materialism and immaturity of the women characters (and of women in general?). Alternatively, the power to buy expensive shoes also comes through, so maybe accumulation of shoes runs parallel to the accumulation of power. The encyclopedia quotes Imelda Marcos as saying that many of her shoes were actually gifts, and it occurred to me that was probably true too—the more powerful a person becomes, the more gifts they receive. And in the case of Imelda, the gifts would probably be shoes, which then represented not just her power, but the attempts by many sycophants to bask in, or solicit, her power. Quick now and check the footwear in your home... and do an analysis of who wields power, and over whom. • |
Published in Philippine Daily Inquirer September 4, 2010.
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