High Heel
by Summer Brennan
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
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Pub Date 21 Mar 2019 | Archive Date 21 Mar 2019
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Description
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
Fetishized, demonized, celebrated and outlawed, the high heel is central to the iconography of modern womanhood. But are high heels good? Are they feminist? What does it mean for a woman (or, for that matter, a man) to choose to wear them? Meditating on the labyrinthine nature of sexual identity and the performance of gender, High Heel moves from film to fairytale, from foot binding to feminism, and from the golden ratio to glam rock. It considers this most provocative of fashion accessories as a nexus of desire and struggle, sex and society, violence and self expression, setting out to understand what it means to be a woman by walking a few hundred years in her shoes.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781501325991 |
| PRICE | US$14.95 (USD) |
Featured Reviews
roxi N, Reviewer
As a lover of high heels, I felt this book was a must read for myself. I thought it was well laid-out and written almost as if I were hearing a podcast. history, opinion, and acute observations made this book and enjoyable read. To link Orvid, fairy tales, societal views/norms to 'simple' high heels was fascinating to read. Oddly enough, the book inspired me to wear heels the next day after months of comfy flats. I won't look at heels the same, and I love them just as much.
Jess G, Librarian
HIGH HEEL - My introduction to "Object Lessons" - has whetted my appetite for more deep dives into the anthropological and ethical questions surrounding seemingly mundane things. Summer Brennan brings insightful commentary to the discussion, invoking mythology and fairy tale imagery, patriarchy and feminism, with sound historical analysis. This has already prompted conversations in my workplace, and I know of at least one person who is actively seeking out other lessons that objects can teach them. It's a quick read, and something I would have loved to share in my gender studies classes in college.
Roman C, Reviewer
"Our shoes pin us to the world... and because the stories that shoes tell are invariably about public life, they must also be about status"
A thought-provoking meditation that starts with heels and travels over a range of related topics from rape culture to fashion, pain and femininity, beauty and art. Brennan is a wonderful companion as she moves us from Ovid's Daphne via Sylvia Plath's haunting black pumps in The Bell Jar, the shoe workshop in Ferrante's quartet of novels, and the numerous fairy-tales that work around shoes (Cinderella, The Red Shoes, Puss-in-Boots just as starters) through to David Bowie's glitter platforms and modern feminist debates about empowerment vs. submission to patriarchal strictures.
I've read a few of the books in this intriguing series and this is the best to date - of course, that's partly because it speaks so clearly to my own concerns and interests, but also because Brennan combines the anecdotal with the researched, and ultimately leaves things open rather than closing them down:
"How can we retain and celebrate a woman's sexuality and femininity, while freeing her from sexual objecthood? What are women even like outside of patriarchy?"
Witty, personal, wide-ranging, interrogative, angry in places, but always thoughtful and stimulating - you won't wear your favourite heels in quite the same way again!
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