Reinventing the Heel: Technoscientific Interventions in Fashion Footwear

• In Event: If a Body Meet a Body: Making People in Daily Practice

Abstract

As previous research in feminist STS has argued, objects, bodies and identities emerge through a process of co-construction. One of the most ubiquitous material practices in many modern cultures is the act of wearing and walking in shoes. Putting on shoes can be understood as a point of contact between an individual’s physical foot and the standardised model of a social foot. As any shoe wearer will tell you, this meeting between body, design, and society is not always a felicitous one.

My paper explores the concepts of fit, comfort, health, and beauty as they intersect with the material performance of gender with a particular focus on the reinvention of the ‘comfortable high heel’. This continuous cycle of invention and modification as recently intensified with the emergence of mobile foot-scanning technologies, female footwear designers, and podiatrist-entrepreneurs. Through narratives of hi-tech customisation and technoscientific progress, these new designs purport to prevent the long-term health effects previously associated with high-heeled footwear while maintaining the longstanding association of the high heel with femininity and professionalism. This case study of how the reinvented high heel attempts to subvert a harmful body regime while maintaining a traditional gender norm shows not just how gender and technology are co-constructed, but also how beauty standards are as much worn on the body as they are in the body through the enactment of the feminine walk and, potentially, the clinical body.

Author

• Chris Hesselbein, Cornell University STS