I thought an interesting Cultural object that I didn’t say in class are High heels. The ones that are 8 inches tall and girls wear with obvious discomfort in compliment their dress. To me I would never sacrifice comfort for looking good. Girls even wear them when they go out, and after they have had a couple drinks. But I guess this isn’t the first time women have withstood painful attire for the sake of being “attractive”. In china they bind their feet from childhood to obtain this “beauty”. There is a ton of different reasons women wear high heels I’m sure, so the signified sign may not be the same as the signifier. Who knows I could be completely wrong in my interpretation of these. Some college girls may enjoy wearing them for comfort, some may like how they get a work out from them, and some may wear them just because their friends are wearing them. When watching Semiotics I realized that there probably is a number of different reason girls wear high heels, but for most I’m willing to bet they signify women dressing up. Furthermore our Culture sees high heels as a specific object, meaning it has an appropriate message to go along with it. According to Saussure a high heel would have no natural meaning, and because of our exposure to the object within our culture we see it as something to associate with natural dress up attire. According to Wikipedia “high heels tend to give the aesthetic illusion of longer, more slender legs.” However the origins of heels come far from aesthetic appeal. High heels in fact originated in Egypt and were worn by both genders. Butches would wear them to keep their feet above the blood on the floor, during the Middle Ages upper-class men and women would wear them outside to keep their feet above the muddy streets full of debris, and Persian horse riders would wear them because they helped keep their feet in the stir-ups attached to the horse. In Venice in the 1700’s women would wear high heels to advertise their wealth and social standings. Through history it seems that heels were used in a much more practical way, but now we associate them with aesthetics.
sorry i dont know why the background is black.
ReplyDeleteHigh heels are indeed a puzzling object to read and understand. I would like to take a stab at them from a woman’s perspective. In our young, American culture it seems that the kind of shoes you wear makes a statement about who you are. I remember in high school, the only girls who regularly wore heels to class were the classy, creative, hip art students. In this case, I read high heels as a sign that they put thought and effort into the way they got dressed that morning and that it matters to them how they looked to the rest of the world. This is a great contrast to the rest of us that just rolled out of bed and threw on a pair of sweat pants. Heels say “look at me; I’m awake and ready to be here.”
ReplyDeleteWhen I see high heels out on campus, I tend to assume that the woman wearing them is in CSOM. This probably isn’t always true.
In the ‘going out’ situation, heels make a different statement. It seems that the taller and skinnier the heel of your shoe, the more daring or outgoing you are seen to be. Am I correct ladies that we all seem to have that one pair of heels hanging out in our closets that we own but never wear because we’re just not brave enough?
Therefore, high heels are working to sort the lazy people from the go getters, the business class from the rest of the university and the confident from the reserved. In our world, it seems that it’s not what you eat, but what your wear that makes us what we are.
I myself do not understand why the female gender wear highheels, but then again why not? There are many things Men do also that are questioned by the opposite sex. I guess this just signifies that each gender have different sights on things, which reminds me of a thought, I'm sure every guy has had, and that is, "Are there flat screen t.v.'s and sofas in the girls bathroom, with fridges stocked on food, because they never go alone. But im sure they have their reasons like we have ours.
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