Every time I come to write, I distract myself with something else, leaving words to churn inside...am not sure if it is writer's block or just consciously or maybe not so consciously an avoidance strategy to not deal with certain issues...
And this is what happens when you shelve and leave pending certain issues...the universe conspires against your avoidance, and ultimately in your benefit...making sure that these certain issues keep simmering inside to the point of unbearable and forces you to finally spit it out.
It does so in some benevolent cunning way, when day after day, an article is shoved in front of your eyes, and those certain issues come back to the surface again, you who thought you could sidestep or leave them hanging somewhere there in your mind.
Well it happened today.
Was reading a rather benign article on the health hazards incurred by women wearing high heels, in the long run they risk fracture of ankles, hips, sciatica, arthritis, bad posture that can lead to chronic back pains, etc...I am not an orthopedist, but I know that your feet carry three times your weight. Imagine your weight multiplied by 3 mounted on stilettos ?!
Not that I have anything against high heels. I love shoes, used to collect them, much less so now. Shoes are pretty and can beautify and they can also enslave.
I remember once I was heading to a workshop led by a woman who was considerably older than myself, hence dotted with more wisdom - as she was greeting me, she looked at my feet and said "did you come here walking ?" Taken by surprise, I mentioned that I took public transport. She repeated her question "did you come here walking - adding - with those shoes ?" Obviously the answer was self evident, it was impossible for me to WALK any longish distance in those shoes.
That was a period of my life when I didn't do much walking in Life. I thought I was walking but in fact I wasn't. It would be unfair to say that I was crawling but I was definitely not walking, I was limping in life with those shoes.
Of course, any "intelligent" reader (hopefully, but most likely a misnomer) would understand that the high heel shoe is a symbol, a metaphor, and not the shoe itself.
Cinderella was dressed by the Good Fairy into a princess, with exquisite sandals fit for a prince. At it so happens, the prince took the sandal she dropped behind and searched for her...finding the missing pair and finding her in the process. She was identified through her gala sandals. Had Cinderella been wearing flip flops, am sure no prince would be looking for her.
Of course the Cinderella fable can be interpreted in a myriad of ways but am sticking to this version right now.
And so it is with women, in the hope of attracting the prince (as the Male), in the hope of being desired by the male, they would torture themselves in many ways starting with the physical and of course the foot - stilettos are just the tip of the iceberg.
Deforming bodies and faces to be desirable to the opposite sex, for his look of approval, women have fallen in the self mutilating trap, the self deprecating trap without even being aware of it.
The trap in question is not just wanting to be desired by the opposite sex, because both genders want to be desired as desire is a natural thing, but the trap consists of becoming psychologically dependent on the approval of the other sex at all costs. Because this is what it really boils down to. And not just a physical approval of desirability, nothing is just purely physical. This is what a "visual" society and "visual" men like you to believe. You know like when they say - men are visual - they are really saying - you are to cater to our needs of what desirable means, into what solely turns us (males) on, your female desire is a reflection of ours.
So once you devote your life to being desirable - to cater for the phantasmagorical and libidinal needs of men (mainly derived from pornographic images - notice in porn films women are fucked while wearing high heels) - you are eroding your center, eroding your self. A bit like the erosion of your ankles, feet, legs, hips, spine, when you are bound in high heel shoes.
Who can stand their ground or run for their lives when mounted on stilettos? No one. Not even superwoman.
Same for this pathological dependency need to be desirable - you become paralyzed in life.
It is of no coincidence that in China (till not long ago), women's feet were bound --you can still see the relics of this practice in some Asian cultures, specifically in traditional Japan, where women take baby steps when walking...
Bound feet and baby steps --- baby steps, infants...infants are dependent beings. They depend on the adult for food, shelter, care, desirability, love and a sense of belonging. Baby steps of an infantilized Feminine, made dependent on all the above, with the source being the male, now substituting himself for God.
The parallel with the stiletto shoe cannot be missed.
An oddity that women seem to constantly miss when having their lives focused on making themselves desirable to men - they fail to understand that it is in particular these type of men (alas the great majority) that fear and shun the principle of Female Desire.
And in closing this chapter, I would like to remind men and women, in particular non Western ones, that in ancient times, in the Arabian Peninsula, neither the Prophet nor his companions needed porno films with women in high heels to desire them.
