High Heel

by Brennan, Summer; Schaberg, Christopher; Bogost, Ian

• ISBN13: 9781501325991
• ISBN10: 150132599X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2017-09-07
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

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, 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.

Author Biography

Summer Brennan is an author, journalist and consultant on issues relating to international security and gender equality. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from Scientific American, Lit Hub, The Millions, Longreads, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, The Rumpus,The Believer Logger, Pacific Standard Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Fitness magazine, and other publications. She has worked with the United Nations since 2008 and is currently a Communications Consultant for UN Women. Her first book, The Oyster War: The True Story of a Small Farm, Big Politics, and the Future of Wilderness in America was published in August 2015. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, USA.

Table of Contents

1. The Garden of Forking Paths
2. The Dancing Princesses
3. Out of the Ashes
4. The Seven-League Boots
4. La Douleur Exquise
5. The Labyrinth
6. The Minotaur
7. The Kill
8. The Goddess of the Double Blade
9. Dancing Backwards
Index