Shoes may be divided into two categories: open shoes, such as the sandal or Japanese geta, and closed shoes, including ankle boots and high shoes. No doubt the first shoes were simple protective wraps. Until the seventeenth century, men and women wore similar styles of shoes.
The thirteenth to fifteenth centuries witnessed the popularity in Europe of the long, pointed poulaine or cracowe, with the point often stiffened and curled up to facilitate walking. Clearly phallic, the poulaine received condemnation in a Papal bull of 1468 (see figure). Another extreme style, the chopine, with a very thick sole of wood or cork, was popular in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and was unsuccessfully outlawed by the Venetian Republic in 1430.
From antiquity, shoes constructed of costly materials, including gems or gold embroidery, revealed wealth and social class. Beginning in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, shoes were worn with pattens — carved wooden supports with pedestals under the heel and ball — to protect the shoes. In the sixteenth century the high heel appeared, worn by both men and women. These, too, were worn inside another shoe, or pantofle, to protect them. Prominent persons sometimes wore shoes to increase their height. Louis XIV, who was only 5 feet 5 inches tall, wore shoes with 5-inch heels covered in red leather, setting off a fashion trend among courtiers.
By the end of the seventeenth century, only women wore the high heel, which accentuates the curvature of the spine, thrusts out the posterior and breasts, and creates a gait in which the hips sway from side to side. Good deportment called for learning how to walk properly in fashionable shoes. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, Petrus Camper, a professor of anatomy, wrote a little book detailing the ill effects of high heels on women's health, particularly during pregnancy.
A fifteenth century poulaine. Drawing by Caitlin Marie Zacharias
Tiny feet in women have been admired in different cultures. The practice of foot binding in China produced the lotus-foot, which fitted into a tiny, pointed shoe. In the fairy tale, the glass slipper could fit only the tiny foot of Cinderella, who became the bride of the prince. Historically, some women purposely wore shoes too small to make their feet look smaller.
Shoes are involved in a number of customs. An Anglo-Saxon father gave one of his daughter's shoes to her bridegroom. During the Middle Ages, it was customary to kiss the Pope's shoe. In an old Flemish custom, Christmas gifts were brought in sabots, or wooden shoes.
Shoes, including the lotus-shoe, modern stiletto, and extremely high heels, have been the object of shoe fetishism. The eighteenth-century novelist Nicolas-Edme Restif de la Bretonne imagined a story in which the narrator steals some rose-coloured shoes from his employer's wife and kisses one shoe while he ejaculates into the other. The male shoe fetishist is often a masochist who imagines himself being impaled by the high heel. Fetish-style shoes have been brought out into the open by members of heavy metal bands, such as KISS, who wear high-heeled platform shoes during performances.
— Kristen L. Zacharias
See also feet.
