Power Tools: An Unexpected History of High Heels

From kings and cowboys to sex workers and fashion icons, how did high heels become symbols of masculinity, femininity, power and desire? The story of the high heel begins not with women, but with men. Heels were invented for horseback riding in Western Asia long before becoming fashionable among elite European men in the seventeenth century. By the early 18th century as new definitions of gender emerged, men were encouraged to abandon heels and heels became central to constructions of idealized femininity. By the middle of the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, the meanings of high heels changed again to increasingly connote the erotic. By the turn of the 21st century, high heels were being touted as power tools in world that was encouraging women to leverage their “erotic currency.” The 21st century has also seen heels being used in transgressive ways to challenge the very gender conventions they had once helped construct This lecture will consider how the high heel acquired its extraordinary cultural power, why its meanings have changed so dramatically over time, and why this centuries old type of footwear continues to spark debate today. Elizabeth Semmelhack is the Director and Senior Curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto and is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on the history and cultural significance of footwear. She has curated more than 30 exhibitions exploring the intersections of fashion, identity, gender and culture, and is the author of 14 books, including Heights of Fashion: A History of the Elevated Shoe and Standing Tall: The Curious History of Men in Heels and Rough and Ready: A History of Cowboy Boots. Her work has been featured internationally in major publications and media, and she is a frequent speaker on the surprisingly complex ways footwear reflects and shapes our lives.