Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes, COVID Edition
If I had asked a hundred random working women what shoes they were wearing in January 2020, I would have gotten a wide range of answers: heels, loafers, sneakers, hiking boots, brogues, wellies, and any number of other, perfectly reasonable styles. There are few hard and fast rules about footwear in the 21st century. I mean, one doesn’t wear high heels on a sailboat or sandals on a construction site, but even women who would not be caught dead without a chunky heel in 1999 (myself among them) now find themselves with a broader spectrum of acceptable options. The combination of increasingly casual workplaces and increasingly available innovative, sustainable, and fun footwear (think Rothy’s, Allbirds, and Tieks) has given women any number of situationally appropriate, attractive, comfortable shoes.
But in June 2020, those answers are likely to be far less varied. Shelter-in-place orders and social distancing have created a world where our footwear is highly correlated with our place in the world, particularly in the world of work — what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu termed habitus (more on this below). (**Excepting, of course, Matt Gaetz’s footwear, which exists on a plane of its own).
Many of us are currently working from home, where shoes are optional (if allowed at all). After all, on Zoom, our interlocutors have no way of knowing if we’re wearing pyjama bottoms, so “professional” shoes are not required. (Although I would never step in front of a live classroom in anything but my own uniform of colorful frock and dependable Cole Haan wedges, for example, I switched to much more casual garb when my classes moved online and ditched the shoes.) When we do go out, it is typically either to enjoy some exercise and fresh air or to run basic errands like grocery shopping, and neither event calls for elaborate footwear.
I was not surprised, therefore, at the New York Times piece on the shoes of the moment: water shoes. A step up from Crocs, this decidedly unglamorous, amphibious footwear takes us from hiking to dandling our feet in a creek to padding around the garden. I think the NYT buried the lede, however, as it was not until near the end that the author noted how perfect water shoes are for the house. Our bodies are used to being cushioned by footwear as we make our way through the world, so we may find our lower backs, hips, and arches longing for some support as we make our way around our houses for months on end. Like my favorite Adidas slides (whose only downside is their tendency to shed those tiny, massaging nubs), water shoes give our feet respite from hardwood floors and thin area rugs, and since nobody else sees them, who cares what they look like?
Because they are lightweight by design, water shoes may also be appropriate for the second group of working women: essential workers. Health care providers, drug store employees, postal workers, Amazon packers, and Instacart shoppers alike depend on supportive, comfortable shoes to get them through the day. Many wear variations on the iconic Dansko clog, and typically let their scrubs or accessories do the talking when they look for self-expression.
I wager that the only women likely to be wearing fashion shoes regularly today represent a separate group: the political and policy-making class. We can further divide these women into two distinct categories: those trying to save the world by sharing epidemiological data and pandemic-era behavioral guidelines, and those pushing the stories the president wants the world to hear.
The former category includes women like Dr. Deborah Birx, U.S. Coronavirus Response Coordinator, and Dr. Bonnie Henry, Provincial Health Officer for the Canadian province of British Columbia. Just as Dr. Birx is admired for her impressive scarf collection, Dr. Henry is known for her colorful, statement shoes. Vancouver-based, cult-favorite shoe designer John Fluevog is so enamored that he designed a “Dr. Henry shoe” in a colorway echoing her signature hot pink, embedding the BC official’s “be kind, be calm, and be safe” motto on the insole (100% of profits go to charity).
These women, like many others, are navigating a demanding professional space while finding room for self-expression. Being serious doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with fashion and a spark of joy from colorful accessories can provide a welcome respite during turbulent times. Birx and Henry’s duds are practical while still signaling that they are women with home lives, with personal interests, with quirky personalities. Their shoes project their humanity.
In contrast, the latter group includes the many women in the Trump administration who most frequently deploy their boss’s message towering high heels, often in matchy-matchy coordination with their bodycon sheaths and miniskirts. Trump family members are particular fans of this look. This is not unique to Republicans — Nancy Pelosi also loves colorful heels — but Democrats are more likely to be seen in slightly more practical footwear. Even officials in previous Republican administrations were more often in low heels or flats, consistent with the on-your-feet nature of their jobs.
What does the Trump administration’s fixation with high heels mean? Vanessa Friedman of the New York Times had an astute take in an August 2017 analysis of what Melania Trump wore to Houston in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey:
“Mrs. Trump’s heels . . . are redolent of a certain clichéd kind of femininity: decorative, impractical, expensive, elitist (all adjectives often associated with the brand “Trump”).
That they also are part of the identity the first lady brought to Washington — that her comfort level and ability to walk in exactly the kind of shoes that cause other women, wearing more solid shoes, to wince and crunch their toes in imaginary pain was part of her narrative and image from the start — does not obviate the fact that they have also come to represent her remove, for both good and ill. Women in the capital are generally more associated with sensible pumps than teetering patent leather numbers.”
Friedman’s spot-on observations highlight three important connotations of Trump-era White House footwear. First, an uber-feminine display intended for the male gaze; high heels are designed to change women’s posture, lengthening the leg line while pushing out the bosom and bottom. Second, expensive impracticality; these shoes were not designed for women who run around doing important work (though let’s be clear, many of the women wearing them have demanding jobs with far-reaching consequences), but rather for the leisure class, women who don’t have to fetch their own photocopies or drive their own cars. Finally, definitive Washington outsider status; this is the footwear of political outsiders, not Beltway bandits.
Of course, this should come as no surprise to anybody paying attention to Trump. These messages resonate with Trump’s favorite themes: the sexualization of women, ostentatious wealth, and the draining of the swamp. (We can debate whether the latter two are Trump facts or fantasies.) The message these shoes send gives us little insight into their wearers’ inner lives or personalities, but it speaks volumes about the glossy nature of the particular political world in which they operate.
I am not here to tell women what shoes to wear. Far from it — let your footwear freak flag fly, my friends! Rather, I want to highlight that our choices are tangible signifiers of who we are, returning to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. Habitus encompasses the habits, tastes, and understandings we accumulate through our life experiences. Put simply, our upbringing, our values, our geographic location, our education, our social connections, and even our work all contribute to the cultural and symbolic capital we carry through life. Our clothes, the outward manifestations of habitus, allow others to locate our place in the world quickly and with startling accuracy.
Though I have no doubt it will lead to a restructuring of the social order, the COVID pandemic has not leveled the playing field by forcing us to be #AloneTogether. Instead, the realities of pandemic life have exacerbated a visible social divide epitomized by — of all things — our shoes.
To borrow a phrase from Brillat-Savarin, “tell me what’s on your feet, and I’ll tell you who you are.”
