高跟鞋為何成了女性專屬?

Shoes That Put Women in Their Place

高跟鞋為何成了女性專屬?

TORONTO — YOU can’t even really see the shoes.

多倫多——你其實(shí)很少能看到這些鞋子。

In many of the photos of women on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival, the elegant gowns fall all the way to the ground, obscuring a view of their special-occasion footwear.

在戛納電影節(jié)(Cannes Film Festival)女星走紅毯的照片中，有很多優(yōu)雅的及地長裙，遮擋了她們專為這個特殊場合穿著的鞋子。

So why on earth would it matter if women entering the prestigious celebration of cinema chose not to confine themselves in difficult-to-walk-in heels, opting for something more manageable — or even fashion-forward, in a flat?

那么，如果一名女性決定不穿著難以走路的高跟鞋，而是選擇更加方便——甚至是時尚前沿的——平底鞋，步入這個知名的電影盛會，又有什么大不了的呢?

It did seem to matter to someone, though. It was reported last week that some women were turned away from the festival for the sartorial sin of wearing flats. High heels, it turns out, appeared to be part of the unwritten red-carpet dress code. Wearing heels changes how you stand, how you walk and how you are perceived. Even if they are visible only in small flashes, when a hem moves to one side, they are, in essence, a foundation garment: shoes that keep women in their place.

但是對于有些人，這似乎真的很重要。上周有報道稱，一些女性穿著平底鞋前往這個電影節(jié)，卻因違反著裝規(guī)范而被拒之門外。實(shí)際上，高跟鞋似乎是不成文的紅地毯著裝規(guī)范之一。穿著高跟鞋，會改變你站立、走路的姿勢，改變?nèi)藗儗δ愕母杏X。即使鞋子被看到的時候很少，但當(dāng)裙裝的下擺擺到一邊時，它們本質(zhì)上就相當(dāng)于緊身胸衣：鞋子讓女性擺正自己的位置。

The heel has come to be the icon of feminine allure and even female power. But what, exactly, is this power and why do only women have the privilege of using heels to convey it?

高跟鞋已經(jīng)變成女性魅力的標(biāo)志，甚至是女性力量的標(biāo)志。但是，這種力量究竟是什么，為什么只有女性才擁有用高跟鞋來表達(dá)它的特權(quán)呢?

Heeled footwear that gave the wearer a bit of a lift, or an advantage while on horseback, were not the original domain of women. They were first introduced into Western fashion around the turn of the 17th century from Western Asia. Privileged men, followed by women, eagerly wore them for more than 130 years as expressions of power and prestige.

高跟鞋會對穿著者產(chǎn)生一種“提升”效果，類似于騎在馬上的優(yōu)勢，它最初并不是女性服飾。在17世紀(jì)之交，高跟鞋被首次從西亞引入西方時裝領(lǐng)域。在130多年的時間里，它是權(quán)力和威望的表達(dá)，特權(quán)階層的男性熱衷于穿著高跟鞋，該階層女性也隨之效仿。

This changed, however, in the 18th century when the distinctions between male and female dress began to reflect larger cultural shifts. Regardless of class, men were deemed uniquely endowed with rational thought and thus worthy of political enfranchisement. Heels were not required on this new equal playing field. Men began to wear the nascent three-piece suit in somber hues and were discouraged from standing out from one another. Alexander Pope, writing early in the century, composed a satirical list of men’s club rules that included the warning that if a member “shall wear the Heels of his shoes exceeding one inch and half... the Criminal shall instantly be expell’d... Go from among us, and be tall if you can!”

然而在18世紀(jì)時，情況發(fā)生了轉(zhuǎn)變，男女服飾之間的差異開始反映更廣泛層面上的文化轉(zhuǎn)變。無論屬于哪個階級，男性都被視為唯一具有理性思維的性別，因而應(yīng)當(dāng)擁有政治選舉權(quán)。在這種新的平等中，男性不再需要高跟鞋。他們開始穿著新興的三件套，色調(diào)暗沉，別具一格是不受提倡的。在那個世紀(jì)之初，亞歷山大·蒲柏(Alexander Pope)列出了男性俱樂部的規(guī)則，其中警告說，如果一個成員“鞋跟超過一英寸半……此人應(yīng)被立即驅(qū)逐……從我們這里離開，自己去變高!”

Women, in contrast, were represented as being naturally deficient in reason and unfit for either education or citizenship. Fashion was redefined as frivolous and feminine, and the high heel became a potent accessory of ditsy desirability. The “lively” character Harriot “tottering on her French heels and with her head as unsteady as her feet” in a 1781 story “The Delineator,” represented the typical 18th-century feminine ideal. The high heel was then suspect for other reasons, too; it had supposed connections to female vanity and deceitfulness. Added to this was the increasing fear that women would use heels and other sexualized modes of dress to seduce men and usurp power. Marie Antoinette was the poster child for this, and this idea is the cornerstone of the contemporary conceit that high heels are accessories of female power.

相反，女性則被視為天生缺乏理性，不適合接受教育和擁有公民身份。時尚被重新定義為輕浮和女人味，高跟鞋成為“傻白甜”形象的有力輔助。在1781 年的短篇小說《描畫者》(The Delineator)中，“活潑”的人物哈里奧特(Harriot)“穿著法式高跟鞋搖搖晃晃的，腦袋就像她的腳一樣不穩(wěn)定”，這代表了18世紀(jì)女性的理想典型。接著高跟鞋又有了其他一些讓人不放心的理由;它與女性的虛榮心和不誠實(shí)聯(lián)系到了一起。此外人們還越來越擔(dān)心，女性會用高跟鞋等性感服飾來迷惑男人并篡奪權(quán)力，瑪麗·安托瓦內(nèi)特(Marie Antoinette)就是一個典型例子。而這種觀念也奠定了基礎(chǔ)，讓高跟鞋成為了一種代表女性權(quán)力的配飾。

By the 19th century, the invention of photography, and its immediate adoption by pornographers, established the curious convention of depicting women stripped of their clothing with the exception of their shoes.

到19世紀(jì)，攝影術(shù)的發(fā)明及其在色情作品中的迅速普及，催生了一種古怪的慣例：描繪除了鞋子之外不著其他衣物的女性。

The heel also retained its associations with female irrationality. As one anti-suffrage agitator wrote in The New York Times in 1871, “Suffrage! Right to hold office! Show us first the woman who has ... sense and taste enough to dress attractively and yet to walk down Fifth-avenue wearing ... a shoe which does not destroy both her comfort and her gait.”

高跟鞋仍然保持著與女性非理性形象之間的聯(lián)系。一個反對女性參政的煽動者，在1871年的《紐約時報》上寫道：“選舉權(quán)!擔(dān)任公職的權(quán)利!先讓我們看看，哪個女人有足夠的理性和品味，穿著讓她舒適，又不破壞步態(tài)的鞋子，風(fēng)姿綽約地走過第五大道。”

With all this baggage weighing down high heels, it’s no wonder they couldn’t gain a foothold in men’s fashion — even when men’s stature became a cultural focus in the early decades of the 20th century. Pseudoscientific ideas promoted Darwinian concepts of survival of the fittest and linked male height directly to sexual attractiveness. Heels could have been pressed back into service in men’s fashion, yet they were rejected. Heels on men detracted from their masculinity by highlighting a natural lack of height, rather than conferring any advantage gained from artificially increased stature.

高跟鞋被這種種包袱所拖累，難怪無法在男士時裝中擁有一席之地——即使在20世紀(jì)最初幾十年，男人的身高成為一個文化焦點(diǎn)的時候。一些偽科學(xué)觀念引入達(dá)爾文優(yōu)勝劣汰概念，把男性身高和性吸引力直接聯(lián)系起來。高跟鞋本有可能回到男士時裝界，但遭到了他們的拒絕。男人穿著高跟減損了他們的陽剛之氣，突出了天生的身高不足，人為增加的身高不會賦予他們?nèi)魏蝺?yōu)勢。

High heels on women, however, remained the cultural norm. Even when heels temporarily went out of fashion, they retained a prominent place in erotica. At the conclusion of World War II, this association led to the invention of the stiletto. The exceptionally thin heels depicted in wartime pinup art were made reality in the early 1950s and real-life women were encouraged to emulate those pinup ideals. Marilyn Monroe — alluring, playful and invariably stiletto shod — became one of the principal feminine archetypes of the period.

然而，女性穿著高跟鞋仍然是一種文化規(guī)范。即使在時裝領(lǐng)域，高跟鞋會暫時過氣，在情色領(lǐng)域，它也始終屹立不倒。第二次世界大戰(zhàn)結(jié)束后，這種聯(lián)系催生了細(xì)高跟鞋的發(fā)明。戰(zhàn)時美女招貼中細(xì)到極致的高跟鞋，在50年代初成了現(xiàn)實(shí)，社會鼓勵現(xiàn)實(shí)生活中的女性去模仿那些畫報女郎。誘人、頑皮，總是穿細(xì)高跟鞋的瑪麗蓮·夢露(Marilyn Monroe)，成為了這一時期女性的典型形象。

By the 1960s, the high heel fell somewhat from favor; too “mature” for the Youthquake style revolution and too problematic for emerging feminists. It returned to fashion in the 1970s, perfectly in tune with the disco era (when some men did allow heels back into their wardrobe, too).

到了20世紀(jì)60年代，高鞋跟變得不那么受青睞了;對于“青年風(fēng)暴”(Youthquake)的風(fēng)格革命而言，它太“成熟”;而對新銳女權(quán)主義者來說，它又太容易惹麻煩。到70年代，高跟鞋重新流行起來，與那個迪斯科時代完美契合(高跟鞋當(dāng)時也確實(shí)出現(xiàn)在了一些男性的衣柜中)。

In the 1980s, as unprecedented numbers of women entered the white-collar workplace, climbing the corporate ladder was perceived as socially risky — it could strip a woman of her desirability. High fashion offered an antidote: Toweringly high “killer heels” that insinuated that business acumen alone was not the reason for women’s success. By the early 2000s, designer heels were perceived as “power tools” — as one Times story called them — to be used, like lingerie, by professional women to manipulate people through the “power” of sex appeal, an idea that continues to resonate to this day.

上世紀(jì)80年代，前所未有的大批女性進(jìn)入職場，事業(yè)心太強(qiáng)開始被認(rèn)為是社交生活的不利因素——它可能會讓女性不招人喜歡。高端時尚提供了一個對策：高聳入云的“致命高跟”。它可以旁敲側(cè)擊地告訴對方，女性的成功并非只是因?yàn)樗纳虡I(yè)頭腦。本世紀(jì)初，設(shè)計(jì)師版的高跟鞋被認(rèn)為是“影響力工具”——時報的一篇報道也曾使用這種說法——職業(yè)女性利用高跟鞋，通過性感的“力量”來操縱他人，這個想法在今天仍然會得到認(rèn)同。

Linking sex appeal to power also clearly suggests that women have a very short window of opportunity for when they can be seen as powerful. The common comment about the Cannes debacle — that a handful of middle-aged women in flats were turned away — illustrates this issue. In an apologist manner, this observation seemed to suggest that perhaps if these women hadn’t been so aged they wouldn’t have worn sensible shoes. Never mind what accomplishments or connections brought them to the festival.

性魅力與影響力之間的關(guān)聯(lián)還可以清晰地表明，女性一生中只有很短暫的一段時間可以顯得富有權(quán)力。對于今年戛納電影節(jié)上的事故——少數(shù)穿著平底鞋的中年女性被拒絕入場——的普遍看法就突顯了這個問題。雖然帶有道歉的姿態(tài)，但這種觀點(diǎn)似乎在暗示，或許如果這些女性不這么老，就根本不會去穿舒服的平底鞋，無論她們是憑借什么成績或關(guān)系來參加慶典的。

This is the ultimate problem with sexual allure as a purported means to power: The power lies in the eye of the beholder, not the beheld.

這就是把性誘惑力視作影響力工具要面對的終極問題：你是否有影響力取決于觀察者的主觀看法。

If the argument for heels is that they are part of traditional attire for women, that is not wrong. The body-revealing gowns and barely there footwear worn by women on the red carpet have direct links to 18th-century ideas on gender, 19th-century pornographic images and midcentury concepts of a woman’s place in society.

如果倡導(dǎo)穿高跟鞋的人聲稱它屬于女性的傳統(tǒng)服飾，這也一點(diǎn)沒錯。暴露的禮服和藏在裙子下的鞋子與18世紀(jì)的性別觀、19世紀(jì)的色情圖片，以及上世紀(jì)中葉的女性社會地位有著直接的關(guān)系。

Perhaps it is a tradition we can upend in the 21st century, when it should be clear that a woman’s power has nothing to do with the height of her heel.

或許我們可以在21世紀(jì)顛覆這個傳統(tǒng)，因?yàn)槲覀儸F(xiàn)在都清楚，女性的影響力與鞋跟的高度無關(guān)。