Last week some middle-aged women attended the Cannes Film Festival wearing flat shoes with their formal gowns, and were prohibited from entering because they were in violation of the dress code, reported The Independent, among other news agencies.
The dress code is not explicit, said the nydailynews, but high heels seem to be one of the unwritten dress codes for the red carpet.
Alexandra Fuluvaka, a senior from Utah majoring in elementary education, said, “I don’t like high heels. They are uncomfortable and unnecessary. But, they bring confidence, sometimes a sense of superiority to females.”
Camry Erickson, a sophomore from Idaho majoring in social work, gave her ideas. “It depends. Actually, they can be really uncomfortable to wear, but I like them because I am really short so they make me a little taller. Sometimes they make me fashionable.”
Senior curator at the Bata Shoe Museum Elizabeth Semmelhack writes in the New York Times opinion column about the Cannes film festival shoe embarrassment. She writes high heels have become a sign of femininity, even though they were not originally women's apparel. “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.“
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!’”
In contrast, women were regarded as inherently irrational and not worth educating to become citizens. “Fashion was redefined as frivolous and feminine, and the high heel became a potent accessory of ditsy desirability.”
Semmelhack cites a 1781 story in which the feminine ideal is represented by a dimwitted women in high-heeled shoes. “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,” she writes.
After the high heel left men’s fashion, it never came back (save for a brief time in the disco era of the 1970s) and from that point on, the high heel totally become a female thing instead of a male thing. Fuluvaka gave her opinion, “That is a style problem, women are more concerned about the way they look than men. High heels are considered ’stylish.’”
Nathan Fuluvaka, a senior from Hawaii majoring in psychology explained his opinion: “Women wanted to feel taller, higher in status.”
Status was related in to women wearing high heels in the recent past even up to today. Semmelhack writes, “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.”
As far as the Cannes Film Festival goes, Festival spokeswoman Christine Aime suggested the staff who had turned away the women in flats had made a mistake.
"There is no specific mention about the height of the women's heels as well as for men's," Aime said of Cannes' dress code. "Thus, in order to make sure that this rule is respected, the festival's hosts and hostesses were reminded of it," reported the nydailynews.