Action heroines slay them in heels
Audiences are more attuned than ever to on-screen footwear, amid our culture’s greater scrutiny of gender norms in film
“I feel relieved at the amount of sensitivity that people have to women and women’s roles in films.” BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD | Actress
Colin Trevorrow’s 2015 reboot, Jurassic World, bagged a huge box office haul but also sparked discussion about one very controversial wardrobe choice: the high heels worn by Bryce Dallas Howard’s character, Claire Dearing. Wide shots show her clicking and clacking as she’s chased by dinosaurs in a jungle.
Women wearing unreasonable shoes in action films is historically common. But something about the sight of Claire striding in pumps captured our attention. “Was it really necessary for Jurassic World to resurrect gender stereotypes along with the dinosaurs?” wrote Jada Yuan of Vulture. Parodies ensued, including one that digitally put pumps on the dinosaurs in the original Jurassic Park.
What became clear is that movie audiences are more attuned than ever to on-screen footwear, amid our culture’s greater scrutiny of gender norms in film. But a look back at the history of heroines in heels shows that the issue is more complex than it seems.
For instance, one reason Jurassic World caught flak is not just that Howard was wearing heels but also that Trevorrow didn’t hide them. Veteran costume designer Ellen Mirojnick (Cliffhanger, Speed, Strange Days)
explained that it’s typical for characters dressed in
heels to be shot in a way that their shoes are not visible during any of the action. Try finding a single frame of Hansel & Gretel:
Witch Hunters in which you can clearly make out Gemma Arterton’s shoes in a fight.
It’s often just too difficult to perform any stunts, even running, in a heel. Some films, such as
True Lies or Red, show a heroine in heels and then make it a point to show her removing them, to represent her shedding that more feminine identity, which also makes the action sequences easier to perform.
Sometimes showing the heels during action scenes is a character choice. After the Jurassic
World controversy, Howard told Cosmopolitan , ”I feel really relieved at the amount of sensitivity that people have to women and women’s roles in films,” but she noted that “this character needed to seem ill-equipped to be in the jungle. She was somebody who looks like she belongs in a corporate environment.”
Think Romancing the
Stone and the screwball adventures of the 1980s.
Some might call such thinking retro-sexism, reinforcing old stereotypes about women even as the films seek to lampoon them. In the sequel, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,
out now in UAE, she conspicuously wears boots.
Last year’s stylised Cold War spy story
Atomic Blonde showed Charlize Theron’s Lorraine Broughton in heels to emphasise the stature and power of the female spy whose concentration is so focused that she can convincingly kick butt while balancing on bladethin stilettos.
Ruth Carter found inspiration in the footwear of Asian cinema for the costumes she designed for Black Panther. She described how shocked she was when Ryan Coogler, a 30-year-old man, told her that the women in Black
Panther should be covered and in flats. (Carter did end up giving them a very small wedge heel, “just enough to pivot on comfortably” in battle, much like you’ll find in shoes of martial artists.)
But, on the whole, footwear has evolved. You can see a marked difference in what women wore in the “girl power” 1990s and in the early aughts, when the stiletto gave way to the chunky heel in Charlie’s Angels movies, The Long
Kiss Goodnight and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer
television series. In each, the heels tend to be heavy, blunt and far better for balance.