Kamala’s sneakers – a fit for the White House
Here’s what happens when you let a woman who wears sneakers walk through the establishment’s door – there’s something threatening about her. She’s going against the grain of uncomfortable stillettos invented by men to create back problems and keep women heeled to the ground – in their place – so to speak. She’s the anti-norm. The one who refuses to conform to the rules and regulations of “acceptable” gendered-attire. She will not stand for shit and it will get dirty!
We shouldn’t really be giving two hoots about what a woman wears, but here we are in the year of our lord 2020 discussing the US’s possible next vice president’s shoe choices, and as a sneaker head myself who just happens to be a woman, I know exactly what this means.
It may seem like a fickle thing to focus on, but Harris’s sartorial choice while doing campaign trails and perhaps even being sworn into the White-House (please god let this happen) is a much bigger message.
Her kicks of choice are the Converse All Star, simply referred to as Chucks. She has an entire collection of them and while she doesn’t go around pairing the sneakers with a white T-shirt with rolled up sleeves and a box of cigarettes in said sleeve – à la James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause – Harris is not afraid to hop on stage in the comfy all-American sneaker to take on the patriarchy. If a brainless orange-haired man with an orange face could win the presidency with poorly designed red baseball cap then why not Harris in a pair of Converse?
Chucks are the quintessential shoe of kids of colour from depressed economic households. They’re trusty, hardy, last long and form part of a history that appeals to the progenitors of sneaker culture.
Young people of colour!
White high-top Chuck Taylors were my first pair of shoes and they were given the care they needed to last me forever. Of course, poorer economic households tend to buy their kids one pair of shoes that are slightly bigger because we grow into them and can wear them for longer.
Even with all changes in sneaker trends (may I invite you to please Google the “ugly sneaker” movement), there is no one who is a person of colour who does not own or who has not at least once owned a pair of Chucks.
They are authentic and relatable. And those two things in combo could alone mean that Harris, as a biracial woman whose parents met while protesting for Civil Rights in the ‘60s, has an appeal to a broader younger audience who still invest in the brand but also Gen-Xers and older generations who grew up with the culture of that shoe.
It makes Kamala Harris relatable, it normalises her.
Harris’s rendering of sneakers in the governmental sphere is not just an F-you to “femininity and kitten heels” – (I don’t know why they’re called that, do kittens wear heels?) – it’s an F-you to the establishment itself.
Here is a woman with both feet on the ground, comfortable enough to run after and fight for whatever she wants. Trust me. I know.