It’s murder in high heels (and I should know)
Iwas made to wear high heels for work once. I was a writer on a teenage girls’ magazine, and the editor wanted me to write an article about how it felt to dress like a woman for the day. I didn’t mind the mini skirt they put me in, and the skin-tight floral top was rather fetching, if I do say so myself. The leg wax, meanwhile, wasn’t as painful as the women in the office had led me to believe. In fact, it was quite interesting, watching the assistant in the spa hold up the first strip of ripped-out hair for my inspection. It looked like a dead ferret.
The heels, however, were a nightmare. I wobbled through central London, toes pinching, calves straining. I felt like a rhino on a tightrope.
Still, at least for me it was only a one-off. Last year, a 27-year-old receptionist in London was sent home from her new job for refusing to wear heels. Her employer insisted that heels of “between two and four inches” were part of the dress code. For women, at any rate. Yesterday in Parliament, MPs debated whether such dress codes were acceptable.
The point, argued Helen Jones (Lab, Warrington North), was not that high heels in themselves were bad, but that some women were compelled to wear them, against their will – while men were bound by no such rule.
And it wasn’t only heels, either. Some companies, she said, set strict rules about female employees’ makeup, expressly requiring them to wear foundation, powder, “light blusher”, mascara, eye shadow, and “either lipstick or a tinted lipgloss”. All these were to be “routinely reapplied during the day”.
There were even rules on tights. At one company, said Mrs Jones, an employee was told her tights were unsuitable; the rules stated they must be “skin-coloured”. Bemused, the woman pointed out that her tights were black – just like her skin.
None of the women taking part in the debate was wearing heels. Liz McInnes (Lab, Heywood & Middleton) said she’d never understood their appeal – she’d worn a pair once, for a wedding, and then given them to a charity shop. Colleagues winced sympathetically. Strictly speaking, though, this wasn’t a debate – no one argued that high heels should be mandatory. I was surprised we didn’t hear from the contrarian Tory MP Philip Davies, who has a habit of barging into debates on women’s issues and protesting crossly that things are at least as bad for men. I feel sure he could have supplied some chastening statistic on the number of men who accidentally throttle themselves each year while attempting to tie a cravat.
He might also have pointed to the sign outside the Commons press gallery.
While it says nothing about women, it states that “gentlemen” must wear “jacket & tie”.
No mention of trousers, mind you. Perhaps when the weather is warmer I’ll try out that mini skirt again.