These Shoes Aren't Made for Walking: Rethinking High-Heeled Shoes as Cultural Artifacts

Claudia Wobovnik

Claudia Wobovnik

Abstract

A feminist remix video is a visual arts approach to critique social constructions of gender expectations. In my interrogation of the cultural phenomenon of high-heeled shoes, I remixed media messages about high heels into a video (see Figure 1) that included my video interviews with six people from six different countries, each different from the other in ethnic, work status, age, gender, and sexual-orientation identity. I asked interviewees about their understandings of and associations with high-heeled shoes. In the accompanying essay to my video, I reflect on my personal sense of self in high heels as both an acknowledgement and reinforcement of gender constructions of desire/luxury, femininity, elegance, restriction, and oppression. A possibility for inversion of given gender categories; as well as how my research-based video art re-envisions high-heeled gender identity, then is also explored.

Author Biography

Claudia Wobovnik

Claudia Wobovnik, a student of Philosophy, Psychology, English, and Education at the University of Vienna and Alpen-Adria University of Klagenfurt in Austria, has focused her study on the fields of cultural studies, postcolonial studies, visual culture, gender studies, and ethics. As a research assistant, she has worked in the fields of Philosophy of Science with a particular focus on issues in Intercultural Philosophy of Science and the question of the possibility and availability of different knowledge and truth systems. As a future teacher it is particularly important to her to educate students to be engaged citizens who actively participate in shaping society. Especially in times of such rapid overflows of information it is essential to step back and critically re-think the way in which we perceive the world and ask why only certain perspectives enter the dominant discourse. As cultural subjects, people should never forget the power and potential of cultural agency in the construction and circulation of meaning. Currently, she is working on her diploma thesis about The Role of Postcolonial Literature in English Language Learning and Teaching.

Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to the author at Claudia. Wobovnik@gmx.at.