The Guardian has this amusing piece commenting on the new fashion for flat shoes for women.

“Fashion trends generated by the fashion industry exist to make life complicated…. Now that the fashion industry has realised that women are fed up with being told they need to wear five-inch heels to look stylish, they’ve proffered flat shoes, but complicated ones.”

For me, there’s also something about fashion that is meant to make those in the latest fashion feel special – AND to make those who don’t have the latest outfits and accessories feel small, ugly and humiliated.  It’s a power thing – a way to control women to fit in with the self-styled “elite” arbiters of what is fashionable. More than that, this mindset also extends to body image – by making us all want to fit in to an ideal skeletal body shape so that those who don’t end up  feeling shame and self-loathing. It’s a way of controlling women and our bodies.

In researching the history of bound feet for my story performance Bound Feet Blues, I’ve been reflecting on fashion and its insidious destructive power.  The elite in ancient China set the trend for bound feet and as it became more Continue reading →