Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Shoes

Episode Date: April 29, 2022

I’m something that you wear, I always come in twos, I get put on your feet. I’m not socks, I am … SHOES.Humans have been protecting their feet for a very long time.But over the years the types of footwear we choose have developed and multiplied. Each new shoe has a new use, and often a new social meaning.So what is the history of shoes? To find out about the masculine beginnings of heels, the reclamation of crocs, and the political ideals of docs, Kate chats to Elizabeth Semmelhack, creative director and senior curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto.Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Thomas Ntinas.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit.This podcast includes music by Epidemic Sounds and archive clips from The Wizard of Oz, 1939. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Now with clear afternoon skies, it is time to wear the more formal high heel shoe. Then close your eyes and tap your heels together three times. From platform trainers to work boots, sky high heels and polished broads. We throw them on before we step out of the door with barely more than a thought. Sometimes we'll wear them even though they give us blisters and sore ankles. But how have shoes changed over time?

And what do our choice of shoes say about us? Today, betwixt the sheets, we are going to find out. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, what beautiful time.

I've had nothing to do with it, Derry. Hi, I'm Kate Lister, and today on Betwixt the Sheets, we are looking out to high heels, sneakers, ugs, sliders, and of course, crocs. How have the shoes that we wear today come about? What's their history? And what does our shoe choice say about us? To get some answers, I sent my producers, Charlotte and Sophie, out to the streets to stare at people's feet.

Yeah, I wear a dark martins. They say on original. They're really dirty. They say that I give zero. They're very nice convoce. Plimpsoles that were given to me for free in a charity giveaway. I don't really care about fashion. I've got my pewmer trainers.

I'm really comfortable. I'm just a casual explorer. Today I'm joined by Elizabeth Semmelhack, director and senior curator of the Beta Shoe Museum, where they have 14,000 artefacts representing a world of shoe culture. We explore the origins of the high heel as manly footwear, the rise of the sneaker, and the dominance of comfortable footwear. So go ahead, look down, because in this episode we're finding out

why when and where the shoe fits. Thank you so much for joining me betwixt the sheets, Elizabeth Semmelhaq. There is nobody better placed. I don't think in the whole world talk to me about shoes. Well, that's very kind of you. There are many people, I'm sure, that you could have spoken to, but I'm very happy to talk to you. Well, I'm just going to say it that, no, you're the best. That's as far as I'm concerned.

Thank you. I think what fascinates me about shoes and surely lots of other people is they occupy such a strange place in our consciousness, because on one hand, they're functional. You wear them because your feet will hurt if you don't. You have to wear the shoes. but they're also this huge status symbol and they can be sexy and they can be clunky,

they can be functional, they can be sporty, they can be all these different things and ultimately we put them on our feet and we drag them along the floor. I think the key here is the fact that you use the word functional. So absolutely some of their functionality

is keeping our feet safe. But I would argue a greater purpose of shoes is to be social. functional. Oh. To identify who we are, our status has historically been used to demarcate gender, group identity. So I do think that shoes are, no matter what shape they are, they are functional. You just have to question what the function is.

What the function is. Because I mean, really, you could just wrap your feet in, well, any old thing, bubble wrap and it would serve the function, you know, that they're dry and they're warm, but they are about much more than that. Exactly. And that's why they come in so many different shapes. Even if people think that they're making, you know, oh, I wouldn't go in for those big high heels, or they think that I'm not making a choice,

it is all signaling something, isn't it? Correct. Even people who say that they're not interested in footwear, you know, historically, I've had that reaction when people come to the museum, It might be a wife bringing a husband, and the husband might declare, I have no interest in shoes. In some ways, he's doing that to signal his masculinity, right, that I couldn't care about fashion. But if I asked him to put on a pair of shoes that he had never worn before, say, a pair of red stilettos, he might instantly have some kind of interest in footwear.

That's such a good point. You do care. You absolutely care. even if you think you don't, your lack of care often is used as a signal to fit some social idea about status and gender. Now, shoes have got a very, very, very long history. And I read that the oldest pair of shoes that we have found were in Armenia and they're five and a half thousand years old. Yes. So those are considered full shoes because they wrap around the entire foot. there have been other sandals discovered earlier.

But yeah. Oh, right. Okay. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So there are many places around the world where extremely old forms of footwear have been found. Humans have been trying to protect their feet.

And I would also argue, signal these other social things for a very, very long time. Do you think that that's just kind of like, we don't know who they belong to, we don't know what they were doing? And like, if you look around at your shoe collection, just to think that just some round, And a condom pair that you've got could turn up somewhere in five and a half thousand years. I know. And I think also one of the things that makes footwear so poignant when you look at footwear from the past is that unlike other garments where certainly you will see impressions of the body. But you can't necessarily instantly imagine that body because the armature of the body isn't supporting the garment. footwear, you look into it and you see the footprint left by the previous wearer. And there's something

that just instantly, I think, connects past and present with that little bit of remembrance, basically. And the shoe has a clap. So you see the shoe and then you imagine who had stood in it. Who had it? Yeah. And the design of shoes, it's changed significantly and we'll talk about that. But I mean, the actual basic, it goes on your whole. foot. That's what you do with it. That's, it doesn't matter if it was five thousand, half thousand years ago in Armenia or if it is in Jimmy Chews right now. It's all doing the same thing. So there's a real historical link there, isn't there? Now, I don't know if people in Armenia five and a half thousand years ago were wearing stilettos. They were not.

Probably not. But when's the sort of the evidence of that of healed shoes coming in? So I've only been able to trace it back as far as 10th century Persia. Wow, that's, wow. But I really do believe it dates back even further. And so my thesis is that the heel was invented to function as an equestrian tool to really allow the horseback rider to secure their foot into the stirrup. Well, that makes sense. When was the stirrup invented is itself a subject of great research and debate, but somewhere between the fourth and the sixth century in there. And so I think the heel assuredly goes back further than the 10th century.

And I think it also is not necessarily so that it was invented in Persia, but that's where I've traced it as far back to. I think it's some Central Asian, Western Asian area and dates back really quite a far way. Okay. So probably functional. Yes. Were they, again, this is really difficult to answer the question, but were they gendered? Back, I mean, now we'd kind of think of heels as stilettos as feminine, I suppose, but were they gendered, do you know? And so, again, this does require more research, but I do believe that through their links to horseback riding, I believe they were linked to military use and military horseback riding. I love the idea of soldiers and heels.

Yeah. That's just amazing. And this is why cowboys wear heels. Of course. We just don't think of it as heels, right? because of the lens that we see the high heel through. But certainly I believe they were gendered, although there are also Persian miniatures

from the 15th century, 16th century that do also show women on horseback wearing heeled footwear. And then some 16th century images, Western images of people in the Ottoman Empire, also wearing heels. So I need to do more work to tease out the gendered meanings of the heels in Western Asia. But it's clear that when heels get brought into Europe around the turn of the 17th century, although Europeans knew about heels for a very, very long time prior to their own adoption,

they were first embraced by men. Oh, okay. And so they have a gendered association to begin with, and it is with men in Europe. I see. Okay, and that's when we start to see them as fashion items. Correct. And so the earliest images that I can find often show men and heels related to horseback riding. So it seems like that original function is what attracts Europeans to having heels added to their footwear.

But in the early 17th century, there was also a trend in women's fashion for women to wear items of masculine attire. Okay. So they would wear hats that were very male referencing. I was reading a 1620s document late one night, and it was talking about these manly women. And it was disgusted by their fashions. And it said that they had stilettos. And I almost fell off my chair. What they meant was that they carried small knives.

Oh, right. Yeah, the stiletto knife, of course. Right. But as they were enumerating all of the things from the male ones, wardrobe that these women were daring to wear. They never said the word heel, but they sort of danced around it. Anyway, my thesis is that women began to have heels added to their own shoes as part of this larger trend to look more manly. Nice. Okay. Just considering what we associate with heels today, that's such a, I didn't see that one coming. And Kings wore heels as well, didn't they?

I mean, these are real high fashion items. The heel actually gets incorporated into, European dress relatively quickly, but yes, it does start out with the upper classes, but pretty soon many, many people across the boards are wearing heeled footwear. And so when you think of royalty in heels, it's because it was the fashion. A lot of discussion has been around, you know, Louis the 14th and that maybe he needed to wear high heels because of his short stature. Oh, Louis. But I don't believe that's true. I believe that he... He's the king, right? He doesn't... He doesn't need anything. It doesn't need anything. He is simply wearing the most fashionable.

And so over the course of the 17th century, both men and women wear heels, men and women wear heels into the 18th century. But across the 17th century, the types of heels that men could wear versus the types of heels that women can wear begin to change. Okay. And so you begin to have gendered associations. So men's heels, as they grow across the 17th century, become really thick, sturdy, chunky, chunky, and women's heels grow in height and become very sinuous and attenuated. But it has to do with shifting ideas of gender. So over the course of the 17th century, like if you look at painting in the early 17th century,

men and women are basically painted around the same height. Women are slightly shorter by the end of the century. Men and women are wildly different in height and how they're portrayed. And it's not because of the footwear that they're wearing. It's because daintiness starts to become a feminine idea. Okay. So when Perrault writes Cinderella in 1697, he's writing about this idealized woman who has these tiny feet because that's what beauty was. Dainty, yes.

So we all know that Cinderella steps. sisters were desperate, right, to fit into those tiny, tiny shoes. Yes. And we know that the majority of women didn't have such tiny feet. And so a heel was part of the rescue plan. What the heel did by becoming so high was it hid the majority of a woman's foot under her skirts. And so the fashion was for very tiny, pointed, tipped toes.

And so when you had your skirts on, just this tiny, tiny little tip of a toe, peaked out and it gave the impression of having a very small foot. Oh, I see. So the heel had a function, but its function was to help women meet a new body ideal, which was to have very tiny feet. To look dainty and tiny and okay. And what about, I'm going to assume that they weren't actually wearing glass slippers and that that's an extension of this, she's that delicate. What about like colors of shoes? I mean, what would be a fashionable? If you were a king, what color would your heels be? The color of heels, there's a wide range. Okay.

But red colored heels become associated with the court of Louis XIV. So what he does, and I still have not found the exact smoking gun, but what he seems to have done is made the wearing of red leather covered heels a prerogative of those who had been granted access to his court. So it becomes a way when you're strutting down the streets of Paris that you can proclaim to everybody, basically your political privilege, through the types of shoes that you could wear. However, this only applied to France. And so as the English were coming and doing the grand tour, the red leather-covered heel, which was already a fashion way before Louis XIV,

but they then see it being very French, very sophisticated fashion, and then they bring it back when they come home. And so red heels become a signifier outside of France, of continental education, of worldliness and status. Is that where Christian Libeton's red heels come from? No. So Christian Lubutan's souls are what he does, right? Did I give it away? I don't own a pet.

And so his red souls, I think, made use of an under-exploited part of shoe design. And when you have very, very high heels, you do see the soul. And so by him choosing to make those that brilliant red, it meant that when a woman is walking before you, you see that signature look, right? It was a very clever use of a part of a shoe that many designers have never thought to leverage. So it's slightly different. Yeah. There's no denying it that if we talk about Christian Libetton's heels and is they're sexy. They have a very sexy image.

And I don't know if that was the case in the royal court. but I was trying to do a bit of research in prep for this about why are heel sexy? Like what is it that it's appealing? What is it doing? And there have actually been scientific studies on this done and then results published. And it's like scientists discover that heels are sexy. But there was one that I found it from 2013 and it was called supernatural stimulant of high heels. And they basically suggested that the heel, the high heel, makes women walk with a more, quote, unquote, feminine gait.

That was the conclusion that it creates a wiggle, I suppose. But I just wonder what do you think about? Why are they sexy? I think they're sexy because we have made them sexy. We've made them sexy, right. And so let's talk about green M&Ms for a few minutes. Oh, yeah, please. Okay. Okay.

So I don't know if you've heard the recent kerfuffle about the redesign of the M&Ms, the anthropomorphized eminems. Oh, no, this is ringing a bell now, but remind me. Okay. So Tucker Carlson from Fox News, had some comments about the new redesign of the anthropomorphization of the M&Ms. He did not really comment on the male M&Ms, but he had lots to say about the footwear

and the presentation of the chocolate Eminem, brown Eminem, and the green Eminem. Right. So the green Eminem was taken out of her heels and put into shoes. Sensible shoes. is what he called them. Okay. And the chocolate Eminem was taken out of her stilettos

and put into still high heels, but block high heels. And both of them are so unattractive to him because of this footwear change that he would not like to go out and have drinks with them. I don't want to have sex with a chocolate bar.

What? Just, that's just, now these are the little M&Ms that they use in the advertising. Right? Correct. Yeah? Yeah. I'll just check it.

I had misunderstood that. And what's so remarkable to me about this recent conversation, right? Is that it was a simple switch of shoes that changed his ability to be attracted to them. To an M&M. To an M&M. And so if you want to talk about the power of footwear and the societal connection between high heels and female desirability, Yeah. This example, I think, is a great example. That's perfect, isn't it?

So how did we get to this point is, of course, a very long history. But you have to go back to the 18th century when men began to abandon the heel in its entirety, even though the heels that they were abandoning were already gendered male. Because the high heel, in part, off the horse, is in a logical form of footwear. Right? I mean, it doesn't really help you walk comfortably. No. It's not functional in that way. So as enlightened and thinking began to posit that men were inherently rational and women, by contrast, were inherently irrational, fashion and many of its trappings, including high heels, began to be used to define and support this new power structure. So I'm sensible, so I'm wearing flats.

Correct. Okay. Why does the term sensible shoe, why is that used to de-sex women? Like if you describe a woman as wearing sensible shoes, automatically a certain type of image pops up into your mind. So what is it about sense that makes you unattractive? These are very complicated questions that date back to Enlightenment thinking. That's so true. So over the course of the 18th century, heels become associated with femininity, also desirable femininity, and that desirable femininity is linked to irrationality.

And then the one place where high heels are suggested as being dangerous is that it was argued that women were naturally irrational. The one place that a clever woman could exert some power was over the one place where men were men. were irrational, which was areas of sexual desire. So if a woman could use her feminine wiles, including a beautifully turned leg, although it's 18th century, so not many legs are being shown, but a beautiful high-heeled clad foot, and she could catch the eye of somebody, she could maybe begin to exert some control over him. Marie Antoinette was the poster child for this kind of thinking. Wow. And so this idea, of high heels and power being linked through the idea that power can only be achieved through

sexual manipulation is something that continued to haunt the history of the high heel moving forward. It becomes even more linked to ideas of erotica when the cameras invented in the middle of the 19th century. So cameras are invented and immediately pornographers begin to create pornography, but the thing that made photographic pornography so exciting was that it was not photographs of just naked women. Western culture has naked women everywhere. All you had to do was walk down the street and see a monument or go into a museum and see a painting. What this photography did was it allowed you to see what real life current naked women look like, but you had to be able to establish that you were looking at a current person as opposed to an allegorical figure.

And so footwear, which changed styles very radically and quickly, was a way of date stamping that photographic image. So you knew the naked woman you're looking at is what the shop girl down the street looks like. And it added to the voyeuristic impact of that image. But it also, because French postcards went everywhere, began to hyper eroticize the heel. And by the end of the 19th century, high heels were now 100% a part of the female wardrobe, but they can no longer be worn by little girls. Interesting. They become the footwear of adult women

exclusively. That's absolutely fascinating. So I do a lot of research around the history of sex for sale and sex work. And one of the things that I've always wondered and thought about is that it's so stigmatized and often wondered if it's among other things is about that power dynamic. If it's about the fact that this is that women who sell sex are inherently sexual, that there's a fear around them because of that power. And one of the things that I think is really interesting is how sex work and fashion intersect. Oh, 100%. Yes. You know, and that courtisans and sex workers have been trailblazers in many ways and that have given us much fashion. Have you found evidence of that? Yes, but I think they also serve as a societal threat. Yes. So one of the things that's

so interesting about the late 19th century or second half of the 19th century, as pornographic images are increasing, is it's in tandem with many women wanting greater rights. And so I think that the work that's being done by sex workers becomes also a means of control over women who want to engage in the public realm, but not as sex workers, that their own virtue is going to now be constantly called into question if they overstep. So by demonizing this particular group of women, you create a threat. That's fascinating. Correct. And so you see this happening in the 1980s quite a bit when many women enter into the white collar workplace. When they first come into the white color workplace, there's great concern as to how are they going to look different from their paint.

color colleagues who had historically been obviously central to a business office, but had also been often chosen for their ornamental potential. The second they get married, the second they get pregnant, they are dismissed. So here you have now white collar workers coming in, white collar women. And there's a great deal of consternation as to how can they establish image of authority. Okay. So some argue that they should wear feminized versions of male tire. So that's why you have the shoulder pads.

And the suit, the jacket looks very male, but they're wearing a modest skirt. They're proclaiming their femininity, but they're not trying to be desirable. And the shoes that they're encouraged to wear are not high stilettos. They're not sensible flats. They are medium-heeled shoes, trying to walk that line. Okay. But that look is instantly lampooned. And fashion comes in and says, oh, my goodness, you know, society says, working women have desexed themselves.

There was this Newsweek article in 1986 that said that it was basically focused on the working woman and that you could not have it all. And that because women were now so devoted to their jobs, they were never going to marry. And that if you reach the age of 40 without marrying, you were more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to marry. Lovely. Don't you threaten me with a good time, 1980s? But it really was part of this inflaming of this fear that working women didn't want or couldn't achieve work-life balance, basically. And they had achieved their success in the workplace by desexing themselves. So this is when Victoria's Secrets comes into play. You could wear your business suit but be a little Edwardian underneath.

And fashion reintroduction. reduces the stiletto heel. But what both of those things do is also bring with it the question of, well, actually, how did you get that corner office? Sexually, yes, okay. So it connects to these longstanding ideas that female power can only be achieved through sexual manipulation. And so it is a long and complicated history in which the high heel is used over and over and over again. God, that's, I hadn't even thought about that. Join me after the break for more shoe talk. I'm going to do a complete 180 now and talk to you about arguably the opposite of the heel,

the trainer or ugly, the comfy shoes. When did we start wearing trainers? So unlike the high heel, the trainer is a much more recent invention. Okay. It dates to the middle of the 19th century. Really, as early as that? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Wow, okay. It had to do with the harnessing of the power of rubber. So rubber is the sap of a tree. Yes. And it originally only grew in parts of Brazil and parts of Central America. Europeans had known about rubber for a long time. And indigenous people in those areas had used rubber in many amazing ways for eons. But Europeans' interest in rubber was very little.

because when you take that sap and you bring it back home, it's coagulates. It doesn't really do much. The reason why we call rubber rubber is because it was used to rub out pencil marks. They thought that that was the point of that material. But there were some people who were obsessed with the potential of rubber because it was waterproof and elastic. If they could stabilize those two qualities to make it so that rubber didn't melt in the sun and crack and freeze in the cold, they could stabilize. it, it could be used to transform industry. And it did. So Charles Goodyear, building upon the work of

others, added sulfur to boiling latex, and he found that this was the secret to making a stable product. And he saw a world in which everything would be made out of rubber. He wore a rubber bow tie. He wore a rubber vest. He believed in rubber footwear. And so very shortly, rubber gets used in industry. It revolutionized condoms eventually. Yes, right, eventually. So industrialization, which is going full force in 19th century, creates industrialists. And industrialists want to prove that they have made it. They're the new Voreche. And the best way you can prove that you have power is to show that you have time to play. Okay. So it creates this huge interest in reviving the game of tennis. And so you have these new industrialists building these giant homes with expansive lawns,

and they make lawn tennis. But the problem with inviting people over to play lawn tennis is that lawns are damp. So rubber sold, canvas, upper shoes, sometimes they were leather, start to be made for lawn tennis. And that's the origin of sneakers. So this was about wealthy Victorianists wanting to flex a bit and show that they look at me, I've got so much leisure time, I can play tennis. And I can afford a special tennis outfit. And the other thing too that a lot of people don't realize is that because rubber only came from a very small part of the world and every rubber tree can only give you about a cup of rubber a day, the cost of rubber at that time was excessive. I think a pair of rubber overshoes cost.

five times the cost of a good pair of leather shoes. No. So early sneakers, which we look back at and they're like, that's canvas and rubber, they're actually very expensive. So this isn't like we think of sneakers today, which is more comfort and functional and they're widely available. This is quite blingy. This is exclusive.

Yeah, exclusive. Is that, I'm often a tangent. Is that why they're white? Is that because that's like, I'm so rich, I don't even get my clothes dirty? There is an element of that, but when they first come out, there's a real push to have them in different colors and different patterns. But by that sort of Edwardian period, keeping your tennis whites or your summer outfit completely white is part of that flex. Nice. Yeah.

Because I look back at, I mean, I'm not a fashion historian, so I'm so glad that you're here. But what I see this repeating again and again is people wanting to show that they have money and not just that they can afford the item, but for example Chinese footbinding the argument around that is that you had so much money you didn't have to walk or work or the stiletto heel in some ways reduces your mobility so again you don't have to be really mobile

because you've got enough money and the tennis shoe is about I have so much money where are we at now with the fashion if I think of something like ugg boots does that fall into this because they are expensive They are. And I think of Ugg Boots and Slides as performing similar functions. So outside of Australia,

the way that, especially in North America, the way that they're worn is, or where they had been worn, more so in the earlier 2000s, is you would see young women sort of completely disheveled in their Ugg Boots walking around. And I remember thinking at the time, it looks to me. like she's rolled out of bed and that there's a kind of disabier, like a little bit of, she's not wearing, like the women weren't wearing, young women weren't wearing hypersexualizing attire. No, no. They were wearing sweatpants and loose t-shirts. But the general presentation was one of, oh, this is just what I look like when I roll out of that.

Yes, with the big sunglasses and the kind of like the leather jackets. It's all coming back. I'm having early 2000 flashbacks. Yeah. So then I started thinking about men and slides, and, you know, they're wearing socks, and they too are sometimes wearing baggy sweat pants or, you know, maybe gym shorts, but they have that similar kind of, I've just rolled out of bed or I've just gotten done at the gym. And so the eroticism of that ensemble, if you just picked each piece apart, you'd be like, that can't possibly be used to confer some kind of sex appeal. onto the wearer. But in its assemblage, I think that both the slides and the socks and the us were doing this really interesting work of, this is just what I look like.

Now I think about it. I remember that that hair that they had, the kind of like the half up, half down, that was called just got out of bed hair. Yeah. Wasn't it? I think it was Dolly partner and he said, honey, it costs a lot of money to look this cheap. There's a certain, God love Dally. There's a same amount of that because if you like break down that outfit, although they look like they've just rolled out of bed, that is a lot of money that's gone into that. And so your point about Ugs being expensive.

So the cost point or the price point of the Ugs is a flex, right? Yes. And then oftentimes the individual items of clothing are branded. And the hair might be super messy, but you know that maybe when it's done, It's due. It is a due. But at the same time,

this is, I think, where the power is, like, but I don't need to make myself presentable in public right now. I look this good, and I've just working up. That's right. Ah, I love that. Yeah, I'm having early 2000 flashbacks. And I still keep hearing Ugs are horribly out of fashion, and they keep turning up every year.

Crocs. We need to talk about Crocs. They have taken on a life of the world. They really have. The people who love, crocs, love crocs, but they've also become like a byword for awfulness on your feet. You know, I think that they are an extension of the dad shoe, the dad sneaker, and they are, I think, Gen Z's sneaker. So sneakers have done really interesting work. And as you know, many high

fashion houses are doing collaborations or making their own sneakers. Sneakers are themselves. fascinating cultural objects. The UG is a very recent innovation, right? It's like 2002, I think. They're created. And when they first came out, they were so roundly criticized and so associated with ugly fashion. But most recently, they've been re-embraced or revived by Gen Z, and they have instantly been connected with high fashion. So you have Belonzi. Ljahey bin Bury. You know, the work that he recently did with Crocs, actually Crocs let him redo their mold.

So the whole shape of the shoe is wildly different. And he's such a cutting edge, such an important fashion icon at the moment that this work is further infusing Crocs with the sense of the it factor. So I think that Crocs like sneakers, comfortable to wear, somewhat customizable with the Jivets and at the same time are places where very, very cutting edge designers are starting to play. So they're coming back. They are here. They're here. They are here.

Is it kind of like Doc Martins? Like they started off as sort of a functional thing and then they got appropriated by high fashion and now they cost quite a lot, Doc Martins, don't they? And I've got a pair of red glittery ones. You wouldn't have won those to a factory. No, I think of Doc Martins and Tim's. being an interesting set of boots to think about both start out as workwear and doc martin's as you know get associated with british nationalism in the 60s and 70s and then become embraced as the footwear

of counterculture but they also become associated with white supremacy yeah and so they have a very complicated set of concepts that become associated with them but it's their counterculture vibe that has survived the most. And it has attracted fashion designers as well and has ended up with there being red glittery. Red Glittery. Doc Martens and Tins are still worn for workwear. But what I find really interesting about them is that they come into fashion in the 90s as an element of, you know, they bring with them heritage, authenticity, which is very important.

But at the same time, physical labor, there's less and less and less of that. And I find it interesting that workwear is becoming more and more and more a part of fashion as labor itself, physical labor itself declines. Oh, God, yeah, that's so true. And I have a question for you that. I'm going to have to ask it because I'm a sex historian and I'll kick myself if I don't ask you while you're here. So there is obviously we all know about people that appreciate the foot. Podophilia, it's official terminology.

Tarantino knows all about it. Now that's kind of well-established, and we've covered a bit of it. You know, heels are sexy and there's a kind of a certain amount of, ooh, risk gay and what's underneath. Have you found examples of women who find men's feet super attractive? Because that seems to be much rarer. Well, certainly, I'm sure there's individuals with all kinds of interests. They'll be there. They'll be out there.

But culturally, we do not find men's. naked feet attractive. That is true. It is something that we always advise against, particularly in North America. So this became a huge issue when Casual Friday came into being in the late 80s, early 90s, was one day a week, men were told to leave their suits behind and wear something that revealed a little bit about who they were on the weekends in the workplace. So it's, It's very fun to read articles from that time period about men saying, what should I wear? How can I do this? And so there was sort of, can you wear shorts? Probably not. Can I wear chinos and sneakers? Yes. Can I wear tivas? My sandals? No. Can I wear flip-flops? No. And so there's tons of articles about discomfort in seeing the naked male foot. And yet, We expect to see the naked female foot in the summertime, right?

We expect women to have pedicures. Even when women are in formal attire, you can be in a ball gown and wear a strappy, high-heeled stiletto. Right? And have your feet fully visible. But if a man were a tuxedo and a pair of solid gold flip-flops, we would all freak out, wouldn't we? Have some feelings about it. And so it's so interesting that we allow men to go topless at the beach or, wherever, but culturally we do not yet want to see men's naked feet.

We're not there yet. It is not an eroticized part of the body in Western thought. But then there's this huge joke about men keeping socks on during sex. For this exact reason, right? And then there's also the fear, like men and their unkept feet is a source of criticism. Yeah. But a man who would dare to get a pet. Medicare is equally criticized.

Ooh, that is true. So poor men. Their feet are, no wonder to keep the socks on. Yeah, their feet are not supposed to be, or not yet, socially embraced. Wow. Oh, that's, yes. Do you know what, I'm going to go around. I'm going to text every man in my phone book right now and go, I love your feet.

Be proud of your feet. I'm going to get something going. Before I let you go, the question that I would like to ask to you is, which pairs of shoes in your life have been the most important? Because I don't know how many pairs of shoes we get through in a lifetime, but if we think back, there's always a few that were really important for various reasons. What comes to your mind? I have a crazy story.

I was working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, assessing their shoe collection. And they have this incredible collection of Roger Vivier. He was the shoe designer for Christian Dior. He made some of the most glorious. shoes in the middle of the 20th century. And I was having lunch with my colleagues and somebody said, oh, you have to go down to sacks or having a big shoe sales. So after work, I went down. And I had not known at that point that Vivier, the name, had been relaunched. So I'm just looking at

the sales rack and I see a pair of Réger-Vivier's shoes. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. So I try them on. They fit. I'm like, I've got to get these. But as I was talking to the salesperson, I said, you know, If you have any other viviers, let me try him on. So he brings out this rose-colored suede, high-heel, shock-heeled stiletto with the iconic vivier buckle on it. I put it on if it's so much better than the other pair. Oh, it's a Cinderella moment. I'm like, sold. And he's like, okay, we just have to find the other half pair.

And I'm like, okay, because he's like, I got this half pair from the back. So we're looking at all the racks. I'm looking under the chairs. I go to the bathroom. We can't find it at all. And he's like, it's around here. I'll give you a call. I wait a couple days, give him a call.

He's like, no, I haven't found it yet. And I'm like, I know this sounds insane, but I'm working on Vivier. I really have to have these shoes. I need the shoe. I need the shoes. Anyway, this goes on all summer. Finally, in October, I'm back in Toronto. I get a call from Sacks.

They found the other half pair. It was in somebody's office. They'd been using it as a sculpture. So I bought the shoes, sent them to me, and I still have them to this day. Oh, I love that story. And that's, oh, thank you so much. And on that note, you've been amazing to talk to.

Thank you so much, Elizabeth. Thank you so much for the invitation. I can talk about shoes forever. I hope you do. That's all for today. I hope that we've given you something new to think about the next time you lace up your sneakers. This episode was produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie G.

If you like what you've heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Throughout May, we'll be taking a look at mental health through the ages, as well as exploring the history of anatomy, royal sex, and we'll be finding out what the snip really is in our chat about vasectomies. Join me again betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast includes music by Epidemic Sounds.