I thought I was on top of the world. And then I pushed myself off the platform.
I used to only wear heels. Like, ONLY. Like I found kitten heel flip flops for the pool. I found sneakers with a hidden wedge for weekends…
I used to only wear heels. Like, ONLY. Like I found kitten heel flip flops for the pool. I found sneakers with a hidden wedge for weekends. In style or out, who cared? Style was largely irrelevant. It was about how heels made me feel. Taller, thinner, sexier, va va voomier, girlier. Everything- ier.
Once, I cut my hair short. Really short. There are many insanely sexy women with short hair. Ruby Rose comes to mind. I did not feel sexy with short hair. I did not feel cute. I felt like a post-haircut Samson. I felt like my power line had been cut with that hair. My sexuality had been erased. I felt unnoticed and unremarkable and uncertain and not stronger (as I had expected) but more vulnerable. Invisible even. I won’t do that again.
I’ve lived in fear of losing my sexuality or my sex appeal or my will for sexy, romantic love. Sweatpants, flat shoes, short hair — these to me were synonymous with the beginning of the end. Of giving up. The slippery slope to sexlessness. If I took off my heels, what next in service of comfort? Pajama jeans? Asking my husband to pull out a gray hair for me? It is my second marriage, and it took me a long time to find him, and he’s hunky and makes me laugh nonstop. If I took my heels off, I reasoned, we’d end up like roommates.
Once, when we were first dating, we happened to run into each other while I was on my way to work in a pair of green patent flats, work heels in my bag. I hid behind a car. Even long after we married, I changed into my work heels on our stoop before walking in the door — the door to my own house. I wondered what would happen when I died — would my husband say — “who the hell is in that tiny casket? I was married to a tall woman!”
But what’s interesting about my husband is that, because I like fashion, he too became educated about fashion so he could share this interest with me. (Love that guy.) And he started to understand proportion. And the stuff that isn’t overtly sexy, he likes! I tried on a boxy, not at all clingy dress covered in textured wool (imagine two bathmats sewn together). He loved it. Mod tent dress worn over denim? Loved. Boyfriend jeans? Yep. He appreciated these things. He appreciates me.
So I when I fell in love with a pair of hand-sewn moccasins, I gave those a try. “You look so nice, honey,” he said, as I left for work, toting a smaller bag, freed from the need to carry a second pair of shoes (just as I was freed from the need to carry a diaper bag a decade ago, to go back to being not just mom, but me). I was also free from teetering and holding onto something while I changed the shoes, and free from the feeling that I was “less than” until I slipped into this outside add-on.
With the advent of the athleisure movement, flat shoes (sneakers, slides, Teva riffs, you name it) are stylish. They’re having a serious moment in the sun, no end in sight. My uber high heels somehow look a little dated, a little trying too hard. In fact my favorite thing to do now is to “poison” a pretty dress (otherwise bordering on precious) with a clean, sharp sneaker.
And I’ve realized that my sexiness (to him, but more importantly, to me) isn’t dependent on a heel. In fact I feel sexier in a flat, looking fresh and confident, walking so solidly into a meeting or to meet a friend. I don’t teeter. I stride. High heels have their place, for sure, and mine aren’t going anywhere, but it turns out that a rebellious little Chelsea boot is just right for kicking ass and taking names. And for now the Saint Laurent Tributes I once felt naked without have gone the way so many other things I used to do in service of “hiding flaws.” This is me. I’m smart, and I have my own brand of sex appeal that comes from what I am, not what I put on. And I have places to go.