This year's summer silliness

An update to this post - this week the NYT posted a story about an unfortunate young woman who fell down a set of stairs at an apartment building, hit her head, and died.  The investigation is ongoing, but cops are in part blaming - her high-heeled shoes.  'Nuff said.

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We remember last year's weird sartorial choice - the band-aid dress.  This year's is meant, I think to accompany it - the sky-high heel shoe.  Like the band-aid dress, these personal skyscrapers have been around, but, since I saw two pairs in the span of one block today at lunch time, perhaps they are "having a moment," as they say.

To be honest, they are sort of cool-looking, the way sculpture is cool-looking.  But the thing about sculpture is that, while beautiful or interesting or thought-provoking, we are not intended to wear it.  I suppose it is one thing to wear stilts while relaxing at a restaurant, or padding around the soft, carpeted floor of an office in Midtown, but just try to stand for any length of time, let alone try to walk in them.  There's a reason the concrete jungle is packed in with flat-wearing office workers and tourists.  As cool as they look, like any artwork, the sky-high heels are not wearable. 

A woman in sky-high heels is basically asking for trouble.  We are probably about 3 months away from some tv news story in which special-guest doctors declaim the number of injuries from wearing 7-inch heels.  Once the doctor story hits, we all know the trend is on its way out.  Allow me to be cynical - when the market starts to dip for these items, the stories about how they are not good for you anyway start to come out, followed by some new trend women are supposed to throw their discretionary cash at. 

Actually, in a world-weary way, I am looking forward to whatever comes next.  Midriff-baring tops were followed by the "muffin top" critiques on the morning shows.  Honestly, I thought I heard some sigh of relief from the fashionistas as that trend happily receded into the sunset (I sighed too, and I never, ever wore one).  Now band-aid dresses are having their moment, held over from last year.  I can't wait for this one to go away.  On Saturday, in the 90-plus degree heat, I encountered an enormous - let's just say person - in a band-aid dress that barely covered her(?) butt, double-D (or E?) cups, very long fingernails and a fabulous updo.  S(H)e was easily 6'5", and was walking a teeny-tiny dog on a fancy leash.  We met at the pet store (yes).  If I was more brazen with my cell phone camera, I would have used it.  Also, the pet store lady was a Zen master for not bursting out laughing.  Only in New York.  But if anyone is ambivalent about why getting rid of this trend would be a public service, next time I'll get proof. 

And of course, the heels (even our friend in the previous paragraph had the smarts to wear bejeweled, but flat, sandals - really, really big ones).  I saw an article in the NYT a few weeks ago about some shoe designer who had opened a gallery-type store to showcase his (why is it always his?) skyheel creations.  The writer noted that some of the shoes were priced in the "low four figures", but that people were actually buying them, in spite of the economy.   Make that women - women were actually buying them. 

Which brings us to the conundrum.  My mother would have said that women have the right to wear whatever they want, enhance themselves surgically this way and that, and are entitled to inflict every notion of bad taste on a public that just wants to go about its business free from visual assault.  My counter in these discussions was to try to figure out what it was about us as a society that insisted on requiring that women maim themselves with the idea that it would make them more attractive - I guess - to men.  Given that I have never even plucked my eyebrows and never seemed to lack for male attention, I never understood it.  Men who were attracted to me often said I seemed friendly and approachable.  The band-aid dress as armor - who knew? 

Of course, we are not the only time or place to insist on maiming - China had foot binding; European and American fashions once mandated corsets so tight and stiff they deformed women's figures and messed up their internal organs.  The problem became so bad, an actual movement for women's dress reform took shape (haha), and the graceful fashions of the early 1910's -20's were the result. 

Maybe we need Dress Reform II.  Or at least shoe reform.  As much as I hated the flipflop (flipflop, flipflop, flipflop) trend, it was preferable (gasp) to this one.  Please, climb down off your shoes before you hurt yourself.