Fri, Aug 12, 2016 page6

• Lethal weapons for feet find favor in China, without a feminist debate

  • NY Times News Service
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  Theresa May barely had her feet under the table as Britain’s new prime minister when Chinese fashionistas began discussing her shoes, her gender and her power, in that order.

  “We are watching Madame Meiyi,” Hou Haiyan, 28, a fashion industry public relations executive, said in an interview shortly after May’s appointment in the middle of last month, using the Chinese version of May’s name.

  “She likes kitten heels and is fashionable. And she has power. Maybe her style is part of her power,” Hou mused.

  

  A close-up shot shows the shoes of French President Francois Hollande, left, and British Prime Minister Theresa May, as they greet each other prior to a meeting at the Elysee Palace, in Paris, on July 21.

  Photo: AP

  Interest in May and her footwear is not unique to China, but female political power is rare there: The Chinese Communist Party has never had a female leader, or a woman on its powerful Politburo Standing Committee.

  A love of high heels is not unique either, though by Chinese standards May’s low heels are modest. On city sidewalks and country roads across the nation this summer, women are walking on far higher spikes and platforms than May’s.

  However, largely absent in China is a feminist debate about heels of the sort heard in Europe, the US and Japan that recently roiled social media and spawned the Twitter hashtag #highheelgate after incidents in which women were publicly chastised as “unfeminine” for not wearing heels in London, Tokyo and Cannes, France.

  In interviews, a Chinese feminist and a top stylist each said that in terms of footwear anything goes.

  “I wear whatever I want,” said Xiong Jin, a women’s rights advocate. “I feel absolutely no pressure to wear heels.”

  “We don’t really have that here,” said Fu Tianjiao, a stylist to the stars whose clients include Li Bingbing (李冰冰), Zhou Xun (周迅) and Li Xiaolu (李小璐), referring to the debate over what is appropriate to wear.

  “Maybe it’s because high heels didn’t originate in China,” Fu said.

  “Maybe in Britain there are traces of tradition like, ‘We have always done this, so you have to do this,’” she said. “But in China it’s impossible, because so many of our fashions come from the outside.”

  And yet, historically, China saw the world’s greatest crimp on a woman’s feet: foot-binding.

  For hundreds of years into the 20th century, families crushed a girl’s feet to achieve a “golden lotus” (10.6cm), a “silver lotus” (just over 12.7cm) or the comparatively big “iron lotus” (more than 15.24cm).

  Today, Chinese names for heels are still colorful.

  Extreme heels — about 20.23cm high and often with a platform at the front — are known as “heaven-hating heels,” or hentian gaogenxie (恨天高跟鞋).

  Stilettos, the heels named for an assassin’s knife, are “lethal weapons,” or xiongqi (兇器).

  Platform shoes are called “water-prevention platforms,” or fangshuitai (防水台), a practical description — if a wearer can avoid falling over entirely.

  “They make me look taller,” said Wang Lu, a waitress in training in the Sanlitun district of Beijing who was wearing white, 12.7cm, zip-up platforms.

  Wang, 16, stands at1.54m in her bare feet, making the extra height welcome, she said.

  “I only bought them a few months ago, and in the beginning I fell over quite a lot, but I’ve got used to them now,” she said.

  Fu is a fan of heels, but she agrees they are uncomfortable.

  “I think a lot of women are quite conflicted,” she said. “They want to be both comfortable and beautiful.”

  Nanci Zhang, an HIV researcher, said that heels were aesthetically pleasing, but that she had to come up with a compromise on one pair of extreme heels that a friend gave her to wear when she sings jazz, a hobby of hers.

  “I tend to use them only on gigs where I have the option to sit!” she said.
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