HIGH HEEL - My introduction to "Object Lessons" - has whetted my appetite for more deep dives into the anthropological and ethical questions surrounding seemingly mundane things. Summer Brennan brings insightful commentary to the discussion, invoking mythology and fairy tale imagery, patriarchy and feminism, with sound historical analysis. This has already prompted conversations in my workplace, and I know of at least one person who is actively seeking out other lessons that objects can teach them. It's a quick read, and something I would have loved to share in my gender studies classes in college.

Very interesting read, but this wasn’t quite what I expected it to be.

I wanted it to be a more complete history of the high heel, but it wasn’t that unfortunately. I do think it’s a good feminist lit read, so if you like those kind of books, give this one a chance.

This was an interesting read, but it was quite different than I expected and I didn't feel that Brennan always did the best job connecting her thoughts back to her starting point of high heels and footwear. Worth a read if you like feminist lit (I do), but definitely not any sort of real history of high heels.

From this wildly erratic series comes a stolid, comfortable, supporting kind of read – therefore one totally at odds with its subject. There's an introductory quote from Virginia Woolf about not understanding women, and this cultural study of high heels certainly shows they're a vital cog in the machine of understanding them and what they've been through, no matter the gender of the reader. (Of course, the discourse has to drag in those that try and cross gender, but that's probably par for the course within academe these days.) It pinballs from ancient Chinese precursors to Cinderella's glass slipper, and the foot-binding women in China suffered for centuries, through artists and legends that have some familiarity with the restrictive speed of the high heel wearer, to modern office politics and post-post-feminism. We get their history, their meaning – and of course the debate as to whether they suggest the likelihood of rape. All of that sounds like the summary of a dry, high-falutin' book, but this isn't really one. Yes, it zigzags from topic to topic in a very singular way, but generally this is average-reader-on-the-average-bus friendly, so is worth consideration.

“How do they walk in these things?” plaintively queries a high-heeled Jack Lemmon as ‘Daphne’ in Billy Wilder’s ‘Some Like It Hot’. The more fundamental question, directly and intelligently addressed in Summer Brennan’s ‘High Heel’, is why do they walk in these things at all, given that their pinched toe and tilt of the foot makes them so impractical and uncomfortable?

Her own love-hate relationship with this object (she records falling whilst trying to run on 4-inch heels) results in Brennan offering a finely nuanced assessment of the ambiguity surrounding this cultural icon. Thus high heels can combine formality and femininity for the professional woman, whilst also being associated with the sex worker and fetishism. Their height suggests heightened status yet their restrictions on movement invite or impose passivity. They can come across both as empowering and liberating and as cruel and degrading (the modern-day equivalent of the lotus shoe), and those that wear them can thus appear as beautiful and alluring or vain and deluded. Not surprisingly, then, high heels constitute, as Brennan states a “fertile locus of feminist debate.”

This loosely structured book has an historical dimension but doesn’t really provide a systematic or detailed history of the high heel. Tellingly Brennan’s Bibliography contains Ovid, the Brothers Grimm, Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf but not June Swann’s ‘Shoes’ or Colin McDowell’s ‘Shoes; Fashion and Fantasy’, or Pattison and Woolley’s ‘Shoes: A Century of Style.’ This is because Brennan kicks off her high heels in order to range far and wide, pondering portrayals of femininity in Greek myth and in fairy tale as well as issues relating to female objectification and sensuality in the modern (western) world.

The fetishist or historian interested only in high heels will likely find this book somewhat disappointing but anyone curious to learn how heels, and shoes more generally, are “about … power, or the lack of it” will find ‘High Heel’ very well written and thought provoking.

I love books about everyday object like this one. It was engaging and entertaining, a well researched pleasant book.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to Bloomsbury Academic and Netgalley for this ARC

"A true princess will feel the pea under a pile of mattresses, but not her Jimmy Choos"

This book was interesting, it covered a broad range of subjects, from Sylvia Plath to the Minotaur.
It had some well written one liners and bits of interesting information.
A very fast read

I love this series of books gems about objects we use everyday things like blankets radios and brings them to life. High Heel shoes makes a delicious addition to this series.Love the image in spring young women put aside their flats put on their heels .The discussion of Sylvia Plaths black patent leather shoes, I wonderful addition to this series about objects.#netgalley#bloomsburyacademic #highheels.

As a lover of high heels, I felt this book was a must read for myself. I thought it was well laid-out and written almost as if I were hearing a podcast. history, opinion, and acute observations made this book and enjoyable read. To link Orvid, fairy tales, societal views/norms to 'simple' high heels was fascinating to read. Oddly enough, the book inspired me to wear heels the next day after months of comfy flats. I won't look at heels the same, and I love them just as much.