Guest Blog: If the Shoe Fits: Footwear, Identity and Transition High Heels – Power or Patriarchy? Emily Nicholls, Newcastle University On Wednesday 17 July, I dragged myself out of bed at some ungodly hour to slip on my sandals and head down to Sheffield for the Dressed Bodies Symposium and – despite the early start! – it was a fantastic and very rewarding day and a great opportunity to learn more about others’ work on a range of diverse topics around dress and identity. The ‘If the Shoe Fits’ project was new to me, and the short video we watched on the project provided a fascinating insight into the work and some of the findings. What really struck me as I watched it was the similarities and overlaps with my own research. When I started out on my PhD journey two years ago, I could never have imagined how important the topic of footwear would be in my own project, which centres around (in)appropriate femininity on a night out in Newcastle (it’s every bit as fun as it sounds!). True, one of my three interview themes is around dress and appearance, but I couldn’t have anticipated how central shoes would be to so many of the young women I speak to, or some of the striking parallels between my emerging themes and those explored in both the ‘Shoe Fits’ project and the symposium in general. My in-depth, semi-structured interviews with young women aged 18-25 in Newcastle are starting to reveal tensions in the ways in which footwear – and heels in particular – matter to women and what they might represent in terms of empowerment or oppression. For many of the young women, the high heel takes on an almost mythical status as a symbol of what it means to be feminine. Participants describe very vividly the feeling of slipping into a pair of heels, and the ways in which this action completes an outfit and makes the wearer feel feminine and ready for a night out. For many of my participants, being feminine is about accentuating your curves, and there was a sense that stepping into heels could literally transform physical appearance, sculpting and enhancing the female body: when you have the heels, it’s like it makes your legs look better, it makes your arse look better, taller, like, it gives you a better figure... [cut]... they shape you, just a bit more feminine, like, the curves... (Ally, 21, bisexual) Something else that really resonated with me from the ‘Shoe Fits’ film was the idea of putting on shoes to point the feet towards – and sometimes literally embody – the future. For some of the young women in my study, the high heeled shoe represents a transition to an imagined and glamourous future, the shift from student to professional identity: I like in my head to think that when I’m older and I’ve got, like, a proper grown-up job and stuff that I’ll be able to wear, like, you know, all the... lots of make-up and wear heels, and dress up for work, if you like (Kelly, 21, middle-class, straight) Heels acting as a marker of maturity was a common theme across interviews, with walking successfully in heels seen as a key achievement of femininity: ...if you can’t wear heels then, like, where have you been?! (Ally, 21, bisexual) Being able to walk ‘properly’ in heels is very important to several of the participants, often identified as a sign of maturity, class and success. Navigating the street in heels is an achievement that can earn praise and respect from other women: ...a lot of them come up and pay compliments... like they go ‘oh my god, how do you walk? Them shoes are beautiful, how do you walk in them?’ (Kirsty, 23, working-class, straight) Note that for Kirsty, it is not just walking well in shoes that is important, her shoes are also valued and recognised as ‘beautiful’ by others, validating her taste and cultural knowledge. Several of the other young women also see investment in the ‘right’ kind of shoes as important. This can be – for example - through wearing ‘proper’ high heels rather than smaller or kitten heels (again possibly linking to the idea that to walk successfully in ‘proper’ high heels is an achievement of femininity). For others, investing in more expensive 1