Should bosses be able to force women to bind their feet?
The BBC asks: Is it legal to force women to wear high heels at work?
If it is it certainly shouldn’t be. High heels are a form of foot-binding, and forced foot-binding should never be legal. People should be strongly discouraged from binding their own feet, and entirely forbidden to bind or demand the binding of anyone else’s.
A 27-year-old woman working for a City firm in London says she was sent home for refusing to wear high heels. But is this legal, fair or healthy?
Nicola Thorp says she was laughed at when she told her bosses that she didn’t want to wear high heels on her first day as a corporate receptionist.
“I was expected to do a nine-hour shift on my feet escorting clients to meeting rooms. I said I just won’t be able to do that in heels,” she told the BBC.
She was wearing flats, and they told her to go buy heels or else go home without pay. She refused and was sent away without pay.
Now Thorp has set up a petition to the government, demanding “women have the option to wear flat formal shoes at work”. It has picked up more than 7,000 signatures. The petition says the law as it stands is “outdated and sexist”.
UK employers can dismiss staff who fail to live up to “reasonable” dress code demands, says employment law firm Thompsons, as long as they’ve been given enough time to buy the right shoes and clothes. They can set up different codes for men and women, as long as there’s an “equivalent level of smartness”.
“Reasonable” – such a flexible word, so different for the employer versus the worker. No doubt it seems very reasonable to a boss to tell a worker to wear crippling shoes, but it doesn’t necessarily seem reasonable to the worker.
Then there are health concerns. “From the point of view of the foot high heels are a disaster,” said Tony Redmond, a biomechanics expert at Leeds University. “The joints of the feet can be damaged by wearing high heels, and this can cause some forms of arthritis.”
He also warned that regularly wearing heels increases the mechanical wear and tear around the knee joints, which might increase the risk of osteoarthritis. It also puts people with weak lower backs at risk of slipped vertebrae.
Plus they’re narrow and pointy, in keeping with the whole fragile, dainty theme, and that’s bad for the whole front half of the foot.
The College of Podiatry has warned employers not to make women wear high heels at work because they can cause bunions, back problems, ankle sprains and tight calves. It has been worked out that it takes an average of one hour, six minutes and 48 seconds for them to start hurting.
The really nasty ones hurt as soon as you put them on.
Photos of the bloodied feet of a waitress in Canada – who worked a full shift in high heels, part of the company’s dress code – have been shared more than 10,000 times on Facebook.
Last year, the Israeli airline El Al established a rule that all female cabin crew had to wear high heels until all passengers were seated.
Simon Pratt, Managing Director at Portico, said Thorp had reported to work with “inappropriate footwear”, saying she had “previously signed the appearance guidelines.” He adds that such guidelines were “common practice within the service sector” but the company were now reviewing them. PwC says it’s in discussions about Portico’s policies. The incident involving Thorp happened last December. She started the petition this week.
It has received more than 20,000 signatures, meaning the government must give a comment. If it gets 100,000, there’s a chance MPs could debate in Parliament whether women should have to wear high heels at work.
What does foot-binding do? It disables women. It makes women less able to run away.
The reason women are ordered to wear high heels is also sexist – many people think high heels make their legs look more shapely, and therefore sexier. That’s pimping, IMHO.
I wear flats to work – as a teacher, I have to stand long hours, as well. I also wear slacks and comfortable shirts (business casual, not t-shirts). The day they tell me I have to wear heels (or skirts, or frills, or pink), I will know it’s time to retire (even if I’m not old enough yet).
A woman should not be required to be a sexy showpiece for her company.
Someone needs to invent a foot colander, or maybe a foot hijab; without elevated heels of course. Then Sincerely Held Religious Beliefs could be put to work sparing worker’s feet.
I have foot problems unrelated to high heels; these come and go, so occasionally I kick my shoes off while teaching. I have done this for years, and it does not violate our rules. I am wearing socks, so I do not teach bare footed.
Last year one of the little darlings complained to someone in administration that I was teaching without my shoes on. There was no change in the rules, I was just ordered to keep my shoes on at all times because “some people don’t like feet”. They saw no feet. There is nothing wrong with socks.
In short, it is never, ever, ever about protecting worker’s feet (especially if said workers happen to be women). It is about making sure the customers who might happen to catch sight of the woman’s feet are happy with what they see.
What kind of student goes running to the college administration complaining about a teachers feet, socked or not? That’s one kid that seriously needs to be hauled out from under the rock they’ve been living under and given a metaphorical shaking.
iknklast: If you are in the U.S., and can get your doctor to sign off on the need to periodically go without shoes while standing, you should be able to request a ‘reasonable accommodation’ under the Americans with Disabilities Act. All you need to demonstrate is that working for too long with shoes on would have a negative impact on your ‘life functions’–so even if you can make it through the day with shoes on, if doing so makes it near impossible to go shopping on the weekend because you need to keep your feet up for awhile, you’d likely qualify. (IANAL, but I did have to do a fair bit of ADA research recently.)
Most of my work requires steel toed boots.
So I googled ‘high heel steel toe boots’.
Guess what?
Reasonableness is a really stupidly dangerous standard for anything, much less footwear. What a bunch of brutes, to require high heels for a job that requires standing and walking for 9 hours a day. What a bunch of brutes to think they can require any particular type of shoes. I inherited bunions. And I had really painful surgery to get one of them fixed – this included SAWING THE BONE and cutting a piece out of it and then pinning it back together. The first few days post surgery were excruciating and since I was not in the hospital they would not give me anything to really manage the pain. And they chided me for taking the vicodin more often than instructed b/c it hurt so damn much. I inherited bunions and thank god I could get it fixed. My right foot hurt every single day of my life until I got that repair. My surgeon was on a total rampage against high heels and had posters in his office and waiting room that showed the damage that high heels cause to foot bones, leg bones and knees and on up. It was gross to see those X-rays. Anyone who knows the damage that high heels do to women’s bodies should be screaming in the faces of bosses who demand that they wear these torture devices. Makes me want to slap people. PS when I worked for a Washington State public agency, back in the 1980s, I was instructed that I was required to wear nylons/stockings every day. Even when I wore pants I had to have on nylons underneath so that the small part of me that showed – the top of my foot usually – was covered in sheer nylon. I didn’t last long at that place, I must say.
This shoe/nylon business is all part of the nasty ass societal conventions about controlling how women look to men. High heels are dangerous for women. But those who look upon women and use us as their erotic entertainment wish to see specific kinds of shoes, clothes, skin, hairdos. etc. And they think that wanting to see woman hobbled by shoes is somehow normal and reasonable. They can all go and fuck themselves.
I really hate that shit.
So do I. It just infuriates me.
Feet are important, man, and they’re fragile. We should treat them like our beloved pets instead of forcing them to wear terrible deforming pain-creating shoes.
How about requiring any male who wants females to wear high heels to wear them himself?
(To the extent that I check out women’s feet I think they look better bare or in low heeled footwear. )
Another of those unbelievable reports, it’s 2016. My wife, a nurse, didn’t own a pair of high heels, she refused to wear them. They permanently injured the feet and made the wearer unstable.
1) If it is a mondatory expense as part of a uniform, it should be provided by the employer.
2) A dress code cannot be considered reasonable if it requires clothing that cause health problems.
#6
What?
Many high profile women in the MSM who host TV talk shows or who do the news often wear high heels and very short skirts. Sometimes you stumble across broadcasts that feature all women panels, and more often than not these women wear extremely short skirts and very high heels. This whole *sexy look* thing, though constantly derided by feminists, has actually crept back into the public sphere. The HOOKER LOOK is everywhere these days.
And boy, do I feel sorry for that waitress. No one should have to work dressed like that, especially in jobs that involve walking for miles on every shift.