On feet and feminism
Lacking originality today, I point you toward the excellent writing of Sara at Moving Right Along, who uses the meme "Five things feminism has given me" to explore being a woman with a transfemoral amputation in these modern times. (I've got that right, don't I, Sara? Transfemoral?)
Here's a teaser:
Human bodies sometimes experience catastrophic changes. When a woman's body changes irrevocably so that she can no longer don the appropriate costume, for example, when she has to give up a foot, she is expected to fight this with every fiber of her being. She is not expected to fight losing the foot nearly as much as she is expected to fight appearing to have lost a foot. And usually she wants to. No one wants to be discounted.
A woman patient of my prosthetist's former employer was a bilateral trans-tibial amputee who couldn't imagine wearing anything but high heeled shoes, and so her only prosthetics bore feet and ankles made to accommodate heels with "life-like" foam covers. She was considered "marvelous" for not giving in to disfigurement. Without knowing her, I considered her story insane. Yet I understand why she would want to hold onto this. Those heels are her signature, her identity. I can see how that can come to be in our culture, and how devastating it would be for most women to give that up.
Also check out Sara's thoughtful comment to my post on Tammy Duckworth and a discussion on hairy legs over at Toad in the Hole.
4 comments:
Yes, Blue, you got it right. :)
I'm glad you enjoyed this post. It's something I've been thinking about for a long, long time, and of course it always comes raging back to my consciousness every time I go to buy a new pair of shoes.
On a much more frivolous level, I am starting to think that the world needs two things:
1. A boutique of reasonably priced but not trashily constructed clothing designed specifically to complement the looks and lifestyles of wheelchair users, where the catalog models and customer service reps all have to be real, live wheelchair users and where any brick-and-mortar stores are designed by wheelchair users for the convenience of wheelchair users, and
2. A shoe company dedicated to making cool shoes for lower limb amputees, all with ½" heels, all with magnificent traction, nothing "orthopaedic" looking, ever (unless that's what's "in" that year for everyone).
Think about it.
"Elegance on Wheels"
"Stumpy's Stomps"
Our good looks, comfort and confidence in public could create an ineffable élan others would covet. It is possible that we could change the face of fashion. If not, maybe we could just enjoy our own clothes more and suffer less to obtain them.
Oh, for the capital.
Ah, I'm now having fantasies of fashion trends in clothing for wheelchair users of amputees that are hard or impossible for the nondisabled to wear.
The envy we could inspire.
Once upon a time I remember Wheelchair Dancer expressing a wish for a home with a bathroom that was designed for her, not adapted for her use. I can't help but think of this as similar.
Why should you have to costume yourself as a walker when you aren't walking?
What if clothing were designed to serve you rather than you having to choose it based on your ability to adapt to it?
What would that look like?
There are so many smart and creative people in wheelchairs I think it must be just a matter of time before you all start rethinking this whole area to your own advantage.
As for shoes, well, I have no problem sharing shoe styles with people who have all their own original feet, and I can't even think of a way to make them exclusively useful to amputees without also limiting the number and types of amputees who could use them either by design or prohibitively high cost. I'd just like to be setting my own options instead of so very much at the mercy of other people's choices.
I do recall seeing skirts and pants somewhere once that were designed with a longer rise for the seated person. I think the butt would bag if a standing person wore them.
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