Running (From Dinosaurs) in Heels

(contains spoilers) 

I liked Jurassic World. I went in expecting to be entertained and I was. Sure, it had plenty of ridiculous elements, but I figured they just came with the summer blockbuster territory. Chief among them: Claire’s heels. Claire, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, is in charge of overseeing the entire titular theme park. And as we’ve come to expect from women in positions of authority in action movies, she’s kind of a drag. Uptight, humorless, career-obsessed. A real icicle-in-the-mud. Of course she eventually melts under the influence of Chris Pratt’s warm heart and hot body. Of course she loosens up and finds her inner badass in time to save the park from a giant hybrid lizard monster on a killing spree. But before, during, and after all that happens the heels stay on, through hours of sprinting across mud and rocky terrain. The heels themselves are a plain conservative beige. In fact they’re very much like Claire: boring, but surprisingly resilient.

I noted the absurdity of the heels while watching the movie. So did Chris Pratt’s character, Owen, calling them “ridiculous” at one point. But honestly I didn’t think about it too much. It didn’t really bother me that her character was a blend of cold-hearted power player and damsel-in-distress. That she needed Owen to rescue her, and in doing so inform her that dinosaurs are animals, not attractions, and that her nephews are good kids that she should try to get to know better. I figured that retrograde gender roles were part of the tradition they were working out of, that it was just a silly movie after all, and honestly who cares. But then Jurassic World broke box office records on its opening weekend, and as the reviews flooded in it became clear that a lot of people cared about the rebooted franchise’s “woman problem.” At the center of the controversy: those heels.

Some laughed them off as standard popcorn flick improbabilia. Some raged against them as a metaphor for Hollywood’s ongoing negative associations and unrealistic expectations of women. Others defended them as a testament to the strength and toughness of the woman whose feet they were on.  Megan Garber puts all these perspectives in a cultural context in an article for the Atlantic.  

We can’t agree on how to feel about Claire’s heels because we never really decided how to feel about heels in general. Are they modern day foot-binding? Or symbols of power and stature? When a woman wears heels, is she demonstrating her financial independence, sexual autonomy, and high pain tolerance? Or succumbing to a male-dominated culture that wants her to flaunt her ass and slow down? It’s been over fifty years since the invention of the stiletto, and we still can’t decide whether high heels are friend or foe to the modern woman. Even Sex and the City – surely television’s greatest high heel evangelist – acknowledged their dark side. Carrie may have felt empowered and fabulous strutting through Manhattan in her sky-high Manolo’s, but her “addiction” to them left her borderline bankrupt. When she realized (after losing the financial support of one boyfriend) that her shoe collection had left her with no savings, she ran to another boyfriend for help. If it weren’t for all those shoes, she wouldn’t have needed the men at all.

As for Claire’s predicament – what were her alternatives? Could she have gone barefoot? Did she have a sensible pair of commuting sneakers stashed away in a locker somewhere? I was genuinely surprised when the movie ended without a Romancing the Stone homage in which Owen hacked off the spikes of Claire’s heels thus freeing her from her self-imposed handicap (although if they really wanted people applauding in the theaters, they would have had Claire do the hacking herself.) But let’s assume, on some level, that she kept them on by choice. Howard herself took this position, arguing that Claire was the kind of woman who insisted she walked better in heels than without them. Suppose those beige pumps did something to Claire’s psyche, making her feel ready to take on the day: to run a major theme park, give presentations to high-powered investors, and if need be go head-to-head with an escaped hybrid lizard monster. After all, this is the reason many women give for spending crazy amounts of money on impractical footwear: it makes them feel superhuman.

This is what it boils down to for me: are the heels the will of a fictional woman who just feels more competent and capable with them on? Or the will of a real-life male director who wants his female lead to stay vulnerable and fuckable no matter what? It all comes down to choice. This was the issue at Cannes this year when the film festival’s directors tried to enforce a bizarre policy that all women wear high heels on the red carpet. Most women wear high heels on red carpets anyway, and that’s fine. But something about being told that they have to changes the game completely. If battling a hybrid lizard monster in heels is just Claire doing Claire, that’s one thing. If her inhuman ability to do so is more about the studio’s failure to see women as actual humans, then yes, Jurassic World has a problem. 

The sexy transwoman's dilemma: redefining gender under the patriarchal gaze

The May/June 2015 issue of Bust magazine has a cover story on Laverne Cox, where the actress and activist further cements her status as one of today’s leading feminist voices. She said a lot of important stuff, but one thing stuck out to me: regarding a recent interaction with author bell hooks where hooks basically called her out for appealing to the traditional, patriarchy-approved standards of female beauty (the accompanying picture of Cox in a cleavage-bearing crop top, flowing skirt and mermaid-like blonde hair does a pretty good job of illustrating what hooks is referring to). Cox’s response was a bullseye that I’ve been orbiting (but not quite landing on) for years so I’m just going to write it out verbatim here: “If I’m embracing a patriarchal gaze with this presentation, it’s the way that I’ve found something that feels empowering. I’ve never been interested in being invisible and erased.”

Exactly. For years, I’ve watched the media (and many feminists) lash out at women who capitalize on their sexuality. When women who are known to be smart and accomplished pose for Maxim, or dress provocatively, or what have you. The message is always something along the lines of: “by appealing to the male gaze you are voluntarily un-empowering yourself. You’re bolstering unrealistic, narrow minded standards of beauty and reinforcing the notion that whatever else you might be good at, looking hot is the most important thing.” And these are valid arguments, but even the most convincing ones have never quite silenced the voice in the back of my head saying “she can do whatever the fuck she wants.” Patriarchy is all about controlling women. And to tell a woman “Doing this thing that you enjoy, that turns grown men into a puddle of drool at your feet, is regressive and counterproductive” is to control her empowerment. It says: sure, you can be empowered, but only in the ways that society deems productive and politically correct.

It’s a complicated issue for cis women, and for trans women infinitely more so. A trans woman’s very identity is political, whether she wants to engage with those politics or not. Not only are they fighting the uphill battle of fitting in to a rigidly cis-normative society, but once the world sees them as women, they are immediately thrust into the fiery core of feminist discourse. Case in point: Caitlyn Jenner.

Like Cox, Jenner also found it empowering to embrace the patriarchal gaze. Her Vanity Fair cover was as sexy and unapologetically glamorous as a 90s supermodel spread. She could have worn a Hillary Clinton pantsuit. She didn’t want to. After a life of being perceived as male, she wanted to have that thoroughly satisfying experience of going full va-va-voom. And in spite of the inevitable transphobic tweets, the Internet’s initial, overwhelming response was a collective “Yeah, I’d hit that.” And then the wave of affirmation for Caitlyn Jenner’s attractiveness receded into a more complicated conversation. Jon Stewart pointed this out on the Daily Show saying “Caitlyn, when you were a man, we could talk about your athleticism, your business acumen, but not you’re a woman and your looks are really the only thing we care about.” Cox also urged fans to look beyond the bustier, writing on her blog “Yes, Caitlyn looks amazing and is beautiful. But what I think is most beautiful about her is her heart and soul.” These observations highlight an uncomfortable question: if the only way we know how to tell a trans woman we accept and appreciate her as a woman is to tell her how hot she is, what does that say about our definition of womanhood?

Female sexuality has always inspired fear. In their myths, ancient Greeks equated death with feminine beauty, probably because those were the two things men knew they were ultimately powerless against. Typically, patriarchal societies have handled this problem by either robbing women of their sexuality completely, or by forcing them to be defined by it. Either it’s not part of who you are (virgin), or it’s all you are (whore). 21^st century America, at least as embodied by the entertainment industry, tends toward the latter approach. But as we continue to move towards true gender equality, more and more women, both cis and trans – are refusing to accept this. They’re acknowledging, celebrating, even flaunting their sexuality without forfeiting all of the other things that make them powerful and great. So I don’t see the reaction to Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover as a regression so much as a baby step. It’s OK to acknowledge that Cox and Jenner are beautiful women. So long as we don’t stop there.