Why I (Sometimes) Wear High Heels

Shoes from Yo Amo Los Zapatos

Things are sodden here in the south of England after the rain we've been experiencing.   Someone in the sky keeps turning on the tap.  The full regalia of wellingtons, galoshes or indeed fisherman's wading boots would have been preferable at the weekend when I went squelching through mud that oozed over the top of my normally serviceable walking boots.

Indeed, the wearing of anything as ridiculous as heels was furthermost from my mind - until I  got back home, washed out mud-dribbled socks, then looked at some of the Facebook photos of a couple of new South American friends to the A Woman in Goggles band page.   Clearly, they were shoe crazy, having posted nothing but pictures of exotic footwear from Yo Amo Los Zapatos - the Spanish language version of the Shoelovers website.  Curiosity won out and I clicked on the mouse to see what all the fuss was about.  And there in its splendour was all manner of vertiginous walking gear - beribboned, bestrapped, bebuckled, and impressively beheeled.   

Somehow, I've never completely subscribed to this Woman-as-Shoe thing, witness the sorry contents of the wardrobe.  Let's see, I must possess something approaching close to (ballpark figure) three pairs of high-heeled shoes.

But.  However.  Still...

Why I Wear High Heels

To look taller, of course:

create plinths for my legs

so they can masquerade

as objets fashioned by Bernini;

to shock complacent feet

out of jam-like spread,

streamline them

and keep them on their toes;

to seduce my gait

away from its forward intent,

teach it to rock to the lateral

in a slow pendulum sway;

to click in a tight secretary skirt

down the waxed corridors

of the Johnson Building,

Racine, Wisconsin, circa 1950;

to liberate the calligraphy

trapped in stilettos,

inking circles and swirls

on wood as I dance;

to gain vantage over hedges,

whose shadows hide

the ploughings left

by serfs in their fiefs;

to lift into the burl

of the west wind,

bump the top of my head

on the underside of wings;

and every night,

removing high heels,

to stand down,

find the earth once more.

© Katie Griffiths

Another Name in the Supper Pot - Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun

Self-portrait in a straw hat 1782

You probably know the game – the one where you make up an ideal guest list and choose famous people, living or dead, you’d like to invite round for dinner. 

Well, I’ve just had to add a new person to my list.

There she was, framed in a corner of the National Gallery in London, at first seemingly just A.N. Other society beauty, until closer inspection revealed a telltale palette and paintbrushes.   It turned out that the pretty pink-cheeked woman in a flirty hat with voluptuous feather was none other than the portraitist Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun.

She was the second shock in the space of fifteen minutes.  Back in the Impressionist section of the gallery, I’d just realised (klutz moment) that the painter Morisot, whose work I’ve long admired - even had on my student walls in postcard form - was in fact Berthe Morisot, for Bertha, not for the rather more trouser-wearing Bert Morisot, her alter ego.   So much for the assumption that every single painter on display was necessarily male.

The French painter Vigée Le Brun (1755 – 1842) in fact pre-dated the Impressionists by a hundred years.  How much more remarkable does it seem, then, that she was able to establish herself in the male-dominated world of Paris in the late eighteenth century during the upheavals of the French Revolution.

It’s true that she had some help in her genes and circumstances.  Her father was a painter, Louis Vigée, and after he tragically died when she was twelve, a new and relatively wealthy stepfather was able to pay for painting lessons.  At the age of  twenty  she married the painter and art dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun whose circle of influence  undoubtedly helped her but who kept control of her money, often to pay off his gambling debts.

But her talent was incontestable.  It had manifested young and had burst out everywhere at the boarding school she attended from the age of six to eleven.  Her memoirs tell us: “I scrawled on everything at all seasons; my copy-books, and even my schoolmates', I decorated with marginal drawings of heads, some full-face, others in profile; on the walls of the dormitory I drew faces and landscapes with coloured chalks.  So it may easily be imagined how often I was condemned to bread and water.  I made use of my leisure moments outdoors in tracing any figures on the ground that happened to come into my head.  At seven or eight, I remember, I made a picture by lamplight of a man with a beard….  When my father saw it he went into transports of joy, exclaiming: ‘You will be a painter, child, if ever there was one!’ "

Elisabeth (I think we can move  on to first-name terms) enjoyed considerable success within her own lifetime, leaving behind 660 portraits and 200 landscapes.  She painted many of “the most delightful and most distinguished men and women in Europe” – including members of the nobility, the Prince of Wales, Lord Byron, the family of Catherine the Great of Russia. 

But I’m not inviting her round for supper solely on the strength of her contact list, but for the anecdotes, insight and pioneering spirit she’s likely to impart.   For example, I’ll want to find out more about her singing sprees with Marie Antoinette.  During the sittings for more than thirty portraits, it seems that they would warble duets by Grétry, for Marie Antoinette “was exceedingly fond of music, although she did not sing very true.”  And we’ll certainly need to get the low-down on the sessions with the Prince of Wales (the future George IV) which enraged those English painters who were elbowed aside for the privilege and which worried the Queen Mother enough into thinking that some kind of hanky-panky was going on. 

I’ll want to ask her about her scarf-draping techniques that came from her intense dislike of the female fashion at that time, when she found that wrapping bits of material made portraits “a little more picturesque”.   Perhaps, too, she’ll reveal more about that famous exchange with an English painter she simply describes as M:  "It seems that my lace shocks you, although I have painted none for fifteen years.   I vastly prefer scarves, which you, sir, would do well yourself to employ.  Scarves, you may believe me, are a boon to painters, and had you used them you would have acquired good taste in draping, in which you are deficient.”

She’ll be fascinating, no doubt, about her artistic eye, and to what extent she was tempted to enhance the appearance of her sitters.  Marie Antoinette, although pitchy of voice, apparently possessed an amazing complexion.  “I never have seen one so brilliant,” writes Elisabeth, “and brilliant is the word, for her skin was so transparent that it bore no umber in the painting.  Neither could I render the real effect of it as I wished.  I had no colours to paint such freshness, such delicate tints, which were hers alone, and which I had never seen in any other woman.”  

Marie Antoinette by Vigée Le Brun

She had equally flattering comments to make about the Prince of Wales:  “Tall and well-built, he had a handsome face; his features were all regular and distinguished.  He wore a wig very artistically disposed, the hair parted on the forehead like the Apollo di Belvedere's, and this suited him to perfection.”

Whereas she may have felt favourable towards its monarch, generally, however, she found England "unmerry".    She has a point -  at the time she visited, London had no picture gallery, and great works of art could only be seen in the private homes of the wealthy.  There was, therefore, much less of interest for an artist compared to Paris or Rome.    And  “Sunday in London is as dismal as the climate…" she writes.  " The English are used to braving their weather.  I often met them in the pouring rain, riding without umbrellas in open carriages. They are satisfied with wrapping their cloaks about them, but this has its drawbacks for strangers unaccustomed to such a watery state of things.” 

The “watery state of things” was no mere idle complaint, for unlike in Paris, she needed to keep a fire burning constantly in her studio, then judge and juggle the distances of her canvasses from the grate in order to dry them.

She’ll be a sparky and fascinating guest.  To make her feel comfortable on this first visit, I’ll arrange proceedings according to her own taste:  

• the cleverest will get an invitation including, perhaps, a poet, a viscount, an actress
• start time will be 9.0 pm
• ladies will wear white gowns
• it will be a light evening repast -  some fowl, some fish, a dish of vegetables, a salad
• no politics - but we’ll chat about literature and tell anecdotes of the hour
• there will be refined merriment and diversions such as charades
• no extra food will be provided, even if guests stay until midnight

I hope more than anything that she will inspire us about her passion for art.   “Nor has that passion ever diminished; it seems to me that it has even gone on growing with time, for to-day I feel under the spell of it as much as ever, and shall, I hope, until the hour of death.”

All quotations from A Celebration of Women Writers: Memoirs of Madame Vigée Le Brun (1755 -1842)

by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun. Translated by Lionel Strachey, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1903.

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/lebrun/memoirs/memoirs.html

A Lesson in Flamenco

I am the only student here - gracias a Dios - for a two-hour lesson in the dance school in Alhendín, a village near Granada.

In the vestibule, black skirts with large red spots, swirling hemlines and frills down their sideseams hang on pegs.  I choose the only one that fits - an offering made of unexciting brown stretchy material that greatly enhances the line of the figure.  Or, put another way, the one with the same fabric used for Spanx control underwear.  Very quickly, my skirt is required to do sterling work.

I must also choose a pair of Flamenco shoes, but like the skirts, the footwear has been accustomed to more dainty dancers.  The largest pair, size 39, are just the wrong side of comfortable, and my feet soon begin to feel emprisoned.

My teacher, Paquita, is a very beautiful young woman who moves with great ease and sensuous grace.  When she tells me she is actually 48 years old, I decide to pay very close attention.  We stand in front of a mirror, with arms straight, shoulders back, stomach and bottom pulled in.  Her fingers reach up to the skies, inviting energy to run down her entire body.  She brings her arms behind the line of her ears, then stretches them out behind her arched back, to show the proud, arrogant position needed in this dance.

We begin by clapping in time to the music, introduce arm movements with wrists moving sinously.  Then we work on the feet, using the heel (tacon) the middle of the foot (media) and the full sole (golpe) to create not just different movements but the tapping sound which acts as accentuation to the music.

"Más chulo, Katie," says Paquita, which means, I assume from her gestures, more attitude.  She is being charitable, for as I gallump alongside her it is not just chulo that is wanting.  I am severely anatomically-challenged, with shoulders that have stiffened and an extra foot that has arrived out of nowhere.

She, meanwhile, whirls and flows and lunges and struts.  She lifts her skirts above her knees, her legs shapely and brown, and taps her shoes ever more furiously in a living example of confidence, sensuality and femininity.

During one of our necessary breaks, she tells me that there are numerous different palos, or Flamenco styles, depending on where the dances have originated and what rhythm or mood is being created.  Classical dance requires the arms to be straight and long, the back to be arched, and the movements to be precise.  Many dancers perfect their techniques over years of training.  She herself actually only began five years ago.  I find this revelation inordinately encouraging, as much as the information that very young dancers will not often have sufficent duende (soul) to convey the depth of emotion required.

"And it is also possible to use your own ideas and movements in Flamenco," she tells me.

Good.  These, then, are the ones I shall be developing within the dark yet safe confines of my own living room.

Oh My Sisters...

Chris leads us in a stretch. Photo by Lenn Patterson

Last Saturday evening, on a yoga weekend in Dorset, I stood with a group of women at a bonfire, a bottle of wine (or two) doing the rounds. After a day containing three sessions of yoga, and a morning walk which had seen some of us escape temporarily over the perimeter fence, we were feeling mellow as we faced each other across the flames.

“SH!” came loud ricocheting stage whispers.  “They’re coming out!”  We elbowed  each other in the ribs and looked furtively across the grass to the large portakabin.  From our best efforts earlier to peer in through its drawn blinds, we had fathomed that some kind of mysterious sitting and staring activity had been taking place inside.  Now it was finished.  One by one, five men and a woman came down the steps, avoiding the bonfire and any eye contact with us in order to walk back to their rooms in the main house.

 “It’s that Tantric group.”

“No.  They’re here for ‘Love in Awareness’.”

“And they’re not allowed to speak to anyone.”

“I wouldn’t be interested in a man who needed a course in Love in Awareness.  Would you?”

And smoke blew into our faces and down our throats.

And Fi launched a Chinese lantern which first threatened to set fire to the Love in Awareness portakabin and then headed menacingly in the direction of the local sewage works. 

And the fire crackled and sparked.

And suddenly a majority around that purifying heat felt the compulsion, as if in some spontaneous Salem witch hunt, to admit they had attended convent schools and were, in fact, lapsed Catholics.

And then came tales of cruel nuns.  Of kind nuns.  Of expulsions from school.

And the confession from Nicky who, as a child, had once come running to her mother saying: “It’s true, Mummy, isn’t it, that if you’re not a Catholic, you’re a Prostitute?”

And I wondered how I had for so long managed to live without the blissful earthy company of women. 

It’s not that I lack female friends.  But usually I see them in ones or twos, not in a large gaggle.  The last time I experienced female group ethos was at my women-only college at university.*  Then, however, I was often dispirited that some of my college friends were more interested in beetling off to the library of a Friday night than sashaying forth into the town.   And the sea of female faces over the muesli at breakfast was a tad depressing, and convinced me that I had stumbled unwittingly and unwillingly into nothing less than, well, there's that word again, a convent. The urge to hitch up my skirts and climb over the gates – which, incidentally, were shut and locked at midnight – was huge.

Fi  lends support.  Photo by Lenn Patterson

But sharing sleeping quarters in a mobile home last weekend, nattering over mealtimes, seeking out collectively the recipe for the delicious home-made seed crackers (but generally there’s been too much brown rice, said Katherine) helping each other, confessing our joys and our sorrows, doing lots of giggling - this is what it's all about.

Oh, and the yoga?  That was absolutely brilliant.

Photo by Lenn Patterson

Our yoga teacher for the weekend was Chris.  She was excellent, and you can check out her classes and yoga retreats.  Highly recommended:
http://www.yogawithchris.co.uk/

A core group of seven of us are devotees of the wonderful Estelle:
http://www.yogawithestelle.net/

A gentle and uplifting documentary on what life actually can be like in a convent  - on Rab in Croatia -  can be found here: 
http://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/8419/RAB-SILENCE

The Love in Awareness group was, in fact, practising a technique of pure speaking and pure listening, in order to learn to drop the layers and masks that we all present to the world.  It, and other interesting developmental courses, can be found at Osho Leela:
http://www.osholeela.co.uk/

*Why a single-sex college, you may ask.  At the time I attended my alma mater, there was no choice.