“High Heels were invented by a woman who was kissed on the forehead.” –Christopher Morley.
She dwarfed everything around her. I mean dwarfed in the sense that she made everything look insignificant and minute, but also in the literal elongation way. She towered into a different stratosphere, a place where only her chin existed. A chin that our heads fell under. All our heads. The cut-off point.
Maybe I should start from the beginning.
I’m stripping. I’m removing my watch then I’m fumbling with my belt. Then off come my shoes. “You have to remove your jacket too,” the uniformed lady says nonchalantly from across the conveyor machine.
Entebbe Airport. 10pm, Ugandan Time. Airport security check, I’m travelling back. I noticed her because while in the process of removing my jacket, I sort of hit her with my hand as she stood behind me. Of course when that happened I was hoping it wasn’t a Nigerian or a Kisii – drama is not what I was looking for at that hour of night. When I turned to mumble a pole what do I see? Her. She is a full head taller than me. A full head taller than everybody in the airport. It’s a stupefying sight, to look under a woman’s chin. It makes you feel frail. You feel your gonads shrink and cower. And particularly, I was concerned that she could see the middle of my head and we all know the story of depletion beginning to happen there.
So anyway, I distractedly mumble an apology, to which she responds with a very faint smile, a smile so faint I thought it was a sneer. In fact, I think it was a sneer. I suspect that this is the smile she saves for shorter men or men with no hair in the middle of their heads -whichever comes first. In this case, both.
She is with a man; some Somali/Ethiopian looking chap with an obedient beard. A chap she also dwarfs. He’s telling her something in a language I can’t understand and she, demurely, responds officiously and in a very calm monotonous tone. A tall voice. I know it was a tall voice because the sound of it seemed to hang around in the air longer than the man’s.
Later, after I had passed the metal detector and I’m getting into my jacket, and is strapping my watch I watched her cross over, pick her purse and strut away to the airline desk, followed by literally every eye on the airport floor. Women gawped; men seemed to hold their breaths. She was abnormally tall, so tall it almost seemed rude. It wasn’t graceful, or even sexy, just sobering. Sobering how she made each one of us on that floor seem like ants; stunted and worthless. And funnily enough, that feeling in itself was intriguing if you want to know the truth.
I have always had a phobia for women who are taller than me. I never want to stand near them, or hug them, or walk on the same sidewalk with them. I have always wondered if they are the ones to change the bulb in your house. Or you are the one to stand on your tiptoe to kiss them. Taller women feel me with angst. They make me feel like their “female dog” (see how being politically correct can sound flat?).
OK, I’m sure all the trained psychologists in High School will offer textbook diagnosis to explain these insecurities. Let me save you the trouble. I give them a wide berth because I’m an egomaniac ogre. Because I fear being challenged. Because I’m too damned lazy to stand on my tiptoe to fetch a kiss. Yes, the hell with high hanging fruits (no pun), they rot quickly because nobody ever touches them anyway. So the sun dries them out. Take your pick…not of the hanging fruit, of course.
The last tall girl I know, the one who looked at me like an ant was from Makerere University many years ago. Renee was her name. She was from one of those tribes in northern Uganda, which means she was taller than all the loud Kenyans who fawned around her to sip from the fountain of her brilliant personality. Only problem was she had the attitude of a gravid sewer rat.
One day at Wandegye, where we would all frequent to eat pork on Saturdays, she told me, “Biko, if you ever hope for us to have a sound conversation while standing up, would you care to wear the right shoes?” Atta girl! I can’t think of anyone who ever went below my belt in that fashion. You could have heard my ego deflate all the way from Busia border as the last of those acerbic words left her condescending lips. Suffice it to say; those words scarred me for life. I’m a willow shadow of the man I used to be because of her.
After Renee, the airport lady with a strange tongue was the tallest woman I had seen in many years. I mean tall as in distinctly tall. Tall because she was naturally tall, yes, but also because she had on high heels which she teetered on, as if she was walking a tight rope. As if, if she veered off slightly she would plunge down into mediocrity, which apparently, going by her high chin, was where the rest of us peasants belonged.
This is not about my insecurities in my younger days, or the scars that I carry under my thorax. This is about high heels and its ode. The most lethal tool a woman can have against a man is not even her brains (that helps) but is high heels because high heels seem to say, “This is my level today. Rise up, if you can.” And that is confidence.
When a woman wears high heels, the message you receive is not a fashion statement, because heels just have to say more. Heels say; I want to be more. It says; you need to see me as more. It also says I don’t care if you don’t see me as more. There is a thin veiled haughtiness about high heels, something that says I don’t give a batshit. That I will take you on, yes, but only on my terms.
When a woman wakes up and climbs on high heels and takes on extra inches under her, she is simply saying she is also willing to take on anything the world throws at her. Nothing says, “I can,” on women better than high heels.
At the airport, I watched many of those airhostesses strut about importantly. And they are all different. There are those foreign ones with pale faces and sharp chins, dragging suitcases like carcasses. There are the local ones with tight smiles and tighter skirts. The slim ones and the ones whose waistlines are slowly going south. The friendly ones and the ones who regard friendliness with disdain. But no matter their shape, temperament or employer, they eventually become one because of their shoes; high heels. Heels give their jobs a certain dignity. Get them off their high heels and they will turn into waitresses. Get them off their heels and the charm goes. The pomp sublimes. Heels prop their jobs up.
Talking of props. Heels transform the blandest of women into sexy machines -and some into sex machines. It doesn’t matter if she is as waspy as a preying mantis or as large as Madagascar’s Moto Moto, heels are the only shoes that will be kind to a woman regardless of her size, status or creed. It’s hard not to notice a woman in heels but it’s even harder not to appreciate a woman in heels.
The elegance of heels aren’t lauded enough. The elevation isn’t celebrated enough. It’s the poise. For instance, hookers wear heels because in heels they find their edge. Also, the sound that heels make is a tattoo that drums in your bones. Heels also transform the way a woman walks. It gives her body movement girth and rhythm. And if she has an ass, a fairly decent ass, it pronounces it because it makes it move and shake in a way flat shoes can’t hold a candle to. And look everywhere, look in Asia or in South America and tell me if you will find an ass that shakes better on high heels. Perfect balance, that’s what having a 7kgs body part titter on a big surface area to volume ration (see how as ass movement can be explained by physics?).
Just to show you that I’m not talking through my ass, according to Harper’s Index, “the average increase in the protrusion of a woman’s buttocks when she wears high heels is 25%” See? I don’t make this stuff up. Now, take that to the bank.
Today’s post is dedicated to all the ladies of High School rocking heels today. We tip our hats to you.
[Photo credit: Flickr.)