Column: I remember my first

by @jabberingjourno May 28, 2015

I remember my first in every detail.

I was aged around 20 and it was shiny, nude and size-wise about a centimetre.

It was a surprisingly advanced age to lose my high heel virginity.

These days even my four year-old niece has a pair, albeit it plastic and sparkly.

But I was working overseas when I finally eased myself out of my selection of black, cherry-red and steel toe-capped Doc Martens boots and shoes ( the latter set off the security gate at the airport).

It also co incided with my waning desire to wear eight strings of coloured beads and crochet tops in the manner of a Glastonbury refugee and saw the final, sad retirement of my Madchester-era red Levi flares with 22 inch bottoms.

It was part of my transformation into a semi-grown up, a changing phase, an experiment that I am still undertaking some considerable time later.

But being a rookie in heels and not graced with well, grace, it took me quite some time to graduate to a full heel and even now poise and elegance are not my friends, particularly in stile toes.

But I love them nonetheless.

How can a woman not like being taller and looking thinner even if you would have less blisters traversing Everest?

No, they are not logical, sensible or comfortable they are just female – something some men might not understand on one level but appreciate on another.

They represent style and they represent choice which is why the apparent ‘heel ban’ at the Cannes Film Festival in the last week cause such a furore. Banning women for wearing flats is like banning women from wearing skirts over the knee.

You can’t do that.

Never mind the obvious issue that some women cannot walk in heels and others do not want to, the sexism of this dress code is blatant. Men didn’t have to to wear a fashionable form of stilts to be let in.

It has been argued, of course, the dress code was no worse than banning men in trainers from clubs or stag parties. But that at least has a practical application.

If the shoe fits, let us wear it – practical or not.