High on Heels, high heels that is...

Queer theory. Academically this is anything which is perverted, deviant, or out of the norm, but according to society, it’s anything which meets the criteria of homosexual. According to this same society, my love for high heels fits this definition. I guess I should clarify, I love them individually, but I really love to see them on my girlfriend. I realize this is a very odd love to have; this further blurs the line of what is gay or straight. I am a straight male who finds a high (pun intended) fascination with high heels. I have perfected what a perfect heel is. Much of it has to do with the person wearing them, but I believe your heels should say something about the person you are, the things you like, or where you are going. Heels should be a character of the person wearing them, not an accent; they should embody something about the wearer. Let’s pause for a moment. What social construct says, I, as a man, cannot tell you, the reader, what high heels are supposed to do? What piece of being a man limits my opinion on something deemed female? Why should I not give my perspective if I have one? We live in a world which has pre-established male and female roles; this includes things which are deemed socially acceptable. Just think for a second, why would my discussing a pair of Go Jane strappy, satin twist, black, peep toe, 4.5 inch heels, which comes in 3 other colors, be an odd topic of discussion around a dinner table at a Frat house on Franklin Street?

According to Gayatri Spivak, at the point I begin a discussion in which I am exceed a normative function for my short hand binary reference frames, I am now succumbing to strategic essentialism. This is the need for me as a male to assert a belief to ‘essentialize’, or better put, bring forward, my group identity in a simplified way to achieve certain goals (Glossary of Key Terms in the Work of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak by Michael Kinburn). In this case, I would be furthering the ideology of males who have something to say about high heels. What’s interesting to me is seeing what a love for women shoes, on women, will do to a man. R&B performing artist, Ne-yo, was “caught” by paparazzi back in 2007 buying high heels for a woman in his life and when confronted about it with an ‘interview’- which really did not occur- with Essence magazine he “came out” to the world about being gay. Ne-yo’s response to this story showed us as his audience, how to engage with essentialism;

“Honestly, when I first heard that there were rumors out there about me being gay I thought, Wow someone must really hate me.

There’s nothing wrong with being gay, but I just couldn’t understand why someone would make up lies like that. I remember speaking to Jay-Z about it and he was like, ‘Look, man you haven’t made it until someone says you’re gay.”

Okay, so because I can respect a woman’s shoe game, and not to mention that I’ve bought a few pairs of shoes in the past for the women in my life, that makes me gay? That’s hilarious.”
(http://www.mediatakeout.com/2009/21245-ne-yo_to_essence_im_not_gay__i_just_love_shopping_for_womens_shoes.html)

Ne-yo’s approach to the subject was, while being deemed gay is not so much an issue, it is not the correct approach for when a male, does not fit the culturally expected, social normative. Ne-yo alludes to it being a cop-out to just write someone off as gay, just because he enjoys something which is not accepted of him to like. Ne-yo is cutting across the grass here; he is culturally choosing to engage his understanding of what he is doing, while not allowing himself to fit into a pre-determined societal checklist. I think this is what Spivak meant for Stategic Essentialist to do, to engage the hermeneutics of gender and instead of accepting something as a single function, gay or not gay, straight or not straight; to find where the blurred line exists and push the envelope; to be able to be your own individual instead of someone dictated by the beliefs of outsiders. So, in the world of men, unless you’re the artist formally known as princess, you don’t wear high heels on the regular as a straight male, but because of essentialism, I can have a love for high heels; I mean, honestly, what makes high heels an implicitly female function?

Will the Real Southerns Please, just talk?

Some years ago, I went to a law program at Yale University to take two classes in Constitutional Law. Upon arrival, we played several getting to know you, ice breaking type, games; one of which was “Where are you from, based on your accent?”. This game was exciting and filled with very interesting processes of elimination to get to where people we from; everything from accent to syntax and word choice was taken into account to get people out (once someone told you where you were from, you could only guess, but not be asked). I was the last person left. I had people guessing all 50 states, even though you were only allowed to guess two. I had people asking me how I said certain words, but my accent was so flat, so indistinct, it took someone to ask me about my grades and for me to say “I make good grades” before it was found out, I’m southern. I was instantly told; everything about me screamed it was a lie. I was born at Moses H. Cone hospital, in Greensboro, North Carolina at 1:11pm on December 27th, 1988, was my response to being told I was lying. But I cam to the realization that I’m not lying but, I did have some internal questions I needed to look at to better answer the question I was asking myself “Why can’t people know I’m from the South? “ Instead of this question let’s try, complicating the issue further and taking about “Why I feel I need to cover up my Southern heritage?” The saying goes. “I’m American by birth and Southern by the Grace of God.” But in my personal experience, society’s negative response to the South has made it the last thing you want to represent.

Let’s look at some of societies positive thoughts on the south; The food is really good, everyone is extremely polite- better known as southern hospitality, a southern belle or a southern gentleman, is the way to go for a significant other, the weather is great and college football, lives here. Aside from these things, which many of them, themselves are highly questionable and enter the realm of objectification and it’s moral constructs with gender roles of southern men and woman and understanding southern culture, aside from all these things though, the for the most part has a very negative connotation with it. These are the things I for which I did not want to be associated; southern are slow, because they are so nice you can take advantage of them and they are pushovers, and also for the personal affect, my parents are both from up north and on a trip to visit my mom’s family in Connecticut, I was made fun of for my use of the world “draw-L-ing” instead of “drawing”. This moment in my life has stayed with me and slightly tainted my conversations with people since, but it still is another reason I do not embrace my “southern jargon”. It is hard enough to be a non- stereotypical black guy, in my mind, I could not even start to try to beat the odds if I was automatically written off, thus I discarded my southern robe, only dawning it when I need to seek refuge among like minded people- more southern.

Thus my continual forgery of identity; forgive me, but I'm gonna borrow this grouping again...