There's No Business Like Shoe Business

I might have - in the past - bitched about the young kid’s shoes, and how they weren't flattering.

Just say no to small shoes. I have reasons, but I'll take an elliptical route.

I remember reading an interview with the artist who illustrated Judge Dredd in the 80s, where he was asked why the character’s feet were drawn as large as they were. His answer was that characters with slightly exaggerated extremities, always looked more powerful. You always took them more seriously. With Dredd’s large feet, he was grounded, solid and athletic. He represented the ultimate, infallible power, and as an artist you went about illustrating that with these visual cues.

There are reasons why Michelangelo’s David is distended in various ways, and it’s not just because it is designed to be viewed from below. His hands and feet are huge compared to the rest of his frame. Those things, are the doing things.

(Not a perfect example. David does present a paradox to anyone who subscribes to the ‘Big hands = big dick’ piece of wisdom that girls used to delight teasing boys with on the school bus. That’s for another time. This tiny keyboard tortures my enormous hands and long fingers.)

Put another way. If you want something to look thick in the middle, make sure the things at either end are thin. Want to make a fat person look fatter? Give them a neat haircut and small shoes. Even worse, cinch the hems on their pants.

At the risk of ignoring post-modernist ideals about the importance of context, there are ways to look good - no matter what fashion dictates. One of them is to make sure you look less like stomach, and more like limbs (‘doing’ things) and breeding bits (being ‘done’ things).

The obvious post-punk rejoinder to this is, “We don’t wanna look powerful and attractive.”