throbbing light machine

As little girls growing up in America, we dream of being Cinderella at the ball. We consume the story again and again, both in its original form and in the high-school retellings thrown at us from the television screen and the cinema. This story resonates with young girls, moreso than any other if the frequency of retellings and adaptations is any mark. Something about it speaks to us, and we can’t ignore it. But it is a good story, we ask? Are we learning the right things? And we talk about female agency, about sex, about virginity, about being a housewife, about wicked stepmothers.

But the center of the Cinderella story—the element that brings the little girls running—is not the household conflict. It’s not even the rags-to-riches plotline wherein the heroine escapes drudgery. It’s the make-over, the balls, and the moment when the shoe slips onto the beautiful heroine’s foot and the prince declares his love for her. It’s the love story. And the catalyst for that story, the object on which the plot hinges, is the infamous glass slipper.

Of course, it isn’t always made of glass. That material is unique to Perrault, as are several other elements of the story. While some have tried to solve the mystery of Cinderella’s shoes by examining their material, this varies so greatly from retelling to retelling that it profits little to analyze it. Whether glass or silk or fur, always her shoes are beautiful and valuable, finely crafted of expensive stuff. Yeh-Hsien’s shoes would have been tiny, in keeping with the bound and broken feet that were so heavily fetishized in Chinese society. Basile’s Zezolla loses a high-heeled patten that would have been used to protect her delicate cloth shoes. Aschenputtel wears a finely embroidered slipper. Perrault’s glass slipper would most likely have a high heel. The shoes of these heroines would all certainly emphazise fashion over form; these are not walking shoes, nor running shoes, nor shoes for the forest or the street, but rather shoes that exist solely for the purpose of displaying delicacy.

Women’s fashionable shoes have not changed so much since the Brothers Grimm, and research has shown that our modern stilettos and pumps cause many of the same orthopedic problems that were common among the bound women of archaic China. Women still commonly wear shoes that do not allow them to move freely, and often they do so in an attempt to render themselves more attractive to the opposite sex. High-heeled shoes position women’s bodies in sexualized positions and enforce a passivity that patriarchy finds applaudable.

It would be easy to denounce these stories as misogynistic, to rant against the shoes as patriarchal instruments of oppression, representatives of the beauty mythology that has enslaved so much of women’s selves. And yet, several of the Cinderellas are active, clever women. Yeh-Hsien is praised as much for her intellect and artistry with the potter’s wheel as for her beauty, and Aschenputtel saves herself sans fairy godmother, only getting a sort of start-up loan in the form of good clothing from the spirit of her dead mother. The heroine chooses to go to the three balls, and leaves when she feels like it’s the right thing to do. In many versions, Cinderella doesn’t marry the prince until he’s seen her in her rags and ashes—he’s got to take her for more than her pretty dresses. These are not the helpless figures we know from modern retellings. This difference is picked up on by some feminists, who claim these tales for themselves and the movement. They see more in the stories than patriarchy and oppression. Where, then, are we left with Cinderella’s shoes?

Self-decoration is a natural human impulse and not a gendered one. However, it has become a part of women’s performative gender within western civilization, and so, while not by necessity an oppressive practice, feminists have learned to beware of the beauty myth. But it’s imperative to separate this from valid female sexuality and the impulse of all sexual creatures to beautify. Feet have a great deal of sexual subtext in our society, shoes even moreso. High heels tilt a woman’s hindquarters as much as 25% higher than is natural, placing them in a constantly sexual position. As many present-day women know, they emphasize hourglass curves and lengthen the legs. Modern feminists have attempted to reclaim the high heel, stating that while the constant restriction of women’s ability to move—regardless of their opinion of the matter—is horrific and oppressive, high heels can be used as sexual drag by an empowered woman. That is, a woman can choose to dress herself in a sexualized, stylized fashion in order to express her own desires and satisfy her own libido. Sexual garb can be used as much for a woman’s pleasure as for a man’s if she is free and self-aware.
The sexual currency of the foot goes well-beyond the fetishistic crowd. Throughout western, and, indeed, eastern culture, feet are used euphemistically to refer to the female genitalia. Freud suggests that this is caused by the journey of eyes peering up a woman’s dress, feet to legs to vagina, and we can see traces of this is the Victorian paranoia over hiding feet and legs. The devil’s feet are inhuman, cloven or webbed, and so to are the feet of those that are painted as his followers—sorceresses, sirens, sibyls, and women of ill repute. The deformed feet of fallen or wicked women refer symbolically to their animalistically unrestrained genitals, marking them as perverted and unnatural. Warner notes that "feet are ascribed telltale marks of identity and origin, perhaps…since they are the lowest part of the body and in touch with the earth as opposed to the heavens." And Bruno Bettelheim chimes in, “the pretty, tiny foot exercizes and unconscious sexual appeal, but in conjuction with a beautiful, precious slipper into which the foot fits snugly."

If feet, then, are sexual, Cinderella’s story becomes more clearly one of sexual and romantic awakening. Cinderella doesn’t consciously drop her slipper as she runs from the ball, but it doesn’t seem too much of a stretch to suppose that, due to its repetition, the slipper needs, for the sake of story, to be dropped. She’s at the cusp of womanhood and mature female sexuality, but she’s unsure about tumbling down on one side of the fence. Part of her wants to remain a child, safe in her family home. No matter how degraded she is there, at least it is familiar. But growing up is not something that we can avoid, and most in time find that they don’t really wish to do so. At the end of the story Cinderella places the shoe on her foot with her own hands (Perrault is a notable exception to this—in his version it is a footman who tries the shoe on the young maidens). At that moment her uncertainty is resolved, and she embraces her maturity.

In fairy tales that revolve around finding love and marriage, love and the heroine’s worthiness to be loved are physicalized to a very high degree—falling in love at first sight, the beautiful good daughter in opposition to the ugly bad girl. Taken literally, this presents a very strange picture, where ugliness is a crime in and of itself and where it is possible to fall in love with a pretty face. Sense returns if this is read as an externalization of character and emotion—beauty represents virtue, and when the prince falls in love after one glance it is because the heroine’s beauty, far from mere attractiveness, actually indicative of her personality. In the same way, the smallness of Cinderella’s foot can be seen as an externalization of her positive sexuality. “Tightness” is a thing that men value highly in heterosexual sex, and is seen as being connected to the sexual experience and promiscuity of the woman. Cinderella is proclaimed sexually virtuous by her small shoe size. It denotes her virginity and her acceptable sexuality. When she puts on the shoe she is assuming the role of a sexual woman who is not unbridled in her desires—a woman who is not controlled by her sexuality. Cinderella, even in becoming a sexual woman, still has to deal with the patriarchy. She is in charge of her own body to a certain extent, in that it is she who puts on the shoe, but she is still constrained by her society’s sexual mores.
The Cinderella story, like many “female” fairy tales, tells stories about strong women growing up and coming of age within a patriarchal system. No, the heroines are not completely liberated feminists. They can’t be. They have to find a way to negotiate with an oppressive society for their own happiness. Cinderella changes her own life, doesn’t need a footman or a prince to accept her own sexuality, and, in many versions, makes sure that the prince sees her in filth and rags before he marries her. But she is also valued for a pretty face and a small foot. She can’t win for losing.

This is part of the reason why fairy tales speak so clearly to modern girls. They still have the same troubles, the same needs. They, too, are trying to grow up within a patriarchy. Feminists still struggle on the knife’s edge between oppressive and unattainable beauty norms and healthy female sexuality. Girls still have to find the balance between the normal desire to be found beautiful and the tragedy of destroying themselves to become so. They have to deal with the discomfort of being wanted and loved only for their looks or the insecurities that go hand in hand with being outside of traditional beauty standards. They want to dance at the ball and be beautiful and still have the prince love them for themselves. Inevitably, they will have to compromise, because they can’t yet have it all. Cinderella’s shoes are pretty and dainty and unique, but she is the one who decides to wear them. Is the story sexist? Yes and no. It certainly takes place in a patriarchal world, but within those confines it tells of young girls striking out on their own, finding a way to claim love and sex for themselves while not losing all agency.