High Heel, Summer Brennan
High Heel, Summer Brennan
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High Heel

Author: Summer Brennan

Narrator: Allyson Ryan

Unabridged: 4 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 07/30/2019


Synopsis

Fetishized, demonized, celebrated, and outlawed, the high heel is central to the iconography of modern womanhood. But are high heels good? Are they feminist? What does it mean for a woman (or, for that matter, a man) to choose to wear them?

Meditating on the labyrinthine nature of sexual identity and the performance of gender, High Heel moves from film to fairytale, from foot binding to feminism, and from the golden ratio to glam rock. Summer Brennan considers this most provocative of fashion accessories as a nexus of desire and struggle, sex and society, violence and self expression, setting out to understand what it means to be a woman by walking a few hundred years in her shoes.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things, published in partnership with an essay series in the Atlantic.

About Summer Brennan

Summer Brennan is a journalist and author. She received the 2016 Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award and was a visiting scholar at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. Her first book, The Oyster War: The True Story of a Small Farm, Big Politics, and the Future of Wilderness in America, was a finalist for the 2016 Orion Book Award. A longtime consultant for the United Nations, her writing has appeared in New York Magazine, Scientific American, McSweeney's, the San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn and New Mexico.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Summer

I absolutely love this book, but I might be biased—I wrote it ;)......more

Goodreads review by Lena

I bought this book because I now make shoes designed for healthy, natural movement, which high heels are decidedly not. Despite knowing the significant negative effects these shoes have on not just the feet but also the ankles, knees, hips and back, I still found myself unable to shake the idea that......more

Goodreads review by Mandy

This is definitely one of the more interesting and thought-provoking volumes from the wonderful Object Lessons series. It’s a thoughtful and wide-ranging exploration of high heels – how and why they were first thought of to why women (in particular) still wear them, however uncomfortable, nay even d......more

Goodreads review by SueKich

Killer heels and Plathitudes. My first entry into Bloomsbury Academic’s collection of monographs…and likely my last (sorry Bloomsbury!) The Object Lessons series consists of short little books, about 25,000 words, about specific objects ranging from the everyday to the unexpected. (Eye charts, anyone......more