The Dangers of High Heels

Samuel Dolbee, New York University

In the 1920s the Turkish state opened museums all over the country. These museums did not have to do with the heroic feats of Mustafa Kemal or ancient pot shards unearthed by Osman Hamdi Bey, but rather with something more prosaic: health. Containing images of the afflicted and advice for avoiding sick fates, these museums present an interesting example of post-World War I efforts to diffuse notions of public health in Turkey. But since the museums - unlike today's Istanbul Metro, apparently - could not be everywhere, the Health and Social Assistance Ministry (Sıhhat ve Muavenet Içtimai Vekaleti) deemed it necessary to publish what it called the Health Museum Atlas (Sıhhı Müze Atlası) in 1926, with the hope that the "paintings and other colorful bits made famous in our health museum" might be accessible to a broader segment of the population. (i)

The Health Museum Atlas catalogued the maladies nearly every country in the world struggled with in the 1920s, including malaria, gonorrhea, smallpox, strep throat, syphilis, plague, alcoholism, and rabies. The list also contained a disease less expected and, indeed, something that many would be hard pressed to consider a disease at all: high heels.

Sıhhı Müze Atlası, 8.

Yes, amidst images of the distended bellies of malaria patients or microscope slides of gonorrhea bacteria (above), the Health Museum Atlas medicalized female footwear. The compendium noted that this fashion trend may have been spreading quickly, "but if women knew how much damage these shoes that we endure for beauty cause, they would never use them." (66) The book proceeded to describe in anatomical details the impact of high heels. In addition to placing undue weight on the toes and causing the ankle bones to separate from one another, the wearer of high heels would shift her "chest back and stomach forward," resulting in an "unnatural" stance. Leaving aside how this posture may have seemed improper socially, the Health Museum Atlas explained the deleterious muscular and skeletal effects of this arrangement, which entailed the contraction of the thigh muscles and an upward shift of the knee bone. On account of all this unhealthiness, the Health Museum Atlas exhorted, "Ladies, don't fall for fashion."

Sıhhı Müze Atlası, 66.

Subsequent pages provided x-ray-like images (above) of the bone structures of these fallen (for fashion) women. A final image (below) also paired depictions of high-heeled women with predictable commentary. What does the Atlas say about the second from the left lady looking chic with her hat pulled over her eyes and a broad belt across her waist? "Unnatural." How about the hunched-over lady with the luxurious hand-warmer and umbrella on the far left? You already know the answer from seeing how far her stomach is pushed forward. Also "unnatural." Stop with the stilettos! In contrast, the character on the far right - wearing "heeled shoes of reasonable and appropriate height" - could walk in a positively civilized manner, approved of as both "balanced and free." 

Sıhhı Müze Atlası, 68.

It is unclear whether these warnings had any connection to Ömer Seyfettin's famous short story "High Heels," but it is clear that Turkish women received notably different messages about footwear from other sources. As Holly Shissler, among others, has shown, Turkish women's bodies became the sites of various modernization projects in the 1920s and 1930s. Their feet were not left out of these processes. Indeed, in some cases, the revolution seemed to be high heeled. Take, for example, this image (below) from the ruling Republican People's Party newspaper in Mardin, Ulus Sesi, in May of 1935. Entitled "The Revolution in Women's Clothes," the cartoon contrasted the veiled women of the past with the fashionably flapper-esque women of the Turkish present, boasting that "the Turkish revolution's biggest mark is in the change that was done in womanly life." The figure in the middle displays this modernity underneath the words "The new Turkish woman works and goes about in social clothes." Social clothes, it seems, would have fit in well at one of Gatsby's parties. They apparently consisted of some sort of coat with fur lining and, yes, high heels. No word on whether the shoes adhered to the Ministry of Health and Social Assistance's warnings about "reasonable and appropriate height."  

Sıhhı Müze Atlası, Sıhhat ve Muavenet İçtimai Vekaleti, 1926.

Ulus Sesi (Mardin), 9 May 1935, p. 3. 

foot

fêtes