Shoo! Shoes: Why Ugly Shoes Repel the Male Gaze

Words: Elida Silvey

Depop is teeming with Vibram FiveFingers. This curious shoe - with its distinctive five toes and foot-like silhoutte - was initially popularised within fitness circles after Christopher McDougall’s best selling novel Born to Run (2009) turned people towards the Tarahumara tribe’s barefoot running. Since then, we’ve begun to see these ‘toe shoes’ paired with balloon pants, silk skirts, and even deconstructed gowns - as arranged by stylist Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen in the lookbook for a Life of a Housefly.

While the mainstream is focused on the resurgence of Manolo Blahnik, the classic IT-girl shoe iconically depicted on Carrie Bradshaw’s feet over the course of Sex and The City’s history, today’s fashion girls seem concerned with finding something grittier. Manolo Blahnik’s latest collection, full of frilly femininity and rococo decadence - directly inspired by the costume design they did for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antonette (2006) currently on display at the V&A Museum - seems to fall flat in fashion’s current view of femininity. As #TradWife trends towards the male gaze, so too, does its oppositional counterpart trend away from it. Looking back through fashion history, statement shoes have become another way to man-repel, whether through unusual silhouettes, textures, or a direct comparison to their real-world references (think, fish slippers!).

In 1954, Dior’s shoe designer Roger Vivier revolutionised female footwear with the invention of the stiletto heel, which incorporated a metal rod that allowed for a thinner and higher silhouette than the pumps that came before it. This newfound shoe elongated the leg and accentuated the curvature of the buttocks, which made them more desirable to the wandering eyes of men recently returned from war. Its effectiveness in the art of seduction caused this silhouette to become embedded into the public consciousness as the desirable shoe for fashionable women. This new innovation in shoes coincided with the dismantling of the female workforce, who ‘had recently been shuffled back to the kitchen.’ Women who had previously been empowered to use their bodies by Rosie the Riveter posters throughout the war, were being coaxed back into submissiveness once their labour was no longer necessary through an impractical, albeit beautiful, pair of shoes.  
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The sexualisation of the heel, and by extension the female foot, existed prior to this moment. One example of this is the iconic 18th-century painting The Swing by Jean Honoré Fragonard, it depicts a woman swinging outdoors, witnessed by her lover who is sat below her with a suggestive view, her heeled shoe is caught mid-air as the result of the back and forth movement. An action that is ‘suggestive of intercourse… reinforced by the fact that the woman’s pink mule has just slid off her foot.’ It is in this exposure of her foot, through the sliding motion of a beautiful shoe, that the viewer can sense ‘the sexual abandon that will soon take place between the painting’s two main protagonists.’ Or in the late 19th-century with the rise of fetish boots, which have been preserved by collector Nazim Mustafayev, whose extensive shoe collection includes a pair of star-spangled boots from the 1890s shown on display in an exhibition in Moscow (late 2023).

“It is precisely because we have been trained to consider a specific kind of feminine beauty that I can appreciate when it is subverted through a hideous accent or accessory.”

Today, the comment sections of women’s posts across the internet, like the one seen on @tacci.cardia account, suggest a general understanding of the fetishes associated with women’s feet. And in 2020, when Brad Pitt brought attention to Quentin Tarantino's foot fetish publicly while accepting a Screen Actors Guild Award, the connection between women’s feet and sexual desire (for some) became undeniable. 

In contrast, the ‘ugly shoe wearer', or GSW, takes on a different kind of internalised desire, one that is aware of the dominant reality for women, but actively refuses to be reduced to the fixed, functional image it portrays. One of the most iconic shoes that is representative of this ideology is Martin Margiela’s Tabis; whose runway debut in SS89 featured models drenched in red paint walking over a roll of cloth that, literally and metaphorically, stamped their iconic footprint into fashion’s consciousness. Since then, we’ve seen a range of ugly shoes enter the fold, with recent additions—such as MSCHF cartoonish Big Red Boots from SS24 or subversive design duo Fecal Matter’s (@matieresfecales) 2018 Skin Boots—becoming viral sensations. 

The ugly shoe comes in many forms; whether its the surrealistic iterations of JW Anderson’s AW23 Wellipets, with their distinctive frog faces, or the slapstick shape of Charles Jeffrey Loverboy’s Banana Boots; the sculptural silhouettes of Thom Browne’s SS20 Dolphin Shoes, or Alexander McQueen’s iconic SS10 Armadillo shoes, famously worn by Lady Gaga in her ‘Bad Romance’ video; or those that teether towards more mainstream appeal, such as Balenciaga’s SS26 Monday Lace Pumps, their SS21 Heeled Crocs or even their collaboration with Vibram themselves. 

In recent years, GSWs include not only the fashion elite, the likes of Michèle Lamy, but also the fashion-curious. Fashion model Paloma Elsesser (@palomija), and influencers, such as @_olhirst_ or @by.regina, are gravitating towards Vibram’s ‘toe shoes.’ While less adventurous GSWs can be seen wearing Tabi-style leather shoes across London - marketed on Instagram for those who can’t afford Marigela’s price-point with brands such as Woodstock Sato, or for those more interested in their Japanese roots, with traditional Jikatabis sold by Tokyo House London. The surge of Croc wearers, complete with charms during Covid, or the lineage of women wearing Birkenstocks to run errands on a weeknight suggests an account of GSW’s mutiny against the male gaze. Vibram’s FiveFingers are just the newest iteration in this saga. 

I wouldn’t go as far as to call these ‘toe shoes’ beautiful, but I am obsessed. I don’t like them but I like that I don’t. It is precisely because we have been trained to consider a specific kind of feminine beauty that I can appreciate when it is subverted through a hideous accent or accessory. When the feminine is underscored with a touch of ugliness, especially when paired with pieces that point to the wearer’s understanding of societies’ rules of femininity, this active evasion of beauty feels reactive and exciting. The GSW experiments with perceptions. She takes the wayward glances at face value, and instead of being put off by them, is confident enough to see them as a marker of her success. 

The ugliness of these shoes is confronting in a way that feels unique, and for those who notice it, it is like being clued-in on an inside joke, or sharing a secret. This ugliness has been hand picked. We become the embodiment of the choice to stand out, to leave all expectations at the door, to become a ‘dangerous nomad’ in the landscape of femininity. We enact, through our choice of footwear, something entirely unexpected: a silent protest.