By: Dr. Tamara Besednjak Valič
Last month, I also wrote about fairy tales and their task of bringing children and adults closer to life lessons and the workings of society. It is a kind of collection of good practices that generations pass on, and which served to enable the younger generation to enter life equipped with the knowledge and insights of past generations.
Since there is a lot of talk in the media these days about women’s shoes, specifically red pumps with outrageously high heels, it is worth asking why red women’s pumps excite us so much. Is it possible that we can turn to the fairy-tale world for advice? What do fairy tales teach us about women or their role as women in society? We learn about women from fairy tales that they were the ones who did the dirty work (like Gretel in my previous column, who persistently pushes the witch into the furnace, Cinderella, who slaves at home), they could be the victims of cruel men (the story of Bluebeard). A woman is also an old woman who lives in a dark forest and destroys (with Hansel and Gretel), and at the same time a woman is a lonely old woman who saves girls from the fate of their own father (the story of the Goose Shepherdess). The brilliant work Women who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés is available in Slovene on the role of women in various social mythologies and fairy tales.
From fairy tales let’s go for a moment to shoes. Shoes are an important symbol, but not only fairy-tale (The Red Shoes, Cinderella), but also the proverbial: “Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes”. In both fairy tales mentioned above – The Red Shoes and Cinderella, we can see the exposed role of a woman who takes revenge on incorrectly chosen shoes. Cinderella’s half-sisters remain mutilated, one without toes and one without a heel due to their desire for the position provided by the shoe. The hero of the fairy tale The Red Shoes, even worse, is left without both legs. A rather cruel story says that the hero Karen, despite the different advice of the caretaker, chose shiny red shoes for her new shoes. She intervened outside the established norm and followed her heart, choosing shoes that pulled her in and forced her to dance a dance she was not prepared for. In the middle of a wild dance, when she cannot tame her legs, she must use the cruellest way to stop the dance – she has to cut off both legs. Only then can she embark on the long journey to final salvation.
What can this story tell a girl sitting in her grandmother’s lap and listening to such a story? In the above ignorant book, the author substantiates a woman’s desire to pursue the passionate life that led to such a choice and from which a woman was robbed. Of course, we must be aware that the role of women in society is adapted to the thousands of years of development of social order, and women as such cannot just give up. The same applies to men. And if behind a successful man stands a woman who supports him, then the whole village stands behind a successful woman. However, it is easier when it comes to long-term and systematically built success in life – a success that is symbolically determined at every point in life by properly chosen shoes. Shoes can thus be chosen as a symbol of life’s decision. Jump into overly shiny shoes – what the hero does paralyses her for almost a lifetime, and it takes a lot of effort to get back on a life path that at least makes sense.
So, what do Slovenians of the 21st century imagine as shoes suitable for a woman who occupies one of the strongest positions in the country probably has nothing to do with fairy tales, but we can symbolically think about the competencies of people running for ministerial positions. Some biographies are endlessly miserable, and it is more than obvious that some are wearing overly shiny dance shoes. The dance will begin, the energy crisis is predicted, the rise in consumer prices is predicted, the war is on the threshold of the EU and the question is how our dancers will be able to react in this context.