Worshiping The Shoe He Walks In
As you might imagine, well-meaning readers send me a lot of “funnies” for possible blogging, which I always appreciate even as I (sometimes) marvel. It is, after all, the case that there are places ErosBlog generally doesn’t go. For instance, my distaste for what I’ve called “old-school bitch-slut-whore porn marketing” makes me reticent about using words like “bitch” and “slut” and “cunt” as labels for people; it’s widely done, and can be quite funny in an appropriate context, but it’s not my style and you won’t usually catch me doing it. (That’s code for “Check all 2340 ErosBlog posts since 2003. I dare ya. You might find one or two examples, because 2003 was a long time ago and a lot of water has run under the bridge since then. But I wouldn’t bet on it.”)
So the other day, when a reader sent me a well-meaning “funny” picture starring (if I recall properly, I didn’t look at it very closely) a woman on her knees wearing a leash or some such, with a caption making some version of a “Life’s a bitch” joke, it didn’t really get my full attention. “Somebody hasn’t been reading ErosBlog for very long”, I thought, as I sorted the email into an appropriate folder (you can guess which one). It’s not that don’t appreciate the helpful sentiment, but…is my “editorial voice” really that obscure?
This lengthy preface is really more than the post payload can support, so I suppose I ought to get down to business. I was reminded of all this when I encountered the following vintage shoe advertisement:
A woman, tastefully naked, on the floor, with an adoring look on her face, under the caption “Keep her where she belongs”, is not materially dissimilar in sentiment from the “funny” that I plonked the other day. But this bit of unreconstructed sexism I find amusing enough to share, unlike the other one. What’s difference?
I don’t actually have a good answer. I can list off a number of things, but they all boil down to matters of taste and style:
1) This version eschews crude labels and language;
2) This version has interest as a vintage period piece, as a mirror onto another time;
3) In this version, the woman is smiling (I’m a sucker for a nice smile);
4) The bizarre presence of the advertised shoe creates absurdist humour;
5) She’s really pretty.
Fairly shallow reasons all, and yet, enough to tip the balance between “inflict it on my readers” and “sort it gently into the trash”.
Similar Sex Blogging:
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=3276
Not to deconstruct the difference between the images too far, but there’s also a lot of nuance available in the word “kept”. Carefully managed, “kept woman” is a career. Yeah, one that exemplifies all sorts of potential power imbalances that we think of as old-fashioned and sexist, but not necessarily one in which the woman involved comes out on the bottom.
Uh. Sorry. Probably should have chosen a better metaphor there…
Unlike most “bitch whore slut” porn where the women look bored or disgusted, this seems less offensive because the woman looks perfectly content to be “put in her place.”
Lurking said what I was gonna say. The smile makes it so much better… so many of us enjoy being “kept in our place.”
There’s a Donald Southerland movie where his wife, Julie Christie I believe, smells the sheets while changing the bed linens the morning after a night of great sex. I think this is supposed to convey that idea but the ad man has to insert his clients’ product. Were it a pipe or possibly a shirt it would have been more evocative (I think) and raised fewer eyebrows, even today.
I find this picture particularly interesting because the discotacular footwear comes across as feminine today. At first, I thought the lady was admiring her own shoe.
I hate to admit it, but I once had a pair of shoes that were almost exactly like those… but in grey and black… same [ugghhh] buckle though…[thank god the 70’s are behind us]……..but more seriously, I immediately thought the “keep her where she belongs” title referred to the idea of keeping her under your foot or in the closet….I believe the ad came out at about the time that the Women’s Movement was starting and there was a lot of negativity by men towards women exercising their rights….. So to me that cute smile is either one of submission on her part or a sly sign of resistance… hopefully the later… but I’m just saying…
man, that shoe is the fug, which is why this ad is so awesome! “Really? THAT shoe is the one that keeps her …”
Maybe it’s because I wasn’t even alive in the seventies and have no historical sense of fashion, but I totally thought it was a woman’s shoe, which lead me to believe that she was being bribed to stay ‘in her place’ with shoes she deeply wanted. A bribe does not seem nearly as off-putting as undesired force as a means for keeping her in her place, so I assumed that was part of the reason it made it past Bacchus’ censors. Anyone else share my impression?