Katie Roiphe, writing at Slate has a *headdesk* article about her need to buy prohibitively expensive, stupidly impractical shoes, in which she waxes poetic about how these shoes will somehow transform her into a magical fairytime sexy princess.
Let’s keep in mind that Katie is a Proud Single Mother ™ who cares about her children so very much she has denied them the most important gift she could possibly bestow on them – a Daddy! Katie is the sole financial provider for her “family” and yet here she is, contemplating throwing money away on something so fucking useless, it almost defies comprehension. “Why”, she asks, “do women buy these shoes”, as she goes ahead and buys those shoes.
Why indeed. Here’s why: despite embracing the cultural narrative that men are useless and irrelevant and that children are little bits of personal property that can be had by any woman with a bag of cash and a turkey baster, Katie still longs for a man. Biology. Always. Wins. Katie still wants to feel sexy and special and take a starring role in a life that has a man and his desire (for her) at the center of it. Well, good luck with that sweetheart. Buying those shoes has probably accomplished just the opposite.
What man wants a woman who has two children out of wedlock, who thinks so little of the importance of a father that she deliberately and consciously eradicated a male presence from her home and her children’s lives, who earns money and spends it not on taking care of the children she decided to have or setting it aside for a rainy day, but spends it on herself in a futile effort to feel sexy and young and appealing? Those shoes don’t say “desirable” or “radiant” or “exquisite”.
The say “Bag Of Fucking Crazy!”
The logic behind stupid shoes is that they elongate your legs, make your butt look higher and firmer, straighten your silhouette so you look slimmer and trimmer and thrust your chest forward so it looks more ample than it actually is. The teetering vulnerability of a woman in 5 inch stilettos is supposed to appeal to men’s innate desire to protect and cherish.
Aaaaaaand most men don’t notice shoes at all.
Seriously, they don’t give a shit about your shoes, and if they do notice, they’re probably not thinking “wow, it’s so sexy that you are basically crippled and helpless”. A sane man wants a woman with her feet firmly on the ground. The sort of woman who can stride alongside him and face whatever curveballs life throws without needing to stop because her feet are killing her and she’s getting a massive cramp in her calf.
Here’s what guys DO notice:
Your hair – if you really want to catch a man’s attention, grow your hair and keep it kempt.
Your smile – make it genuine. Remember ladies, you can’t fake natural beauty.
Your friends – women without friends are deeply suspicious.
Your voice – Deep and manly? Save that for men. A feminine voice will always win. So no screechy shit!
Your hip to waist ratio – High heeled shoes won’t make you look slim, ladies. Losing weight will make you look slim.
Your glow – Radiance does not come from patent leather shoes, Katie. It comes from a cheerful, loving heart and a sense of wonder and fun. Having a good nature is having true beauty
What’s fake– Skip the false eyelashes, hair extensions, fake nails and overly made-up face. You aren’t fooling anyone, and certainly not the man sitting across from you.
Your eyes – They are the window to your soul. Accentuating them with a touch of makeup is fine, drowning them in buckets of glitter and cream eyeshadow is not.
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/dating-advice/what-guys-notice
See? No shoes.
What Katie is trying to buy when she buys $1500 shoes is love. And not just any love: a man’s love. She is trying to buy admiration, desire, lust, longing, sensuousness and ultimately, acceptance. Everything about being a woman and looking like a woman is about competing for men and their attention. Women don’t wear lipstick for their own personal pleasure. They wear it to signal to other women “I’m in the game, bitch” and to signal to men “pick me!”. And you know what? That’s fun! And exhilarating and confidence building and aesthetically pleasing and life-enhancing. Beauty is a wonderful thing.
But when the rest of your life is such a fucking mess, Katie, and you have two children that basically SCREAM your contempt for men and masculinity and fatherhood, all the shoes in the entire world are not going to help you. You have consigned YOURSELF to the heap of bitter singleness, probably forever.
You made your bed, lady. Never mind shoes. You are on your own, so take that money and tuck it in a GIC somewhere. Someday, you’re gonna need it. And for the love of god, wear some practical shoes. At least one part of your life should make some sense.
Lots of love,
JB
judgybitch 
That’s a pretty good list of things that a woman should focus on. Its quite similar to the list I made a few days ago. Although my list of things a woman should do to be attractive is shorter at only 3 or 6 things depending on if you want a relationship to last.
http://spootville.blogspot.com/2012/12/girls-my-complaints.html
Two other thoughts:
High heeled shoes also make your feet look small, which is very good.
We do notice shoes if they are really awful; don’t wear Uggs or flip-flops.
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Hello JB,
Found your sight about two months ago and have been reading faithfully and passing along your post to my 20year old daughter. I need some advice. Twice, once in this post and again in “How to pick a wife. Advice to younger men,” you made mention that “a women without friends is deeply suspicious.” I understand what you are saying about young women who are seeking attention from men and their reasons for it, but I have a daughter who doesn’t have many friends and not for the reasons you stated. We are a very small close-knit family, but my daughter doesn’t suffer fools well and hasn’t as you have said found a group of like-minded-ladies while at college. Add on top of that she is somewhat introverted and shy and has residual fear of letting people get close because she was bullied in middle school.
My question is where on a university campus can young Red Pill Woman find like minded ladies?
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It’s too bad your daughter doesn’t suffer fools gladly, because lord, there are a lot of them. I feel like I’ve misrepresented myself a bit, now. I have a lot of women I know and can easily hang out with, but as for true, dear friends, I have only a few. And a girl who is shy without a lot of friends, well, that’s kind of self-explanatory: she’s shy!
So I’m saying it’s okay that your daughter doesn’t roll with a huge crew. I speak more of loud, abrasive girls who still don’t have any women friends. The kind that only like “men” because women are so catty/bitchy/negative etc. They are just straight up attention whores, and that’s not a good thing.
As for where to find red-pill women on a college campus, well, good luck. I honestly don’t know. I met my very best friend in this world at college, but we bonded because we were both kinda trashy, lower-class girls from rough backgrounds at a very posh university (scholarships!), so we found each other and never looked back.
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Depends on the sex drive of the guy. After experiencing both heel and non heel wearing women, I wouldn’t even consider a relationship when she doesn’t rock stilettos, at least occasionally. When I see a woman in a tight dress with stilettos, it brings an incredibly visceral feeling where I just want to try to break her in half from behind.
A lot of guys aren’t like me, so you get what you advertise for.
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Certainly some men really enjoy the sight of high heels on women. Nothin wrong with that. However, it is completely irrational to spend $1500 on a pair unless you are a millionaire. Sure, I can see and feel the difference between a $10 pair of shoes and a $75 pair. At some point north of $100, the law of diminishing returns kicks in. It becomes all about label obsession and women trying to one-up each other. I would bet that the percentage of men not employed by the fashion industry who are able to tell the difference between a similar style of Nine West heels vs. a pair of Jimmy Choo heels is close to zero. The way women fetishize brands is just sad. Even more pathetic is the fact that they often spend money they don’t even have, ruining their credit in the process.
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Of course women buy shoes to get a man, but not directly, since as you point out men do not notice the actual shoes. They want other women to notice them and melt away in dismay at her Higher Value and not try and compete. In other words, women dress for other women, but only as a means to an end.
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It’s too bad that it’s Katie Roiphe who’s writing this crap. If she’d been more honest with herself, and with her readers, it could have been interesting. Her article a week later is about older women and biological clocks, which she ends with:
“we could perhaps benefit, à la Shulevitz, from a slightly more honest reckoning with the biological truths and how we found ourselves in thrall with late parenthood. And in the informal feminist education of future generations, we may need a little more of Margaret Fuller’s “I accept the universe” and a little less bourgeois having-it-all talk.”
Roiphe was also the one who dared (in 1995) to suggest that a woman who got drunk and ended up regretting who she ended up in bed with ought to blame herself, for making the choice to get drunk. But she retreated from being sensible in the face of the firestorm _that_ brought on, and has become a much more midex bag, intellectually.
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Agree. Roiphe is hit and miss. But her overall contempt for men shines through in that particular post.
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Notice how many of these features center on the head and face. Of course, men are going to check out your body. I don’t feel the need to comment on that any further. However, I don’t believe the importance of facial attraction can be be overstated. Recognition of facial features is one of the first things babies can do. We are hard-wired to recognize faces, and facial characteristics makes up a large factor of attractiveness.
Shoes are as far away from the face as you can get.
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Women buy fancy shoes – and designer handbags for that matter – to impress their peers / competitors among the fair sex.
It also is nice that they aren’t reminded how fat they are when they try on the shoes.
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i know this is a little late, but i disagree with you about the glitter part. at some level all guys are attracted to shiny objects, which would be why women dump a bucket of glitter on their tits. so in light of that, it seems the best way to get a guy look where you want him too is to put glitter on it. or add a neon bright rainbow to said area, that’ll draw some looks. (speaking as a guy who has a ton a rocks cause i like shiny shit)
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Oh, all right. I’m a sucker for glitter. Word to the wise: check your husband’s schedule the next day before you glitter up because that shit is hell to get off and meeting clients covered in glitter doesn’t always go over that well.
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On a more healthy note, I have to say that the super high heels are horrible for a woman’s feet. Ever since I got into natural style running I have gotten rid of the constrictive overly padded running shoes and switched to light, roomy racing flats with absolutely no rise in the heel, and try to wear the least restrictive shoes I can find. I remember once seeing a woman do a presentation and she wore these open toe high heel shoes. She had been wearing tight heels for so long that it deformed her big toe, causing it to curl inwards, over her other toes. I still shudder when I think of it…
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How did I miss this thread? Expensive, impractical shoes won’t buy anyone love….but I LOVE expensive “impractical” shoes!
I spent years in practical (birth-control nursing) shoes that I had to leave in the garage and put in the autoclave from time to time. Really nice “impractical” high heels make me look and feel like a real woman (a woman at least 3 1/2 inches taller). My husband asks for them too from time to time. It’s like getting a “piece of strange” after all these years I suppose. 🙂
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Sounds like fun, Liz. And you don’t sound like the sort of woman who would accept an invitation to go for a walk around the lake and show up in stilettos.
Mr. JB is happy for me to wear sensible shoes, because high heels KILL me, and if I wear them, we will end the night with him carrying the shoes and me and our coats and my purse and he gives that a pass.
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Heh, how clueless of Kate not to know why. Both high heels and bustles serve the same function – simulating the sexually charged pose called “lordosis behavior”.
Wearing high heels habitually also diminishes the height difference with any man who happens to be nearby, making their presence less dominant and appealing to the wearer.
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I’m a man and haven’t worn a lot of restrictive shoes but i still have that my smalltoe(?) Is a bit under the next one so it partially treats on it. Granted i don’t know how much this womans bigtoe was turned and so i am just saying that yes i know feet get deformed by bad footwear but there can be otjer causes aswell.
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