Perceptions

[Shyheels]

One of the additional strings to my bow as a freelance writer and photographer is escorting tour groups - giving lectures etc. I don't do a lot of it, three or four times a year, but the gigs are always nice ones and takes me to interesting places. I used to go all over the world, as with my other assignments, but these days, having grown weary of flying and all the attendant hassles, I stick to Britain. At any rate, I am on such a trip now. Yesterday I was taking to my group about Charles II. In addition to talking about the politics of the Restoration I talked about his coronation portrait - now hanging in the throne room in Holyrood House in Edinburgh. Aside from his holding a sceptre and orb, as symbols of newly restored royal power, he's wearing four inch heels. I mentioned this fact to see the reaction. It was dispiriting, but not surprising. 

My group, 24 elderly Americans, smirked, sniggered, mocked, and cooed and ran through all the trite schoolground mockery. There was something so drearily predictable, unthinking and Pavlovian about it.

I explained the history of heels, how they'd been a masculine fashion and how the cultural shifts in the Age of Enlightenment, with his emphasis on science, philosophy, comics and political thought changed men's fashion forever, while women, seen as ineducable, were allowed to keep their pretty colours, laces, silks and heels. My group were quite interested, I could see that, but then, as though on replay came the same smirking, cooking and mocking yet again. It was like they were on a continuous loop, stuck in a rut.

  Part of me felt like telling them I had a pair of 12cm stilettos in my room I am practicing with, but I need this gig. 

[mlroseplant]

Not wholly surprising, especially for that age group (which is getting to be my own age group at an alarming clip). In my experience, which is admittedly limited, people tend to react better to the real thing than they do to the idea. When people actually meet me in person, I get the distinct impression that many of these chucklers and chortlers think to themselves, "OK, that's a little different, but we can go with that." Whereas the idea of a drag queen reading books to their grandchildren upsets them greatly. I know--apples and oranges--but you get the idea.

Not that I am suggesting you do so, discretion being the greater part of valor, but if you were to show up to your tour group, dressed as you normally do for such a gig, except wearing 4 inch block heeled boots, I bet the reaction would be generally much less than their reaction to Charles II.