A SOCIAL HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY AND GENDER
Eve Shapiro · 2010
In the film, after being literally hit over the head with the problem, and as a last ditch effort to save his failing factory, owner Charlie Price recognizes his niche market-shoes for ‘drag queens’ (aka males who perform dressed as women). He works with Lola to design shoes that will allow male bodies to successfully function in women’s high-heeled shoes. As fanciful as the film is, the story and the problem it centers around are genuine. A 2006 New York Times article inspired by the film interviewed a number of drag queens and shoe designers about the reallife challenges posed by lack of footwear for drag queens.3 What the interviewees make clear is that without footwear that fits their feet, male-bodied individuals struggle to perform femininity (whether as drag queens or as transgender and transsexual women). High-heeled shoes are one of the few items of clothing that remain strictly gendered in this age of increasingly androgynous clothing (particularly when compared to bygone eras of corsets, full-length dresses, and top hats); if one is to portray normative femininity-regardless of biological sex-one must be able to wear the appropriate footwear. The solution to this shoe problem is the creation of new approaches to, methods for, and products targeted at male bodies doing femininity. In other words, successfully dressing the part-a key component of embodying gender-requires the development of new technologies.