Fashion Fashion illustration

Heels! – A love/hate relationship

January 19, 2018
Heels shoes fashion illustration Alessia Landi Al Draws

There is a saying in Italian that goes more or less like “if you want to appear beautiful, you have to suffer a little” (chi bella vuole apparire, un poco deve soffrire). The actual English equivalent is “no pain no gain” but I really don’t like it because it makes me think of sweaty bodybuilders on paleo diet more than all the exquisite tortures that women do to themselves to be… oh well, beautiful.

But that’s not me guys, I have ZERO pain resistance and the patience of a rabbit on speed. I don’t do beauty tortures. I don’t do painful procedures*, extra strong facials, uncomfortable clothes that look like sculptures… And I don’t do heels.

And it breaks my heart so much because heels are one of the most beautiful things invented by humans. I could admire a pair of beautifully designed heels for hours. Heels are this perfect image of elegance and gracefulness, a masterpiece of architecture against all laws of anatomy… And dammit, they hurt my feet like hell.

You can suggest me any remedy you want, I tried everything including those soft pads to put inside your shoes, I just can’t stand the pain. I guess I don’t really care of being bella, since I am not really making any effort to increase my pain resistance threshold at all, uh.

But guess what, I keep buying them! I go online, I fall in love and I think “I can do it! I can do 10 cm this time! I FEEL IT! It’s gonna happen!” I click on the check-out button, I wait for them to arrive full of hope, I put them on, stand up, walk two steps, cry a little and then I return them. This is what happens every. single. time.

I have this weird idea in my head that my feet are going through a heels evolution: I was able to walk only in flats until I was 28. Then I don’t know what happened, but I started feeling comfortable only in 5-7 cm block heels or wedges. So I have this thing in my head that one day, like magic, I’m gonna be able to go up to 12 cm. Just like that, from granny to Miss Louboutin in a second, wait for it!

But let’s be honest, it will probably never happen. My feet are as flat as a laundry iron (that’s one thing I don’t like about Singapore: I have to wear sandals all the time which means I have to look at my ugly flat feet all day long, every single day) and they can’t just handle the structure of a high heel.

But oh well, I am starting to think that I actually want to admire them more than I want to wear them so that’s OK. And if I can’t have them, I can still draw them! In the end, all architecture masterpieces are meant to be admired, they are not really made for people to live in… OK no wait, I think I found a very bad comparison here.

But anyway, you got it: no heels in my wardrobe, but lots of heels in my sketchbook.
(And in my shopping cart apparently, because I don’t think that weird shopping+returning habit is going to end any time soon…)

That’s it, enough with this Thursday night delirium, I’m off.

Have a great weekend!

xx Al

*My nerves have decided they can handle only one painful procedure a month, and that thing happens to be a Brazilian wax. But oh, the tragedy… (one day I should tell you about all the drama that comes out of that 15-minute-long hair stripping session, my beauticians are always very entertained).

PS: I remember I wrote a similar post many years ago on my first blog (that is now dead and gone, RIP). Oh well, this heels thing really must be an true obsession… (I’m pretty sure you will see many more heels sketches in the coming months, both here and on my Instagram)

PPS: Basically today I just wanted to post this sketch. Obviously to do so I needed to write a 600 words-long monologue. God I’m so Italian.

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