Shyheels

I see Annie Leibovitz is offering courses in Photography https://www.masterclass.com/classes/annie-leibovitz-teaches-photography?utm_source=Paid&utm_medium=GDN&utm_term=Aq-Prospecting&utm_content=Image&utm_campaign=AL I am wondering if she'll be teaching the novel techniques she used in Vanity Fair this month to give Reese Witherspoon three legs and Oprah Winfrey three hands....

Sorry - it just doesn't work that way. Believe what you like. You're the one seeing pretty colours on the trees. Heels are not cross dressing. I agree - being gay and wearing heels have nothing in common, but that would be the judgement people would be likely to make regarding men in heels. Cross-dressing in most people's view would involve skirts, dresses, trying 'to pass'. Simply wearing a pair of heels wouldn't cut the mustard for cross-dressing...

Agreed - a thicker sole would make for greater comfort. Which is - frankly - kind of obvious. But we had been talking about platforms, not thicker soles.

A slightly thicker sole and a one-inch or greater platform are very different things.

No they don't. Or at least the vast majority don't. It's just seen as unusual, weird, possibly gay but not cross dressing.

In a large sense nothing in the men's wardrobe is ever or has ever been exclusively male. The borrowing is all a one way street. My point is a woman can go into any store and buy any shoe or boot she likes from either side of the aisle and not be labelled with being a cross-dresser. The necktie is a perfectly valid example as are the shoe styles I mention. The fact is that now - today - these styles and items are masculine, on the men'swear side of the shop. If we want to go back a century or two and say, well, they used to be feminine as well - hey, guess what, at those very same times heels and boots were masculine. Lets stick to today. If a guy in heels is cross-dressing, so is a woman in a necktie. Dresses have never been part of the masculine wardrobe, so let's discount them for the purposes of this discussion. But heels and boots have most certainly been masculine and were appropriated by women. It is a curious and rather depressing aspect to society's blinkered views of masculinity and fashion that once something goes feminine, it ain't coming back in terms of menswear. As a group, we men have been left with only those items that are practical. No colour or theatricality is allowed for men. Why? Unfortunately for the rank and file, most of the people who do brave the slings and arrows of censure and wear what they please in terms of boots and heels tend to be celebrities and/or people of the gay/trans/or cross-dressing persuasion. This really only helps cement the idea that only gay/trans/cross-dressers are interested in breaking these boundaries. I doubt very much that that is true.

He's pretty clearly a guy

Cross-dressing? Your 'truth' is not mine, nor indeed is there enough consistency and logic in it to be any form of absolute truth at all. Let me take you through the logic of this: Footwear of any sort cannot be cross-dressing in and of its own. Let’s start with the law of reciprocity. No woman who wears a pair of men's oxfords or penny-loafers or workbooks is ever going to be labelled a cross dresser so there alone, by the law of reciprocity, a man who does the same can't be considered to be cross-dressing. This would especially be true if it is not his (or her) intention to be cross dressing. And if one was intending to cross-dress one would do more than merely change one's shoes, surely. If one is was to adopt a stern line and declare that wearing any single item of mis-gendered clothing is cross dressing what then of millions of school girls who wear neckties as part of their school uniform. Are they all cross dressing? Neckties are strongly associated with male attire. I think you would find a lot of parents would vehemently disagree with the idea that their daughters are cross dressers. Now let’s look at the broader picture. Footwear - as a broad category - is unisex, unlike say, the category of dresses and ballgowns which society holds to be specifically feminine. Virtually everyone wears something on their feet and so divisions between 'men's' and 'women's' footwear comes down to a matter of styling. If one one starts labelling someone as a cross-dresser solely on the styling of their shoes, and nothing else that they are wearing, one finds oneself on slippery logical and sociological ground indeed. Example: I have a pair of masculine RM Williams dress boots - classic Aussie male boots. They have heels of about three-quarters of an inch, maybe five-eighths. Okay - I wear them with jeans and shirt, classic male attire. I raise the heels on my boots to an inch and a half, but otherwise am wearing exactly the same clothes. Am I now cross-dressing since my heels are higher? No? Yes? Not yet? Do I become a cross-dresser if I raise the heels further, to two inches? At what point, if any, everything else being equal and unchanged, am I considered to be cross-dressing? And who establishes that point? Or do we then start to consider toe shape? One could end up becoming like those ultra conservative religious scholars who can argue for hours over points of excruciating minutiae in establishing rules in the church. Another example - Farmer Jones goes out to clean out his barn. He usually wears his dark green Hunter gumboots for this. Alas, he can't find them. Instead he finds his wife's pink Hunter gum boots. They are identical to his - happily enough even down to the same size. So he borrows them. They are ostensibly ladies boots and would have been marketed as such in the shop. Except for the boots he’s wearing his regular clothes. Is he cross dressing? Remember his wife’s boots are identical to his own. They’re standard gumboots. In this instance the difference is a purely matter of colour - pink being marketed as a 'girl's' colour. The quibble ceases to be about the boots themselves but about the colour of the boots. If a man wears pink does that make him a cross-dresser? Now take the example of knee boots - men are 'allowed' to wear knee boots for practical purposes, if they are engaged in such activities as motorcycles or horses. Then it is considered a good idea in fact, and indeed in dressage riding boots are part of the required attire. Now, women wear these same style boots around town as part of 'a look', a matter of fashion and style rather than practicability. This tall-booted style on the high street is strongly associated with women nowadays. So where does that leave a man who wears otherwise masculine looking riding-style or biker-style knee boots around town, and who doesn't own a horse or a Harley? Is he cross-dressing? What if he usually does ride a Harley but leaves it at home one day, drives his Volvo to work instead and still wears his boots. Would he be cross-dressing then? Bear in mind that these are the same tall boots he wore on his weekend ride. And he's wearing his usual masculine clothes, say, jeans and a jumper. Is he cross-dressing now because he's wearing tall boots the way a woman would, fashionably, without any valid practical reason? What about a guy who aspires to owning a horse or a Harley and buys himself a pair of knee boots beforehand, and wears them around town to break them in? Is he cross-dressing? If not, how long a period of grace is he granted before he can be said to have lapsed into cross-dressing? A week? A fortnight? A month? What if he buys the boots and changes his kind, or never really had any serious intention of acquiring a motorcycle in the first place, has he been guilty of cross-dressing in spirit? If this sounds silly, so does the idea that anyone could be cross-dressing merely because of a change of footwear and nothing else. There is no way wearing high heels or tall boots or both constitutes cross-dressing. Unusual, yes, certainly; cross-dressing? Nope. And society doesn't look at it that way either - not if all we’re talking about is just a substitution in footwear and nothing else; they just think it is bit weird.

True - high heels, and tall boots, for that matter, with or without heels, are definitely associated with feminine fashions. But a change of footwear, on its own, does not create an androgynous look, let alone drift into cross dressing. Very often men who do wear heels in public do create androgynous looks for themselves and I think that is one of the reasons men are not likely to take up wearing heels en masse. The association with androgyny, TV and CD is too strong. Indeed every time some fashion house makes a grab for publicity by having male models in heels at one of their shows, it is nearly always with some androgynous look that most men, myself included, would run a mile from wearing,

I just don’t do androgyny - doesn't do a thing for me. I am a jeans and boots guy...

I can see that point too. If I am going to be in four-and-a-half-inch stilettos, I want the full proper deal. But aesthetics are important too. Stilettos have an elegance that is blunted badly by platforms.

None of that works for me, I'm afraid. Not my thing at all.

I never liked platforms of any sort. Especially with stilettos - they counteract; the stiletto is meant to be sleek, elegant, the rapier; not paired with a clunky platform sole.

He certainly wears those boots well. Here is piece from Vogue on Jared Leto's foray into high heels. Some of the writing in this breathless puff-piece is hilariously unintentionally ironic but anyway: https://www.vogue.com/article/jared-leto-mens-heels-red-carpet-style?mbid=social_twitter_vr

No, I was speaking with the editorial “we”. Shiny clothing naturally part of the office dress code, although it plays hell with the flash...

Actually I shoot for Strict Woman’s Weekly. You don’t usually see us displayed on the stands - we’re shrink-wrapped and sold under the counter.

One would hope. I know - know as a fact - they would be out on their ear if they did anything like that at the magazine for which I work. Gone...

It's pretty clear somebody goofed with the Photoshop. That's a really bad mistake - on several grounds; one, it's sloppy, and two, its questionable if the photographer/processor should be engaging in such trickery. Different magazines have different policies towards that kind of thing. The one for which I have contributed for many years has very strict policies against that kind of jiggery-pokery. Vanity Fair and Annie Leibovitz are obviously far more laissez faire...

That’s hilarious. And no, I am sure it was not done on purpose... I see where Vanity Fair is claiming that Reese’s third leg is actually the lining of her dress. They have run out of ideas on Oprah’s third hand, and are just letting that one alone.

I saw a show of her work in Britain and, as you say, some of it is nice, others less so, but none of it struck me as stuff I couldn’t find plenty of on Pinterest. It was certainly not exceptional. I have had the privilege of working with some truly world class photographers during the course of my career and while they were and are famous names, none of them ever achieved the lucrative day rates or renown amongst the chattering classes etc of Annie Leibovitz. And yet they all easily eclipse her for talent

Not so sure about the not dying poor bit. She had to sell the copyright to all of her work a couple of years ago to pay off millions in debt. No doubt she'll bounce back, but she certainly took a big hit. Yes, I'm sure her Rolodex is full of interesting names...

I find her work to be very hit and miss, and highly overrated in any event.

I have chased blown litter on beaches in Antarctica left by thoughtless tourists. A bag blown around the head of a motorcyclist would be no fun at all...

It was - is - quite a striking image and received a lot of coverage when Leibovitz made the original, during the 80s. It was a clever concept on her part and of course later on Pirelli made use of it. It was not originally part of an ad campaign but a fine art photo as far as I know - although it might possibly have been done for the famous Pirelli calendar.

At least you chased them. Plenty of people wouldn’t have bothered...