Opinion | Sally Quinn: Goodbye, high heels

I never thought I’d abandon high heels. But I did. It wasn’t the pandemic. It was the pain.

I got my first pair of heels when I was 13. My military family was stationed in Greece, and I was at the rebellious age. As part of my newfound independence, I had recently announced to my horrified parents that I was an atheist and would no longer attend Sunday school or church.

I had also become interested in dressing up, something my father astutely noticed with displeasure, especially the Fire and Ice lipstick. Still, he returned from a business trip to Paris with a gift of black suede French heels with a sweetheart cut and pointed toes. I had never owned anything so grown-up and sophisticated in my life. True, they hurt like hell. But they were glamorous, and therefore worth it.

The shoes came with a condition. I had to go to Sunday school or church every weekend. My father was bribing me. Very unchristian, I thought. But still: high heels!

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The next Sunday I entered the church as the organ music swelled as if to greet me and I sashayed down the middle aisle for all to admire, including some of the girls from my class who I assumed were sick with envy. Once in my seat at the front, I sank to my knees and thanked God for my new shoes. I also promised I would never miss another Sunday.

In that way, heels became a religion of my own.

But they always hurt. In college I majored in theater and landed the role of Sabina, the maid, in Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth.” I wore a black minidress with a frilly white apron and hat — and stiletto heels. The play opened with a long monologue that I delivered while I was feather dusting. On opening night my feet hurt so much that I forgot my lines and had to dust my way over to the wings where the prompter could whisper the missing words. So much for my theater career.

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Thinking back on it, pain was a constant from the beginning. “Il faut souffrir pour etre belle,” as the girls used to say at my Swiss boarding school. It is necessary to suffer to be beautiful.

As a young reporter, my feet were always killing me when I chased congressmen across the marble floors of Capitol Hill. But I secretly wondered whether those heels also helped me get the interview.

Because — let’s face it — high heels are flattering, they’re sexy, they demand attention. So naturally a girl hoping to attract Mr. Right, or land an interview with a powerful man, would want to wear them.

Several decades later, I met the writer Mary Karr at a party in New York. She had just written a hilarious piece in the New Yorker about how she had given up high heels. That night, as I recall, she was wearing Mary Janes, with the strap across the front. As we spoke, my feet aching in their heels, she lamented her practical choice, acknowledging that she wouldn’t be as attractive to men.

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Which made me think back to my first serious boyfriend the summer after I graduated from high school. Our passionate summer romance cooled when we both went off to college so I was ecstatic when he invited me to the Penn-Princeton football game in September. I bought a dynamite red dress and pointed toe heels, which got stuck in the mud on the way out of the Princeton stadium. But at the after-party, he ditched me when a stunning woman walked in radiating New York sophistication. Masses of golden curls surrounded her perfect face and she wore a black lace off-the-shoulder body-hugging dress. But her finest attributes were her legs, long and slim and balanced on five-inch black heels. Every man in the room dropped his jaw, including my beloved. A few weeks later he broke up with me by letter. I always thought it was the heels that did it.

Recently, at the White House correspondents’ dinner, I saw a woman in a slinky gold dress and high gold strappy stiletto sandals maneuver her way down Connecticut Avenue in a cold drizzle, stumbling and hanging onto her escort. She could barely walk. Watching her, I thought of the ancient practice of Chinese foot binding, where the women wrap little girls’ feet so they won’t grow because little feet are more attractive to men. Women are rendered crippled by this practice.

And in the western world, women do it to themselves. I realize this. And I bought into it.

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My late husband, Ben Bradlee, thought high heels were really hot. One day we were driving down a street when Ben almost wrecked the car. His head had been turned by a gorgeous babe flouncing down the sidewalk. Spandex dress, towering stilettos.

“See that girl?” I asked him.

“What girl?” he asked, as if he hadn’t noticed.

“The one who’s limping in those stupid shoes.”

“Limping?” He was surprised.

“Yes, her feet are killing her. See the grimace on her face? It’s from pain.”

He slowed down to get a better look.

“I don’t know,” he said teasingly. “She looks pretty good to me.”

So naturally I wore heels.

My change of heart was hastened by a tumble I took one late winter night as I was racing to get home when the high heel of my boot got stuck in a crack between the bricks on a Georgetown sidewalk. I face planted on the bricks. Happily nothing was broken but that did it for me. Now my closet is filled with Rothy’s flats.

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So why do I miss my high heels? Why, when I look in my closet for the right shoes, the alluring shoes, do I feel a pang of remorse? Why am I envious of former speaker Nancy Pelosi, who at 84 still wears fashionable heels and claims they don’t hurt?

Because I’m giving up one aspect of my image, that’s why. I’ve always considered myself a feminist, but on the other hand I wore shoes that killed me to appeal to men. I have to admit that I’m somewhat ashamed of my hypocrisy here. I felt sexy and empowered in high heels; I know I can still be these things without swanning around town in stilts. And can you imagine men wearing stilettos to appeal to women?

I don’t mean to make this out to be a human rights issue — that sounds a bit overwrought — but I feel a little like I did when I was 13. Rebellious, seeking my independence.

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