High heels as mobile media: (Im)mobilities and feminist ecologies

Abstract

This article critically explores the high heel as a mobile medium by discussing the contentious footwear through the lens of media ecology and mobilities research. Employing the McLuhans’ ‘laws of media’ or ‘tetrad’, I highlight what the high heel enhances, obsolesces, retrieves from the past and flips into when pushed to an extreme. This tetradic reading also draws on contemporary feminist media studies and a gender and media ecology subfield. Ultimately, the article shows to what extent the high heel is an ambiguous and divisive medium that extends the female and male body; shapes and is shaped by past and present cultural, social and political environments; and affords a range of physical, corporeal, social, imaginative and affective (im)mobilities.