Ophelia Muses on the Glass of Fashion

 

Ophelia Muses on the Glass of Fashion

High heels or no high heels? That is the question.

Whether ‘tis braver in the feet to suffer

The pangs and pinches of outrageous fashion

Or to slip on gross Ugg-boots or Doc Martens

And trudge round like a peasant. Seven-inch heels!

If only lofty heels could bring an end

To bunions and the thousand painful shocks

Our feet are heir to! 'Tis an expectation

Podiatrists would scorn. To walk? To limp!

To limp? Perchance to fall. Ay, there’s the rub

For in those towering heels what falls may come

When we go tottering of on those treacherous soles

Must give us pause. There’s the respect

That makes calamity of Blahnik’s best

For who could bear the searing spinal jolts

The sale girls’ sneer, the doctors’ contumely,

The pangs of oppressed corns, the tortured toes,

The insolence of husbands, and the spurns

That patient customers of Harrods take

When they might well pedestrian quietus make

In simple flatties? Who’d wear Jimmy Choo

To hobble, crippled, cross a slippery floor

But for the dread of other women’s scorn –

That oft-discovered snigger at whose sound

No girl can but turn pale – Jellie’s the will

And makes us rather wear the shoes that give us grief

Than put on others kinder to our feet.

[Exits left, in thongs]





COPYRIGHT (C) 2010 J D FRODSHAM