FootNotes:ON Shoes

   The essays in this collection offer various answers to this question, from the per-spectives of art, film, literature, history, folklore, dance, psychology, and cultural studies.Sometimes overlapping, sometimes contradictory, these analyses extend argumentsdrawn from the steadily growing body of work devoted to fashion. Reflecting the paradoxesinherent in shoes- in collecting,consuming, fashioning, representing. and wearing them-they are loosely organized into four sections: perspective, presentation,power, and perception. In a sense, such distinctions are arbitrary, for our contributorspersistently identify the ambivalences and anxieties in the culturally constructed meanings of shoes.
    Distinctions of class, gender, and sexuality often further overlap with ethnic identification,as particular styles become synonymous with certain groups of wearers. According to Tace Hedrick. spike heels (tacones) have come to he connected with the exotic beauty of Hispanic women. "Where would the Bratilian Carmen Minmda, Nuyorican Jennifer L6pez, or Mexican-born Salma Hayek be without their seemingly requisite high heels?" she asks. Heels have become synonymous with " brownness."
    Shoes can also be conceived of as talismans of their wearer, bearers of the
power accrued to the absent being. ln the magical thinking of American advertising,shoes have acquired a talismanic significance: ads for Air Jordan& once extended the prumise that the wearer could "be like Mike." Despite Michael Jordan's protest that"the shoes mean just shoes," young costomers were still willing to pay upwards of $200to purchase a token of his success.Vintage Air Jordans routinely go for$22,500,about as much as the retro VW beetle.  Jordan may have retired, but Nike's basie marketing strategy hasn't. A Lakota lndian says he runs the Sacted Hoop 500 far all Lakota (figure 2). Since,as he reminds us, "we belong to this land, to the spilit of Paha Sapa," we can all turn running a relay in our Nikes into a spiritual quest.
    Such a gesture, of course. distracts consumer from the realities of shoe production,from the impoverished and brutal working conditions of laborers in sweatshops in the United States and in the exploited third-world markets favored by Nike and other first world corporations. Recently, troubled athletic giant Re-eook publicized the results of a study citing health and safety problems in the factories of its subcontractors in Indonesia and its suppliers in China, Thailand, Vietnam. and Brazll.Nike is reportedly inviting college students to investigate its labor practices in lndoriesia and elsewhere. Students must, of course, possess a working knowledge of the country's language and regional dialects, so one wonders how many will actually be able to take advantage of
this "opportunity."