The Shoes We Change, The Roles We Keep
During my BA degree ceremony last May, something caught my attention and stayed with me. To my surprise, the event was almost entirely female; only a few men appeared among the graduates. And then I noticed a small choreography unfolding with perfect coordination: Every woman arrived in comfortable shoes, switched to high heels for the hour of the ceremony, and slipped back into ballerinas the moment it ended. The transformation was so synchronized it felt almost ceremonial in itself — as if the heels were part of the academic regalia, worn briefly for the ritual and then quietly retired.
As for me, I arrived in my very worn‑out ballerinas and stayed in them, fully committed to the idea that comfort is a human right. And I want to be completely honest here: I’m not immune to vanity. I had perfect makeup, carefully arranged hair, and a new dress purchased specifically for the occasion. I wanted to look polished, and I did. Yet high heels, at least for me, are instruments of suffering disguised as footwear.
Watching the other women perform their synchronized shoe ritual — ballerinas for arrival, heels for ceremony, ballerinas again for survival — I couldn’t help thinking the heels must have been torture for them too. Otherwise, why not simply arrive in them, stay in them, and glide out triumphantly at the end of the day? Instead, the moment the ceremony ended, the collective sound of heels being abandoned was almost liturgical. It was like witnessing a mass exodus from pain.
What struck me most was the unspoken agreement that this was simply what one does at a ceremony. It reminded me how many rituals of femininity operate like inherited scripts: No one writes them, yet everyone seems to know and follow their lines. The heels weren’t just shoes; they were props in a performance of adulthood, professionalism, and femininity, all compressed into a single hour. And the fact that every woman switched back immediately afterward revealed the truth beneath the performance: the ritual mattered more than the comfort, but only for as long as the ritual lasted.
In that sense, my worn‑out ballerinas felt like a small rebellion — not against beauty, but against the idea that beauty must hurt. I didn’t feel less elegant for choosing comfort; if anything, I felt more myself. And watching the other women slip back into their flats, I sensed a shared relief, a collective exhale that said more than any words I heard that day.
And I want to be very clear: None of this is meant as moralizing. I’m not standing above anyone in my ballerinas, declaring myself liberated while other women are trapped. I participate in my own forms of self‑conditioning — my hair, for instance, was held together by an entire ecosystem of tiny clips, pins, and sprays that kept it perfectly in place throughout the day. It took me twenty minutes in the evening to dismantle the whole construction, pulling out each little piece one by one like I was undoing a miniature scaffolding. All that was unnecessary bother for the sake of beauty.
I do plenty of things that aren’t strictly necessary but feel socially expected, aesthetically pleasing, or simply habitual. So this text isn’t criticism of any woman who wore heels that day. If anything, watching that synchronized shoe ritual made me realize how many small negotiations we all make with our bodies, our comfort, and our sense of belonging.
And so when I think back about that day — the nice dresses, the diplomas, the synchronized shoe ritual — I realize that the ceremony reminded me how easily we step into roles that ask us to endure discomfort for the sake of appearances, and how quickly we abandon those roles the moment the ritual ends. The heels came on, the heels came off, and in between, an entire act of femininity unfolded in miniature — brief, wordless, and complete.
