Being dressed to kill shouldn’t mean killing your feet! It’s time to liberate ourselves from the tyranny of shoes that hobble our mobility and disfigure our bodies in the name of sexiness. With this book, Leora Tanenbaum shows us how to take the first step. –Audrey D. Brashich, author of All Made Up: A Girl’s Guide to Seeing Through Celebrity Hype and Celebrating Real Beauty
In Leora Tanenbaum’s Bad Shoes, the woman who exposed slut-bashing, cat-fighting, and God-reclaiming takes on women’s masochistic relationship with their feet. Run (while you still can) to your nearest bookstore and save your sole. –Jennifer Baumgardner, author of Look Both Ways, Manifesta, and Abortion & Life
Advocate for women Leora Tanenbaum has written a witty, insightful, highly readable, and frankly shocking exploration of high heels that is a must-read. Tanenbaum urges readers to use common sense and not wear high heels that make us hobble. This lively book makes me want to give my pointy-toed, 4-inch stilettos a new place in my closet: the archives. –Liz Funk, author of Supergirls Speak Out: Inside the Secret Crisis of Overachieving Girls
Praise for Leora Tanenbaum’s previous books:
Leora Tanenbaum is one of the most astute and thoughtful of the new generation of feminist writers. –Elizabeth Wurtzel
Tanenbaum’s prose is provocative. – San Francisco Bay Guardian
Tanenbaum is thorough but never patronizing. Warm and informative, her own voice enriches the text. – BUST
[Tanenbaum’s] intimate perspective is personally revealing and enormously informative. – Feminist Review
Bad Shoes and the Women Who Love Them is a lighthearted but highly informed wake-up call to women to make smart decisions when buying and wearing fashionable shoes. Arming the reader with essential facts, citing medical literature as well as leading podiatric surgeons and orthopedists, Leora Tanenbaum covers the history of high heels, Chinese foot binding, the controversy over cosmetic surgery of the foot, and what Sigmund Freud had to say about women’s shoes and sex.
Illustrated throughout by artist Vanessa Davis, Bad Shoes also includes hilarious anecdotes from women who love shoes. And in case you’re wondering: yes, it is possible to make good footwear decisions without sacrificing style! Tanenbaum shows you how.
Leora Tanenbaum is the author of Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation ; Catfight: Rivalries Among Women ; and Taking Back God: American Women Rising Up for Religious Equality. She lives in New York City.
Vanessa Davis is a freelance illustrator and cartoonist. Her first book, Spaniel Rage, was published by Buenaventura Press in 2005, and her second, Happy Chappie, is due out from Drawn & Quarterly in 2010. She produces a comics column for Tabletmag.com.
