Stu

I grew up during the 1970s and early 1980s in a small farming town in the mountains of Costa Rica. My father was not a farmer; instead, he bought the potatoes and carrots produced by the family farmers in our town, and he sold them to vendors in retailers in nearby cities like San Jose and Cartago. We were not wealthy, even by Costa Rica’s modest standards, but neither were we poor. We always had food, a roof over our head, and, of course, enough clothes and shoes for everyone in the family.

During my childhood, I always remember seeing women in high heels. My mother, aunts, cousins, family friends – all wore heels. The single women tended to wear the higher stiletto heels, while the married women wore lower and more conservative wide heels, but flat shoes on women were a rare site. To me, high heels were as inevitable a part of growing up and becoming a woman as developing breasts and menstruating.

I first asked my parents for a pair of heels when I was 13, and I was told no. When I was 15, my parents bought me a pair of loafers with 2-inch block heels. I was only allowed to wear them on weekends. Indeed, I wore them with relish, and particularly to Mass on Sundays. The church was the one place in town where women liked to show off their best heels, thanks largely to the captive audience of chuchgoers. Lots of young women found any reason at all to walk up and down the aisles during the service, with their heels clicking on the hard floor. Nobody seemed to mind, and I joined right along.

When I turned 16, my parents bought me new loafers with a 2-1/2-inch heel. They then bought me a pumps with a slightly narrower 3-inch heel when I turned 17. The same rules applied: I could wear them only on weekends. Two months before my 18th birthday, I received a sneak preview of my next present: those wonderful, strappy 4-inch stiletto sandals. I practiced walking in them in the house, with my mother and an older cousin supervising me and giving me tips on how to walk properly in them, like a true tica. In Costa Rica, it is not enough simply to wear high heels. Instead, a woman must develop her own style of walking. In truth, a truly proficient high heel wearer would develop several different walking styles – elegant, flirty, even sexy and seductive. There was no way I could become an expert in the two months prior to turning 18, but my mother and cousin were able to give me the basics. My mother took out her own pair of 4-inch stiletto pumps, which I had only seen her wear on a relative handful of special occasions. Within seconds, she was strutting around the house like a woman 20 years her junior, and she put on an exhibition of sensuous movements of her cola that even made me blush.

“You think I was never young? You think I was never interested in impressing men? Think again,” my mother said to me as she laughed. “Of course, there were a lot of reasons why your father fell in love with me. But my walking style in high heels did not hurt.”

Yes, mothers teach those things to their daughters in Costa Rica.

After my 18th birthday party, I was allowed to wear high heels whenever I wanted. My flat and lower-heel shoes went in the closet forever, and virtually overnight I became a full-time wearer of 4-inch heels. My cousin, whose shoe size was the same as mine, gave me a couple of pairs of her 4-inch heels, and my parents bought me another pair within a few months of my 18th birthday. Those four pairs of shoes carried me a long way. My loose clothing also gradually gave way to tight pants and skirts that shamelessly advertised my feminine figure. My parents beamed with pride in the morning when I would walk out of the house in my 4-inch stilettos and tight clothing. In the eyes of Costa Rican society, I was an attractive, sociable woman with a good upbringing, and someday soon I would become a desirable mate for some worthy man. I was a credit to my community and to my country. In Costa Rica, style counts for a lot.

Strutting through town in my stilettos, I loved the fact that so many adults I had known my whole life would come up to me and tell me how fast I had matured, and how lovely I was. I also loved the attention I received from boys my own age. The compliments bolstered my self-confidence, and the more confident I became, the more compliments I got. Oddly enough, I liked to spend time during that period with our local priest, a handsome man in his late 30s. I would walk into church during the week in my stilettos, and offer to do little errands to help him out. I always loved to turn and give him a nice, sensuous wiggle whenever I left the church. I was not trying to seduce him. I simply felt badly that a nice man like him could not date or marry, and I wanted to be at least a little feminine presence in his life. I think he appreciated it, as he always seemed glad to see me, and he frequently complimented me on my appearance.

I graduated from high school at about the same time that I turned 18. For the first year after high school, I attended a one-year secretarial training program in Cartago, which was only a short bus ride away. The students in the program were primarily 18-year-old women like me. At least two-thirds of us wore 3- to 4-inch heels on a regular basis, and we soon divided into two general groups: those who wore heels, and those who did not. In retrospect, I regret not paying much attention to the flat-shoe wearers, as most of them were good people. I was still immature in that regard.

After one year, I graduated from the secretarial program with honors, and was ready to start my first job. I was hired as a sales clerk in the only real store in my little town. The store was a little bit of everything. It had started as a savings and loan where the farmers of our town could get loans and deposit their savings. The savings and loan remained its core business, but it was so successful that it expanded to also sell clothes and agricultural supplies. Naturally, I was assigned to the clothing department. My parents were delighted that I was hired, and I soon found out why. Virtually everyone in town frequented the store and got to know the employees on a first-name basis. At age 19, I was now one of the most visible women in my little town. Women would come in throughout the day to look at clothes, and I would help them with their questions and their purchases. Being well-dressed gave me credibility with them, and it helped me maintain my good reputation. The atmosphere at the store would change greatly in the late afternoon, when the men would come into the store after a day of work in their fields to buy farming supplies, chat among themselves, and also to look at us. In those afternoon hours, I easily had 10 or more pairs of male eyes focused on me at any moment as I went about my duties. I would walk up to the men, say hello, flirt with a few of them and then wiggle my way back to my duties. I loved the attention because my family and my culture had raised me to view this kind of attention as a compliment. No one ever expressed concern about my on-the-job flirting with the men, because this was also acceptable in Costa Rica. I (along with my fellow female employees) were bringing in customers to the store, and making the store an indispensable part of community life. It never occurred to me until I moved to the United States that such workplace behavior could be considered unprofessional.

There were two women at the store, Rita and Victoria, who had a big influence on my life. Rita, the assistant store manager, was an attractive black-haired woman in her early 30s. She was married with three children. It was somewhat exceptional in my town for married women to have full-time employment, but Rita was an exception to everything. While most married women rarely wore any heels higher than 3 inches in public, Rita wore 4-inch stilettos to work on most days. She also had an affinity for relatively tight dresses (although not as tight as mine, but the comparison is an unfair one because I was still single). Rita also flirted more than most married women. But what impressed me most about Rita was her intelligence. She had worked at the store for a number of years, and knew every square inch of it. When things went wrong and the store owner was out, Rita took charge to make things right.

One day, I was so busy flirting with several men that I put the wrong price tags on several articles of clothing. Rita noticed this, and called me into a back room. “You know, Ana, you are a very attractive, personable young woman,” she said. “The management likes you because you bring in customers, both men and women. You can keep this job for several years without learning anything new or improving yourself. But in five years, there will be new 19-year-olds who will attract more customers to the store than you. If you learn this business and do your job right, you can be promoted to more important jobs. If you don’t, you better hope you have good marriage prospects, because you will not have much of a future here. You seem to have a good head, Ana. Start using it.”

Rita was right, and I knew it. After that, I redoubled my efforts to learn all I could about the store and to do my job well. I still flirted with the men and wiggled in their presence, but I learned how to not let that distract me from doing my job. Over time, I learned an incredible lesson: My potent feminine expression would have an even bigger impact on people if they could see I was smart and effective on the job. The physical and the intellectual reinforce each other rather well.

Unfortunately, I could see that Rita was sad and frustrated much of the time, despite her important job. The rumors in town were that her marriage was not going well, and that she was even involved in extra-marital affairs. I can look back at her now and know that, if she had been born and raised in the United States, she would have gone to college and had a high-powered career. But those kinds of opportunities are not available to women in small towns in Costa Rica. Rita was indeed trapped. As I will explain later, I often thought of Rita when I had to make important decisions in my own life. She was both a role model for me, and a model of what I did not want to become.

Victoria was also an important influence on me, but for completely different reasons. She was the secretary and personal assistant to the store’s owner, which made her the highest-ranking woman in the business. Rita may have been the problem solver, but when the owner was out (which was often), Victoria was in charge of the entire operation. She had a pretty figure and long, brown hair that was just a slightly lighter shade than mine. Perhaps most significantly, she was 29 years old and single.

Costa Ricans get very traditional when it comes to marriage. They believe that a healthy, well-adjusted woman should be married by about the age of 25. Women who reach their late 20s without getting married are viewed with some suspicion, as if there may be something wrong with them. They are under continuous social pressure to prove that they are still feminine and desirable. An important way that Costa Rican society gives these women to prove their femininity is to exempt them from many of the social rules that apply to everyone else. High heels are perhaps the best example. As much as Costa Ricans revere high heels, there is a general taboo against wearing heels higher than 4 inches on a regular basis. However, this limit does not apply to single women beginning in their mid-20s. It is socially acceptable for these women to move up to 5-inch heels, as if they need the extra height to reassure others as to their femininity. These women also can wear tighter clothing and engage in even more flirtatious behavior than younger, single women.

Victoria seemed to enjoy the freedoms that society granted her. She wore 5-inch heels on most days, along with the tightest clothing of anyone who worked at the store. She was very outgoing, and usually emerged from her office in the afternoon to join us in flirting with the men who would gather in the store. As much as I enjoyed the attention I got during these daily flirt sessions, Victoria was clearly the main attraction. She would wiggle up to the men, stand close to them, laugh at their jokes and tease them with her own. I am certain the men looked forward to her daily demonstrations of flirting, and who could blame them? She was a master at walking in heels, and I learned a lot by observing her. She had at least five different walking styles – a normal walk mode, an elegant style she employed for senior citizens and important visitors, a sensuous style she used with younger women, and two sexy styles that she utilized in front of men. She could switch styles in an instant, depending on who was in sight of her.

I was supposed to feel a little sorry for Victoria, because she was about to turn 30 and was still not married. Instead, I grew to envy her. She seemed to enjoy her 5-inch heels so much that I wanted to try wearing them. However, I was too young, and could not wear anything like them without causing a scandal that would have embarrassed my family and jeopardized my job. I also envied the way she could dress and flirt more daringly than the rest of us. I did not think of her attire and behavior as a last-ditch effort to attract a good man; instead, I saw it as a rebellious expression of freedom that I might want to try myself some day. These were radical thoughts for a small-town, Costa Rican girl, and I did not share them with anyone.

Victoria took obvious pride in the fact that she wore the highest heels in the store, and there was one occasion when I succumbed to the temptation to imitate her – or, more accurately, to challenge her. On Fridays, it was common for the female employees to dress down by wearing lower-heel shoes. Many of my co-workers and I moved down to 3-inch heels on Fridays, which cleared the way for Victoria to move down to 4-inch heels. I borrowed a pair of 4-1/2-inch heels from my cousin with the intent of wearing them to work on a Friday, even though the shoes were really only meant for special occasions. On the day I wore them to work, I noted with satisfaction that Victoria had indeed worn a pair of 4-inch heels, which meant that I was wearing the highest heels of anyone. I got a number of compliments, including a grudging one from Victoria. My triumph, however, was a short one. During the morning break, Victoria went home and returned in a pair of 5-inch stilettos with a needle-thin heel, and the tightest pants I had ever seen her wear up to that time. She strutted up to me later that morning and said to me, “Do not be in such a rush to move up, Ana. You do not know what I had to go through to earn the right to wear what I wear. Stay away from things you do not understand.” To emphasize her displeasure with me, she reassigned me for the rest of the day to take inventory in one of the back storage rooms. I never challenged her again!

To be continued.