Little dolls (Monday, 29 December 2008)

This is something I have seen all over Asia but it is something that keeps amazing me; little girls wearing shoes with heels. And I don’t mean a tiny little heel but really already on their way to the high-heeled section…. I noticed it again today when I walked home from the supermarket;a little girl wearing sandals with a substantial heel. She needed to run every couple of steps to keep pace with her father and it was obvious the running wasn’t easy at all since every once in a while she side-stepped her shoe. Sometimes I see little girls as young as 3 years who wear those kinds of sandals and often I seriously wonder what is wrong with their parent’s eyes when you see a girl struggling on those shoes. Or even when it is evident that it does nothing else than to give the girl a bad posture and/or bad feet with shoes worn down completely on one side. But some parents want their little girl to be as doll-like as possible. With all the paraphernalia that goes with it. Little doll-like dresses, little doll-like shoes, little doll-like hairstyles and even make-up….I banned those shoes from my classroom (and therefore basically from the school since we don’t wear our shoes in the classroom anyway) and I have tried to impress upon the parents why it is not a good thing to have their girls wear those shoes on other occasions than a festival or other kind of celebratory event. Though I doubt I make much of a dent in the Asian female population with bad backs and bad postures in a couple of years time….

The whole issue of shoes is a problematic item here (in Asiain general and Burma specifically) anyway. We tried to find decent shoes or sandals for Xenne but there was next to nothing. We finally found a pair of sandals that were not made of plastic or fabric and that would fit his baby feet. In most shops there were rows upon rows of baby and kids shoes, sandals and slippers but every single pair was made of plastic or fake leather. And as mentioned before most of the shoes for girls were heeled ones. At the Hush Puppies and Ecco stores in Bangkok they had some good shoes for kids but they only started at a size much too big for Xenne. Not to mention a price-tag that was a fair bit on the high side. Anyway, it might be one of our only options when Xenne grows up some more…..