From Hats to Heels

I hope everyone had a very happy Easter. But I notice something when I went to my church yesterday. As you probably know Easter is the time where everyone is suppose to dress up. It is especially the time when women wear big hats. I remember as a kid seeing all of the fancy hats that were on the heads of the women in the Easter service. But yesterday I saw only one hat and it was not fancy at all. It seems the hat tradition is dead in my church.
But that did not mean that women were not dressing up. In fact what I did notice was that almost all women were wearing high heel shoes. And by high heels I do not mean an inch. I was looking at three and four inch heels on those women. And I use the term woman with some caution. I think some of the girls who were about 10 also had on these monster heels. I am not saying that women never wore high heels to my church except yesterday. But, yesterday almost all of the women wore these super heels and that does not usually happen.
So what am I to make of this. It seems to me that Easter is still a big dress up day but that fancy hats seem passe. Instead women dress up their feet more than their heads. Funny but I thought that women always wore heels to dress up but I really notice it yesterday. Maybe it has always been this way but the big hats distracted me from their feet. Or it may be a racial thing. The churches I went to as a kid were predominately black churches but now I go to a multiracial church. Perhaps big hats are a black thing. But the black women at my church yesterday were not wearing the hats either.
There are several ways to take this. As a sociologist I can note that heels are not physically healthy for women and this is another way that body images are used in a patriarchal way. As a Christian I can complain about the emphasis on dress instead on the true meaning of Easter, which in some ways is a more meaningful holiday than Christmas. As a man I can just appreciate the way high heels creates a beautiful site when worn by pretty women. Hey I gotta be honest or else I can not be a real trouble-maker. Regardless, it will be an interesting trend I will keep my eyes on in the coming years.

Sincerely,

Trouble-Maker