By Kylie Jennings
On Thursday, October 19, Western New England University hosted the Walk a Mile in Her Shoes event. This event is a time when men gather and walk a mile in traditional “women” shoes: Infamous high heels. This event/organization has been around since 2001 and is considered award-winning. According to their website, it is “the International Men’s March to Stop Rape, Sexual Assault & Gender Violence. It is a dramatic opportunity to raise awareness in your community about the serious causes, effects, and remediations of men’s sexualized violence.” The whole point of this event is to use the metaphor of “walk a mile in their shoes” in a literal way. This metaphor is saying “you need to understand what someones been through before judging them.”
The Walk a Mile in Her Shoes event that went on here at Western New England University was quite large. There was a great turnout in terms of how many people came. The walk started right in front of the University Commons, and the participants walked along Wilbraham Road. The men participating in this event were given bright red heels to strut their way down the main road. There were signs with different statistics and data about sexual violence posted all around the area. A few people gave speeches about the importance of this topic and shed more light on this serious issue. Kristine Goodwin, Vice President of Student Affairs, said some things that explained the situation well. “It is no accident that men wear ties like women wear heels. It chokes them into acting masculine by pointing to their private parts… It is not a ‘who has it worse’ because we all have it worse when we aren’t working together to dispel gender stereotypes and expectations.”
Although the purpose of this event was to raise awareness of a serious issue and topic, some students didn’t quite understand the meaning or purpose. In one case, someone said, “Literal interpretations of metaphors are not usually one of them. In this case, specifically, it felt like it was demeaning.” On the other hand, some men were going as far as to say that this event was more of a “skill issue” on women’s end because they didn’t think heels were that bad. Overall, this event was debatable on whether the message was able to get across or not.
Talking to one of the participants allowed for a better insight. Sean Maserati took some time to tell us about his experience with this event. He explained that he was overall excited to be a part of this event. A few of Maserati’s friends, who were women, encouraged him to go on this walk. Another one of his reasons for attending was “it was an excuse to wear fabulous looking heels and slay.” Maserati has always been an open-minded person and willing to experience something new, so there wasn’t a chance he would pass up an opportunity like this. “When I put on the heels, I was elated to see that they gave me a new horizon, a new amount of height, in fact.” Maserati also explained that walking a mile in heels like those would really “get any point across.”
Most of the participants seemed to enjoy their time walking. A few people showed up to cheer them on from the sidelines and help support the cause, even if they weren’t the ones walking in heels. It felt like a true community-bonding activity with many important takeaways
