You actually are appreciating her efforts with your thoughts. Appreciate doesn't mean value/like necessarily, it can mean to understand the implications of in a neutral-preference manner.
Regardless, there are many men who appreciate heels in the other sense (sexy, etc) who give no thought to the effort required to wear them.
Wearing them myself lets me do both :)
I mostly feel sorry for women who feel pressured to wear heels even though they might not personally want to. Likewise for makeup, jewelry, plastic surgery, black women with straightened hair, bald men with hair transplants, men in suits on hot days, people eating too little because they feel pressured to stay thin, etc.
When people choose to do/wear those things because they like them, or choose to have extensive piercings or tattoos, etc., more power to them.
In other words, the problem for me is with social expectations that discriminate against people who don’t put extensive money, time, discomfort, and sometimes injury on the line to look the way society expects.
Exactly. But you will be told that you are policing choices, restricting freedoms, or even oppressing people for pointing out that social expectations exist. Because of the natural process of selection, the ideology of social neoliberalism has reached its peak in the last 20 years. Choices of the individual are reflexively defended in every case, because the framing of individuality won; it was the framing most rewarded by those social groups with the most power.
Can you please point out an example of someone being accused of oppressing people for pointing out that social expectations exist? If that is so widespread, I'm sure the web will provide plenty to link to.
I'm asking because I feel you and I live in a different reality. The concept of gender roles and its restrictions on free personal choice is, as far as I know, completely accepted by the mainstream, and while I'm sure there are dissenters, the idea that they are the dominant opinion is baffling to me.
This is not to say gender roles or other social expectations are dead - of course not, they're extremely powerful. But I certainly don't agree that it's taboo to point it out.
I have to admit I don't understand your example. The only people being accused of oppression are the legislators of the bill in question. I don't see anyone being accused of oppression for pointing out that social expectations exist. Who exactly is doing such pointing in that example?
Feminists point out the social expection of the availability of women's bodies for use. They have been and will continue to be accused of oppressing and marginalizing johns. It's a straightforward situation in which johns are identified as engaging in unnecessarily "taboo" sexual behavior by society, just like lesbians and gay men, and thus you should afford them the same consideration and lack of criticism if you are a Good Liberal.
Feminists who point out objectification and the expectation of sexual access are slapped with the label "SWERFs" (sex-worker exclusionary radical feminists). Meghan Murphy writes quite a lot about it so see her other pieces.
It's in Portuguese, but essentially it's about kids coming home and saying that their school colleagues had to them that (1) her mother was too old, (2) that they aren't her "real" parents (she's obviously adopted), and (3) that he shouldn't have two dads, and it ends up with them hugging each other.
When Coke, one of the more important symbols of the dominant system, has an ad about social expectations and people defying them, it's kind of hard to argue that it's not a well accepted concept!
Do you or do you not believe in the gender socialization of women? Do you believe femininity, as a culturally constructed set of expectations, is a neutral and non-destructive, or positive and constructive, historical event in human history, or that it is destructive? Or do you believe that femininity is a natural psychological feature in the minds of women?
