Unfitting shoes: Footwear fashions and social mobility in colonial Peru

Feminine footwear fashions changed from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century in colonial Peru. Through a variety of textual and visual sources, this essay focuses on footwear fashions and the practices they demanded. It confronts the stereotypical and misogynist vision of colonial women expressed by poets, travelers and Spanish officials with the experiences (if not the voices) of colonial women that emerge from archival records. The study of footwear as a cultural artifact enables us to explore the trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific connections that directly or indirectly pushed women to move between worlds, cultural imaginaries and social expectations.