Florals & Flaws

I have an obscene amount of ballet flats, because I can't wear heels with my ankle and foot disability, and ballet flats tend to be easiest and cheapest, but I've been wanting to push myself more with shoes, hence the following purchase from Ideeli:

They're the Big Buddha Hike shoes.

Not being able to wear heels feels like my style is disabled as well as my body. Cute heels are de rigueur for the fashionable femme; there was an entire television show built around women's supposed love for shoes above all else. I love shoes, but shoes do not love me. Eschewing shoes in favor of the needs of my body seems to only draw attention to my flaws. I can't tell you how many times someone has commented on an outfit post at my other blog telling me the outfit would be cute, if only I wore better shoes. Honoring the needs of my body means acknowledging I have a body, which much of fashion wants to ignore. Garments that constrict, constrain, cause pain, can be beautiful but I worry about the promotion of disembodiment. As a fat woman, and a person with a disability, my constant pain keeps me embodied and my fat keeps me visible, as does my limp, or my cane. Often when I browse style blogs or fashion magazines for outfit inspiration, I feel frustrated, because I am unable to wear the shoes pictured, so I must seek out an alternative. It seems like such a frivolous thing, but not being able to wear heels when I probably would if I weren't disabled, having that choice made for me by my body, feels like another way I'm marked as flawed or different.

I'm glad oxfords and loafers with skirts are coming back into style, because sometimes I do just want to feel pretty.

I admit that these sort of appeal to my Victorian sensibilities. The 19th century is my primary field of interest for my comprehensive exams, and these look like something that might be anachronistic, but not altogether unfamiliar to those Boston Marriage ladies. Also, I'm a sucker for florals. I identified as butch for ten years, and I've only started identifying as femme in the past two years, but I am a person of extremes. I either study for my exams for eight hours a day, or lie in bed on painkillers (for my chronic diseases, not recreationally) watching Mad Men. When I was butch, I tried to be hypermasculine, and when I discovered and acknowledged my femme tendencies, I went all-out femme, and when I dress up, it's where I feel most at home now. These shoes are so damn feminine, and they are so different from anything I have, I just couldn't resist.

I'm not sure yet what I'll wear them with, but I had to buy them when I caught them on sale.

Any styling tips? How do you use your sartorial choices to express your gender? How do you find fashion limiting, and/or how does your body limit your fashion?