The Lesson Learned from Kinky Boots

RED is….

the color of my preschool bus matron’s lengthy Sally Hansen glue-on nails; the medium rare cowboy steak my husband eats every Wednesday night; a treasured cinematic trove of glittering “no place like home.” Red is sexy – and the bread and butter of Broadway’s dancing queen, Kinky Boots.

As soon as my mother proposed we see the show together, I accepted. There’s just something about red thigh-high stilettos, Cyndi Lauper lyrics and feisty drag queens that screamed, “Must see with mom.” After all, this was the woman who cried tears of joy when I finally conceded to trade in my Doc Martens for her 6 inch platforms. Even if it was only once, when I was 18, and my knees wobbled through the entire duration of my wear.

While I failed to see the beauty in designer heels back then, the transition signified a rare and precious moment in my life. I was desperate to grow up and into myself, and my mother was facilitating the evolution. On the night we saw Kinky Boots, I don’t know what I was expecting, but what I received was validation.

The show began with the death of the main character Charlie’s father. This consequently boomeranged Charlie back to the slummy Northampton, where he was to take over his old man’s all but bankrupt shoe factory.

Pressed between the demands of frustrated employees and a whiny fiancé, Charlie is liberated by an unlikely crusader: Lola, a sassy cross-dresser with the confidence of Lindsey Vonn on a bunny slope plus a voice rampant with the power of seduction.

Lola and her sparkle-footed posse help Charlie identify a new niche target market: cross dressers looking for ostentatiously fabulous and supportive footwear, but even more so, individuals seeking the sartorial embodiment of freedom, pride and sex. The final heeled-product resembles a cross between Madame Tussaud’s interpretation of Spice Girl footwear and what I imagine Dorothy’s ruby slippers might have looked like if MGM were to do a remake featuring Ms. Gale as a cross-dresser. The boots were remarkable, misunderstood, and oozing with sex appeal.

As the ensemble on stage sang “The Sex Is In the Heel,” I danced in my seat, thrusting my arms in the sky with move I like to call “Reverse Stairway to Heaven.” The cast, meanwhile, shimmied and pirouetted across the floor in shoes that would no doubt have the average pedestrian on his or her ass in three steps flat.

For the purpose of the show, the cross-dressers were selling shoes, but behind the curtain of showbiz, the real sell was self-assurance and above all, sex. Sex that, in the words of the show, “shouldn’t be comfy”; the kind of sex that isn’t exemplified by a flawless swimsuit model, a seamless debutant, or a Dominique Ansel milk-and-cookie shot. Rather, it was sex exuded through power, vociferousness, and the unabashed embracement of wobbly knees as you walk on daggers for the very first time.

And that, you see, is the greatest lesson my mother has ever taught me.

Edited by Leandra Medine