Like most public figures, Kamala Harris adapts her shoes to different occasions. While her wardrobe includes traditional options like formal black heels, it was her appearance within the Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars on the February 2021 cover of Vogue that attracted particular attention.

As a Democratic presidential candidate, these sneakers became one again Center point their campaign.

With her alternative of sneakers, Harris signals a brand new era in women's political leadership — and shows how her alternative of footwear can shape a pacesetter's identity and their ability to attach with voters.

Comprehensive American values

We may know not to guage a book by its cover, but all politicians – especially women – know that we inevitably do. The appearance of others is the best way we categorize people to grasp the world and our place in it.

Clothing is a central medium with which we discover ourselves and others. Shoes are particularly meaningful: When we have a look at an individual's shoes, we will tell from them whether we discover with that person or not.

This is something that politicians and their teams know and manipulate to win votes.

One famous scene A very good example of that is Democratic Congressman David Norris of Brooklyn's concession speech within the film The Adjustment Bureau (2011).

The character played by Matt Damon reveals the numerous work that goes into putting together the proper outfit:

We associate shiny shoes with high-priced lawyers and bankers. If you would like to get the vote of a employee, you’ve got to wear your shoes out a little bit, but you possibly can't wear them out a lot that you simply piss off the lawyers and bankers […] So what’s the right amount of abrasion? Do you recognize we actually paid a consultant $7,300 to inform us THIS was the proper level of attrition?

While Harris' Chuck Taylors generally look flawless, she makes it clear that she is aware of the style's importance to potential voters, explaining in a single Interview 2020:

No matter your background or what language your grandmother spoke, all of us had our Chucks sooner or later, right?

Relatively inexpensive and practical, the Converse All-Star is an all-American shoe worn by people of all ages, races, genders and sexualities. He is a social balancer – a wise alternative for a politician who desires to discover with a broad electorate.

As other As I discovered, Harris' alternative of sneakers signals her American values ​​and no-nonsense attitude.

In these shoes she is prepared for anything.

Shoes change us

Interviewed in 2018Harris' relationship with the sneakers goes back several years and definitely seems authentic.

Whether the unique decision to wear them was her own – or, like Norris, that of a team of consultants – not matters. Through the technique of wearing them, shoes change us.

They not only affect how we physically move through the world, but additionally shape our social relationships with others.

Anyone who has chosen a specific pair of shoes for a job interview or an important day knows their transformative power in helping you are feeling the piece.

Identity may be understood as something that’s performed. When a performance is perceived as compelling, we turn into the role we’re playing and the identity is integrated into our sense of self.

Harris' shoes are comprehensible. In them she is perceived as approachable and down-to-earth and might due to this fact feel that way.

During the campaign, the social interactions it allows improve their ability to attach and socialize with other people. Through this process, their performance and their identity turn into one.

You could say she has turn into their shoes; In this manner, she embodies the all-American values ​​that she represents. And at just one.75 meters tall, the choice to not compensate for her height with heels exudes a self-confidence that increasingly women are discovering.

This woman knows who she is and is reassuringly comfortable.

Find authenticity

Next to ongoing speculation When it involves Trump's height and whether he wears height-adjustable insoles, his alternative of footwear has drawn comparatively less attention, as is usually the case with male politicians.

Accordingly Shoe Newshe rarely deviates from black leather shoes, indicating his corporate associations. However, that didn't stop Trump from launching one Line of golden sneakerscalled “Never Surrender High-Tops” and priced at $399 in February. A brand new design with the words “Fight, Fight, Fight”, was released after the attack in July.

This represents a really different use of shoes to have interaction with voters.

At a time when authenticity is increasingly valued in politics, Harris' shoe alternative represents greater than only a campaign strategy. It reflects changing expectations of power and leadership.

Her Converse sneakers challenge the concept that women must literally elevate themselves to authority figures.

Instead they suggest a latest sort of political performance where power comes not from size or traditional status symbols, but from the power to create an actual reference to voters.

Whatever motivated Vice President Kamala Harris to pick out Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, it probably wasn't a desire to fire up debates about apostrophes. But it doesn't take much to get grammar nerds riled up.

“The lower the stakes, the bigger the fight,” said Ron Woloshun, a creative director and digital marketer in California who jumped into the fray on social media lower than an hour after Harris selected Walz last week to present his views on possessive pronouns.

The Associated Press style book says, “Use only one apostrophe” for singular proper nouns that end in S: Dickens' novels, the labors of Hercules, the lifetime of Jesus. But not everyone agrees.

The debate over possessive pronouns ending in “S” began shortly after President Joe Biden cleared the best way for Harris' candidacy last month. Is it Harris' or Harris's? But the selection of Walz, together with his last name that feels like an “S,” has really fueled the talk, says Benjamin Dreyer, retired editor in chief at Random House and writer of “Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style.”

Within minutes of the announcement, which got here during a visit to the dentist, Dreyer was inundated with questions.

“I thought, 'Okay, everyone just needs to relax. I'll be home soon and I can sit down at my desk,'” he said.

While there’s widespread agreement that Walz's ruling is correct, confusion stays over Harris' ruling vs. Harris' ruling. Dreyer's ruling? Add the 's.

“Setting 's is just easier, and then you can use your precious brain cells for more important things,” he said.

Woloshun expressed an analogous opinion on the social platform X, where apostrophes are thrown around like hand grenades. “The rule is simple: when you say the S, spell the S,” he argued.

This puts them on the identical side because the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal – and in contradiction with AP.

Although AP's style has evolved on many fronts over time, there are not any immediate plans to vary its policies on possessive pronouns, says Amanda Barrett, AP's vice chairman for news standards and inclusion.

“This is a long-standing strategy of the AP. It has served us well and we see no real need to change it,” she said. “We know there is a debate and that people make different choices when it comes to grammar, and that's all fine. Everyone makes the decision that works best for them.”

Timothy Pulju, a lecturer in linguistics at Dartmouth College, said that until the seventeenth or 18th century, the possessive type of proper names ending in S – similar to Jesus or Moses – was often simply the name itself, without an apostrophe or additional S. Eventually, the apostrophe was added (Jesus' or Moses') to point possession, although the pronunciation remained the identical.

“That kind of became the standard that I was taught and that I hold myself to, even though in retrospect I don't think it's a great standard,” he said.

That's because linguists consider writing to be a representation of speech, and language has modified since then. Pulju said he expects the 's form to eventually prevail. But for now, he – together with the Merriam-Webster dictionary – says each forms are acceptable.

“As long as people are communicating successfully, we say the language is doing what it's supposed to do,” he said. “If you can read it, no matter how it's written, it seems to work for people. They're not confused about whose running mate Tim Walz is.”

If she wins in November, Harris could be the third U.S. president with a final name ending in “S,” and the primary since Rutherford B. Hayes, who was elected in 1876 – 130 years before the creation of Twitter – and was spared the social media furore over apostrophes. Harris is the primary candidate with such a sensitive last name since 1984, when Democrat Michael Dukakis lost to George HW Bush.

Dukakis, now 90, said in a telephone interview Monday that he couldn’t recall an analogous discussion when he was a candidate, but he agrees with the AP.

“To me it sounds like it's an S, an apostrophe, and that's it,” he said.

The Harris campaign, meanwhile, has not yet taken a transparent position. In a press release issued by her New Hampshire team on Monday, she praised “Harris' positive vision,” a day after her national press office wrote of “Harris' seventh trip to Nevada.”

Originally published: August 14, 2024 at 5:36 am