Topic: high heels

“My mother was big on beauty. She’d say, ‘Anna, how come you look so ugly? You dress like a boy. You not sexy nothing. Anna, fix hair. You cut the hair like a boy.’ She had this ancient view that a woman’s value was wrapped up in her appearance. But I never bought into that pressure to be pretty.”One day I wore a multicolored dress [on Today] and someone asked if I was trying to be Toucan Sam. But I chose it because I thought, ‘This will perk up America.’ I’m encouraged by my bosses to wear these ridiculously high-heel shoes because women say, ‘I love your shoes!’ So if it makes women happy, I’ll wear them. But I’m still going to be me.”

Ann Curry recently said this in an interview with The Ladies Home Journal. The interview was conducted before Ann was fired from her post as anchor on The Today Show but she probably knew what was coming as she was rather candid about her employers in the interview. Now Ann was held to a higher standard than most women because her job was to go on television each morning and tell millions of Americans the news of the day. But the sentiment that heel height and the color of your dress affecting your work abilities is something some working women can relate to, even if they aren’t sitting next to Matt Lauer. We talked to some fashion experts about this. More »