Upon seeing that her grandparents have hijacked her room on the day of her birthday (the one that everybody has forgotten), it’s telling that when Samantha Baker (Molly Ringwald) in Sixteen Candles asks Grandma Dorothy (Billie Bird) and Grandpa Howard (Edward Andrews) how they’re doing, it is the former who immediately replies with, “My corns are killing me.” Arguably one of the most underrated, overlooked movie lines in cinema history, those five simple words, delivered within this context, are extremely indicative of the inherent gender discrimination (as well as the ageist stereotype) of corns. 

Maybe Camille never really understood why that ostensibly “esoteric” line of dialogue always stood out to her every time she watched Sixteen Candles (which was enough times to warp the VHS tape and compromise its tracking ability). Not until sometime in the late 90s, when she had started her first “proper” job. Her first “career woman” job, if you will. It was as a paralegal in Midtown, quite possibly the most nightmarish thing one could imagine. Initially, she had tried her hand at the “artsier” pursuit of landing an editorial job at a publishing house, but, when that proved to be a dead end, she pivoted toward this. Somehow, although she had no legal background, the firm that hired her was one of the few willing to offer “on-the-job training” for the right candidate. And she knew that what the “boss man” (fittingly named Chip) found “right” about her was her appearance. Camille had, in fact, been used to doors opening for her all her life because of this very asset. Just not in the publishing world, where it seemed to be a disadvantage to look “hot” because that meant you couldn’t possibly be a “serious reader.” 

Not that being a paralegal didn’t require its own highly serious reading. It just happened that it wasn’t exactly the “erudite” kind of reading that High Literature saw itself as being part of. Plus, in the end, Camille knew she was nothing more than a glorified secretary. Or “executive assistant” as it is now called. That was fine, she supposed. Like Samantha before Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling) magically appears outside the church standing in front of his Porsche, Camille had given up all hope of her dreams ever coming true. It was easier that way. Made life less depressing. Even if it still was when you examined it too closely. But Camille decided she had to look on the “bright side” of things now. What choice did she have? Even if she found it difficult, most days, to feel “plucky” wearing shoes that pinched her feet and made her want to pass out from the pain. But there were a million (literally) other girls in New York willing to wear “fuck me pumps” on the job, so why shouldn’t she be able to do the same? Especially if she wanted to “compete.” Stand out, be seen, et cetera. Which is what you had to do if you wanted to stay “relevant” in the big city. As much as Camille hated to admit it, she still wanted to. Figured she had at least five more years in her to waste “the best years of her life” in a place that exponentially drained you of your vigor and youth with greater gusto than just about anywhere else. 

So she wore “dem heels” with her “smart” skirt suits and her slacks and button-front blouse combos. Never thinking twice about what she was wreaking in the coming months as the pressure on her ring toes, forced to twist and recoil as a form of protection with each new step, grew great enough to invoke…the corns. Having been previously unaccustomed to their presence, Camille initially wanted to write them off as blisters, or something “blister-adjacent.” But as the days went by and they didn’t “pop” or go away, she had to start questioning what was really going on. And that’s when she heard Grandma Dorothy’s line echo back to her from the ether, “My corns are killing me.” 

But Camille was no grandma, she was twenty-five years old. How could she possibly be made to suffer this form of “grandma pain”? Or, at least, pain that was constantly pigeonholed as being solely for grandmas. It was then that Camille knew she and every other woman her age had been sold a lie for the sake of keeping them all quiet. Because if you talked about your corn pain in your twenties, you were admitting some kind of weakness. A frailty that indicated you were on your way to being a very “old” thirty-something. And since the patriarchy behind most societal propaganda knew that the greatest way to scare women into being quiet was to make them come across as “aged” if they spoke up, Camille had of course never met a fellow high heel-wearing woman who had mentioned that her corns were killing her, too. 

The hardened skin with that throbbing central point of pain every time one stepped (or even didn’t) on it was not, as the lore would have one believe, just because a woman had become day-old bread in society’s eyes. It was because she had been conditioned to think wearing high heels was aesthetically pleasing, “sexy.” Just another bill of goods sold by the men who invented the concept of wearing heels in the first place. Apparently, when they realized how fucking uncomfortable they were, they decided to pass the shoe fully off to women. Decree that it was “women’s footwear.” Even though, originally, rich men had wanted to wear it as a symbol of their elevated status, then made their rich “bitches” do the same.

By the eighteenth century, the distinction between “men’s heels” and women’s heels was clear: women were saddled with the far more excruciating iteration of the shoe, featuring narrower toeboxes and ultra-thin heels instead of thick ones. Eventually, “high heels for men” evolved into boots and that’s about it. Nonetheless, their comfort was all but assured from the inception of heels. It was women who didn’t get a say in the styles they wore, told from the beginning that the most architecturally unsound shoe was what they deserved as a mirror of their “frivolity.” And besides, weren’t women accustomed to enduring pain anyway? What with the monthly menstruation/child labor thing. Wearing heels ought to feel divine in comparison. Such was the way of “male logic” (an oxymoron if ever there was one). 

Well, there was nothing divine about Camille’s crippling corns. Honestly, it had gotten to the point where she couldn’t even walk without hobbling anymore. And that’s when she decided she would stop wearing high heels, realizing: no wonder men never get corns. They’re not expected to “ooze sex,” even in a professional setting. They could wear shoes that weren’t tight, shoes with infinite structural support and ample cushioning. The more Camille thought about it, the angrier it made her. That the female gender was put at a disadvantage in every possible way in the workplace. Thus, the friction against her toes had transferred to friction between her and her male co-workers (not the sexual kind, obviously). She found herself not only wearing flats, but exhibiting what the men around her would call a “flat personality.” That is to say, she didn’t smile. Didn’t put on the usual expected airs of “female pleasantry” anymore. And that was directly tied to the fact that she stopped bothering to sexualize her appearance with heels. 

Suddenly, it was as though she was no longer “promotion material.” Wasn’t that fucking convenient? Her shithead boss went back to giving her the frothy, easy legal documents to prepare and also ceased inviting her to join him in more high-level meetings. He was so fucking transparent. And what the fuck did he or Grandpa Howard—or any man—know about “focal intractable plantar hyperkeratosis”? She’d love to see goddamn Chip strut around in a pair of heels all day and still wear a smile. And one that didn’t look like a demonic Joker-y one as a result of the physical agony. 

She knew that what Chip and the rest of the overpaid executives were really upset about was that she was no longer sacrificing her own comfort for their viewing pleasure. Furthermore, Camille was aware that there was an entire fetish around women in heels and the pain associated with it. A routine search for women in heels on the internet would bring up titles like, “Beautiful businesswoman takes off red high heels and massages painful legs.” Misogyny-based sadism at its pinnacle. But there seemed to be no fetish photos involving women with corns. Evidently, that was a little too “real” (read: gross) for most men. Who still wanted to believe “dames” were pliant little creatures who could take all manner of physical torture and alchemize it into “delight”—because shouldn’t it be just that to be able to please a man? Even with the “simple” gesture of dressing up in the caricaturized costume of what it means to be “feminine”? 

Camille was not going to take her discrimination lying down. Particularly as her feet had never felt better—she wasn’t about to ever go back to wearing “torture shoes” again. So she did what any woman with (or without) robust legal knowledge would do: she sued the fuckers. Citing enough credible evidence to convince the jury that her boss’ behavior toward her had changed only after she stopped dressing “like a corporate slut.” With the money she won from the case, Camille abandoned the legal profession and moved Upstate, where she opened a comfort shoe store just for women called Shoes That Aren’t Corny.

The shop became so renowned, it even got a feature on the Vogue website, of all places. Even though magazines like Vogue would always keep indoctrinating women with foolish and physically harmful notions of what constitutes “beauty” and “attractiveness.” But that was fine. As long as there were a few women in the world who could push back against the unstoppable brainwashing machine once in a while, maybe there was hope. If for no other type than the woman who suffered from corns.