Poet's Response To Men Criticizing Tall Women Who Wear Heels Is Perfect (Video)

In my personal opinion, high heels -- stilettos, in particular -- are a creation imagined by the devil.

I hate them. And thus, I don't wear them.

But my opinion, of course, is not shared by all: For many, the height-boosting shoes are empowering.

They're confidence-boosting, to be sure: Nobody has ever looked bad in a good pair of heels. But it's more than that. There's an emotional element, as well, and that element is the one that inspired Imani Cezanne's spoken word poem, Heels.

The poem, which Cezanne performed at the Ill List Slam Poetry Invitational in December, is a lyrical challenge directed at threatened men who criticize tall women who choose to wear high heels.

The stigma, Cezanne explains, stems from the incredibly outdated notion that a woman must be smaller and more delicate than a man.

Cezanne begins her poem dramatically, explaining,

This is for the men who ask me why I wear heels, if I'm already so tall.

Instead of immediately answering, she fires back against the question, hilariously asking,

Who told you that standing next to a tall woman would make your dick shrink?

The poem only continues to get better from there.

She says,

I wear heels because it's useless to cater to your insecurities.

However, while Cezanne could have easily spent the entire time bashing men for their ridiculous feelings of inadequacy when confronted with a tall woman, she doesn't.

Instead, addressing these unseen, fearful males, she argues,

You should shine brighter. You should get more special. You should love yourself enough to not let a woman in heels emasculate you.

Her performance is delightfully sassy and powerful in a way that only a badass feminist like herself could pull off.

Ladies, watch this. Men, watch this. It's time to stop criticizing other people's choices and time to start focusing on our own lives.

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