Iconic British shoe brand Dr. Martens is hosting a very special giveaway, and you too can enter for a chance to win. The prize? A pair of 8-hole Dr. Martens emblazoned with an image of a woman with double mastectomy scars. The back of the boots read “Queer.”
The painting on the white boots was done by Jess Voss, a Colorado-based painter whose body of work is entirely about gender affirmation, LGBTQ+ issues, body positivity aka fat acceptance, abortion, and trans. The boots received a mixed reaction on social media, with many women pointing out that there’s nothing healthy about the double mastectomy of healthy breasts.
Cosmetic double mastectomies, sometimes called top surgery, are sought by women who believe that they are actually men, despite being female. Many doctors across the US perform these surgeries, and they come with complications. A Miami doctor who performs multiple cosmetic double mastectomies operates without insurance, which is allowable in the state, in order to stave off potential malpractice claims.
Dr. Martens is a long-standing brand that has symbolized non-conformity and independence. It was embraced by the punk rock movement, and by 1990s era devotees of alt-rock. It has maintained its status over the years, but with this new veer into LGBTQ ideology, it takes a departure from a brand status that encouraged heterodoxy to one that is wrapped in groupthink.
I got my first pair of Dr. Martens in the summer of 1991 in Harvard Square, in the middle of a hurricane. There were no women’s sizes or men’s sizes, there were only UK sizes. Storm clouds rolled in, the rain beat down, and my mom and I, on a break from court, went down to one of the shoe shops to buy them. I’d convinced her to let me have them, despite the expense, and likely some of it was guilt, since we’d been in court for a few days while my mom, dad, and step-mom—somehow three entirely different factions— battled over my custody arrangements.
All I wanted were the Docs. They were black 3-holes, and I adored them. I’d wanted them ever since I saw Michelle wearing them to school the year before. They just barely matched our uniform requirements, but she got away with them while I was repeatedly scolded for wearing black Keds. Michelle had purple hair, attitude to burn, and sometimes let me listen to tales of her adventures dropping acid on the south shore beaches with friends. All the drama club girls had Docs.
My biggest rebellion was writing poetry after lights out with a flashlight under my covers. I was awed by the upperclassmen at my Catholic girls’ school. They seemed powerful and bright, secure, ready for life. I was primarily terrified—of my parents, of failing out of school, of not being able to stand on my own two feet.
When I put the Docs on in Harvard Square, black oiled leather that repelled the rain, I felt like I could stand up straight. I felt like I could kick some ass.
That summer saw me move to Philadelphia to live with my mother full-time, judge’s orders. When my dad and I went back to the old house to pick up my things, we found it stacked up on the sidewalk. I lugged each box full of old dolls, books, clothes, and stacked them in my dad’s car. The Docs crunched on the asphalt and gravel, and the soles were so thick I didn’t feel a thing.
Later that summer I found some acrylic paint and painted them. Circles and words intertwined, I made the Docs my own. Later, when the soles wore through and the counter collapsed, I would get another pair, but nothing matched those first ones. I wandered far and wide in the City of Philadelphia in those shoes. I spent my entire junior year in those shoes. I grieved my past Massachusetts life, the beaches, the Catholic girls, the friends I’d made, the life I anticipated, with the help of those Docs.
Now, Dr. Martens is taking a different approach. Rather than remain a blank canvas for the many personalities, life choices, ambitions of those who buy the shoes, the brand has staked a claim to one of the more absurd notions in contemporary life and holds it up as an exemplar of how we all should think.
Dr. Martens backs the idea that women should cut their breasts off when they feel unhappy about being female. The same shoe that made me feel like I could be strong in myself now preaches to women—on white leather, no less—that if they are non-conformist they should alter their healthy bodies, undergo dangerous cosmetic surgery and then celebrate that.
It is for sure true that if there were an artist who made a painting glorifying breast enlargements, that painting would not grace the leather of a pair of Dr. Martens. If an artist advocated for girls to get collagen lip injections, those paintings would not be on the Docs. And it is so unlikely as to be satire to imagine that the back of a pair of Docs would have the word “straight” scrawled across is like it does the word “queer.”
Coupling a brand known for non-conformity with an ideological perspective that is outright and intentionally harmful to young people makes that ideology all the more pernicious and dangerous.
Gender non-conformity is about being the sex you are unapologetically while refusing to comply with society’s stereotypes for that sex. Non-conformity is not about attempting to change your appearance in order to comply with the stereotypes of the opposite sex. To do that means acknowledging that the stereotypes of your own sex—that you are bucking—are correct. It is to say “if I am a woman that does not conform to gender stereotypes I am not female, for the stereotypes, not anatomy, are what define us.” That is backwards, it is anathema to the entire project of equality and women’s rights, and it is what Dr. Martens in pimping with their new shoes.
Artist Jess Voss can sell posters and prints of her work, and does so, but celebrating the dismemberment of women’s healthy body parts, in service to the lie that this turns women male, is enough to make sure I never buy Dr. Martens again—not for myself, not for my child—and neither should anyone who believes that children have the inalienable right to grow up whole. Dr. Martens is poisoning girls against their own bodies, where once the brand stood for being your true self. No one needs to remove body parts to be who they really are.
