Yumi Ishikawa

While we admire the resistance of Meghan Markle in the last months of pregnancy not only published, but kept steadily on high heels, Japanese women seem to have declared war on uncomfortable shoes, and along with the strict requirements of the office dress code, operating in the country.

Led protest movement 32-year-old model and actress Yumi Ishikawa. It all started with the fact that in January of this year, the girl tweeted with outrage from the fact that Japanese employers forced women to wear heels. The post caused a great response, gaining more than 100 thousand likes and posts, and the comments women shared their complaints of pain in the legs and back due to the constant wearing of shoes with heels, and published some photos of corns.

Seizing the moment, last week, Ishikawa launched a online campaign with the hashtag #KuToo (it is based on a combination of two Japanese words kutsu (shoes) and kutsuu (pain). The name Yumi was chosen by analogy with the known motion #MeToo, which began to gain popularity in October 2017, after this phrase has become a symbol of struggle against sexual harassment and received a special distribution in connection with the scandal around Harvey Vanshtein.

She also created a petition on change.org an appeal to the Ministry of health, labour and welfare, in which she asks politicians to pay attention to the situation and forbid employers to require employees to wear a certain type of Shoe. To date, it was signed by almost 17 thousand people.

I thought that if so many people so close to this topic, why not start a movement,

— said Yumi in an interview with TIME.

Yumi Ishikawa

It should be noted that the undertaking of the girls have supported not all. While some agreed that it is not even about whether someone’s high heels or not, but first and foremost about freedom of choice, while others wrote in comments that this requirement for women is no different from the requirements for men to wear leather shoes.

The scandals of the strict dress code previously flared and / or other countries. So, a similar petition against heels was launched in the UK in 2016. Then Nicola Thorpe appealed to the government to prohibit companies to require women to wear heels. Such an act is inspired by her personal experience: shortly before the Torp itself was sent home because she showed up to work in ballet flats (dress code required shoes with heels from 4 to 10 centimeters).

A scene from the movie “the Wolf of wall Street”

Interestingly, the instructions on how to be dressed, sometimes come not only from superiors in the office, but also from random people on vacation, where, apparently, the closet can be informal. So, about the same time, when Yumi started his action, the passenger airlines Thomas Cook Emily O’connor was faced with the face control at the entrance to the plane.

Last week a girl was going to fly to the Canary Islands, so got dressed in a crop top and light pants. Representatives of the airline called her views “inappropriate” and asked him or throw something on the shoulders or otherwise leave the Board. Earlier this week, the airline brought the girl to apologize.

Emily O’connor

The first news about Yumi Ishikawa shared blogger LucyHale.