They/Them
"Launched in June 2019 in the guise of a fictitious online shoe store, ‘Un/tied Shoes’ takes viewers on a mock lifestyle-driven online shopping experience, the kind in which each customer envisions their journey reaping the-ultimate-pair-of-shoes-that-will-finally-make-my-life-complete. . . . Shoes, of course, being a metaphor for the much meatier matter of how mainstream fashion empowers — or denies — our ability to comfortably express our true identity. . . . Society has grown more accepting of trans and non-binary people, but the issues they face are still often neglected or misunderstood. But Ruddy believes everyone can relate to wanting a pair of shoes or a piece of clothing that informs their identity.”
– Doreen Nicoll, Raise the Hammer
“A new kind of store has popped up in Regina’s atmosphere, one that displays the struggles genderqueer and non-binary people face when they shop. ‘Un/Tied Shoes’ is an online shoe store, with each pair telling a story about what it’s like to be non-binary in a gender-specific world. . . . Ruddy said they hope the site is a call to action for the industry to get away from the confines of two genders. . . . ‘I invite them to think about making these styles of clothes for all sizes and all shapes of people.’”
– Taylor Braat, Global News
AWARDS
Digital Dozen Breakthrough in Digital Storytelling Award
Columbia University School of the Arts Digital Storytelling Lab, 2020
“The creators disrupt the generic familiar quality of the retail site by relating very specific memories to the shoes on offer. The shoes become a revealer of the identity of a specific person as they explore and define the limits of their own identities. The shoe itself is not simply a vehicle for memory. The creators relate it back to embodied existence by offering only certain sizes and your size may not be available and thus may not actually be able to make the shoe fit. That shoe motif harkens back to a widely shared cultural memory of Cinderella. Un/Tied Shoes does not have to explicitly invoke this well-known fairy tale of true identity but in activating your relationship to shoes – fitting or not – it recapitulates the process through which all of us are socialized into accepting fixed gender categories.”
– Illya Szilak, Digital Dozen Breakthrough Awards
NOMINATIONS
“Best Production, Interactive"
2020 Canadian Screen Awards
