Nancy Pelosi’s Heels Are the New Filibuster Sneaker

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Just after 10 a.m. on Wednesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) began a filibuster-style speech opposing a budget agreement that fails to address the legal protection of undocumented immigrants who arrived to the US as children, who are also known as Dreamers. By the time she concluded, Pelosi, who is 77, had been talking for more than eight hours.

And as reporters noted on Twitter, with some amazement, she did the whole thing in 4-inch heels.

Whether or not it was Pelosi’s intention, her choice of footwear makes a statement: She’s not quitting. She doesn’t even feel the pain.

It’s a gritty counterpart to the famous hot pink sneakers that former Texas state Senator Wendy Davis wore while delivering a 13-hour filibuster in 2013 — an effort to block a bill imposing new restrictions on abortion clinics in her state. Davis’s running shoes were just as eye-catching as the pussyhats that Trump protesters wore to the Women’s March on Washington in January 2017, and they looked wildly out of place with her formal blue and white outfit, which was the whole point. She’s not quitting, they said.

To each her own. As one House staffer told me last week, Pelosi runs a polished office.

“The women who work for Nancy Pelosi are so fashionable,” she observed. “They just have really nice staple dresses, and they do pearls, but they’re not too flashy. They look great.”

Who willingly wears high heels when they know they’ll be standing for hours on end if not to make a point?

This story has been updated to reflect the full length of Pelosi’s speech.