Reave, an assistant English Professor at Texas Wesleyan University, examines the paradox of the pointe shoe in its intended uses: the foot becomes the focus while being effaced; it controls and imprisons the foot while allowing the dancer to ‘defy gravity’; and it disintegrates/fragments the foot (scarring, calluses, blood) while giving the impression of a long, continuous whole (the line of the leg and body). Using her own experience as a dancer, autobiographies, and interviews, she applies theories of semiotics to explore the shoe as fetish and the contradictory nature of that fetishism. She provides the only direct discussion of pointe shoes that I have come across thus far and will be helpful in providing me with a starting point for looking at the more intangible notions that will arise from the systematic analysis of pointe shoes.