Doll Talk: CFM; hoohoo (& other) display stands

[Jonathan Lighter]

My understanding is that the term originally applied to the extreme, red platform high-heeled shoes popular (they say) on the club scene in the '70s. The idea was that any female who wore such a striking (and pricey) style was maximally wild and crazy and unabashedly looking for umlove.

JL

Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: Doll Talk: CFM; hoohoo (& other) display stands
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On Aug 9, 2005, at 3:32 PM, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Jesse Sheidlower
> Subject: Re: Doll Talk: CFM; hoohoo (& other) display stands
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> On Tue, Aug 09, 2005 at 03:15:05PM -0400, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> At 9:40 AM -0400 8/9/05, Mark A. Mandel wrote:
>>> My wife, who collects dolls and makes clothing for them, saw this on
>>> one of
>>> her doll forums.
>>>
>>> -- Mark A. Mandel
>>> (by hand)
>>>
>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>
>>> Describing elegant, fancy, stiletto heel shoes:
>>>
>>>>>>
>>> It will probably be about a month before I get the prototypes of
>>> those -
>>> probably in the same shipment as these sandals. My roommate in
>>> college
>>> would
>>> have called them CFM shoes... I can't say what that means here or the
>>> moderators would remove the post ;-)
>>> <<<
>> This is, I infer, "Come Fuck Me"? I've heard of "fuck-me shoes"
>> (although I have no idea what they are--I somehow never learned how
>> to decode communication from footware), but not "come fuck-me", but I
>> take it that's what's involved here, unless I have the C wrong. (As
>> I say, shoes don't talk to me.)
>
> Yes, it's "Come Fuck Me". _The F-Word_ has a 1990 example from
> Pam Munro's _Slang U_ (unusually referring to a skirt; it's
> usually footwear). Antedatings welcome. _fuck-me_ adj. is from
> the early 1970s.
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
> OED
>

By coincidence, it was in 1990 that I first heard this term and, FWIW,
I've heard only the alternate form, "fuck-me shoes." I've never quite
been able to winkle any sense out of it, even though my wife and female
friends have pointed out to me examples of such footwear. And, if
memory serves, there was even an episode of Sex And The City that
revolved around such shoes. OTOH, its application to a skirt, a dress,
or a top would make perfect sense to me.

-Wilson Gray

P.S. My spellchecker saved me from eggcorning "footwear" as "footware."


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