No stranger to controversies, Kristen Stewart jump-started the 2018 Cannes film festival protesting the unwritten high heels only policy by taking off her high heels in the middle of the red carpet.

Even if you hate her acting, movies, or character, you really have to respect the girl for defying such an absurd and gender inequality rule. I love that she didn't shy away from walking barefoot through the red carpet because she knew it was going to bring attention to the topic. And honestly, no social inequality will change unless we speak about it.

It just blows my mind to think that we're living in 2018, yet there are still images women have to live up to.

I'm not bashing the Cannes Film Festival for requiring a dress code because there are dress codes everywhere. For example, you wouldn't show up for work wearing shorts and a crop top. This also means you probably shouldn't wear jeans and a t-shirt to an upscale event like the Cannes Film Festival.

However, my problem is that the film festival is requiring women to only wear high heels to the event. They're portraying the idea that the only way for a woman to dress professionally or look "fancy" is by wearing high heels, which is not true at all. They're also enforcing the idea that women have to wear high heels in order to fit a certain image. Flats can also make an outfit look fancy if you look for the right ones. Many women in the workforce wear flats and are still able to look professional and well put together because high heels are just not practical for an everyday setting.

Although the Cannes Film Festival has denied enforcing the high heels only policy, there were several reports of women being denied entry to the festival in 2015 for wearing flats. Some women were older and had medical conditions that didn't allow them to wear high heels. In 2015, Asif Kapadia, the director of the Amy Winehouse documentary "Amy," also said his wife was originally denied entry to the festival for wearing flats but was eventually let in.

If men aren't required to wear torture devices on their feet, I don't see why women have to.

Women do not need to add another six inches to their height in order to look "fancy" or "professional" enough, especially if men do not have to and flats do the same job.

People need to stop living in this bubble that women have to present themselves a certain way in order to fit into the social norms or look womanly enough. Women are not bound to only skirts and dresses anymore, and we certainly shouldn't be bound to only heels. It's 2018 and if women want to wear flats and pants, so be it. And if men want to wear makeup and dresses, so be it. As long as they're not looking sloppy or showing up in sneakers, I don't see a problem with wearing flats to the Cannes Film Festival.

I'm happy that women like Kristen Stewart are putting down their foot and standing up to this unfair rule.

It may seem like a small and irrelevant problem to some, but incidents like these show how minorities, women, and people of color become oppressed in social settings, whether they're big or small.