Could This Finally Be the Downfall of High Heels?
By Cheryl Harbour

Warning: There may be some information in this article you wish you didn't know...like the real reason men find women in high heels attractive.

Hardly anyone who’s ever worn a pair of high, high heels has raved about its comfort. And at a certain point in their fashionable lives, many women push their higher heels to the back of the closet or into the consignment bag. According to the Washington Post, “High heels are the worst and women are finally ditching them.”

No doubt about it: Women have a love/hate relationship with high heels. They hate the pain but they’re well aware that men love the way women look in high heels. So it's up to each woman to decide: Which matters most – potential sex appeal or comfort and common sense?

Somehow high heels have survived all kinds of assaults - from women's liberation and feminism to an overall dressing-down of fashion to designers trending toward ballet flats and sneakers. The fashion statement of heels has survived so far -- but not without some bruises.

According to the NPD Group’s retail tracking service, sales of high heels dropped 12% last year while sales of sneakers rose 37%. So why have high heels refused to die?

First a quick run through of reasons NOT to wear heels:

Most health problems associated with high heels involve the skeleton and foot bones. Heels pitch the foot forward and compress toes into a tiny space, so the result may be hammer toes or bunions – not to mention pain, pinched nerves, and heel spurs. Straining ankles and tendons around the foot can lead to tendonitis, and over time, the Achilles tendon can shorten. There is also research supporting the fact that walking in high heels impairs the working of the muscular pump in the calves which is responsible for returning blood to the upper body. The result may be vein problems.

And now the explanation for women continuing to wear high heels despite the medical claims:

Men find women in high heels attractive. Women innately know it, and scientists have studied this phenomenon. Heels give a woman’s buttocks a lift. They make her legs look longer. They make her take smaller steps and pivot her hips more which results in a gait that is seen as more feminine. Most alarmingly, heels make a woman arch her back, leading to a curve that approaches a 45 angle, which is considered ideal for sending out “I’m ready for sex” messages. This is the way it works in the animal kingdom (the arching of the back, not the high-heel wearing) and apparently among human animals, too.

This observation comes from a study reported in the Daily Mail and led by Dr. David Lewis at Murdoch University in Australia, which had men look at photos of women that showed their bodies but not their shoes. The models changed from heels to flats, but the study subjects didn’t know what the women were wearing when the photos were taken. Overwhelmingly, the men deemed the photos where women were wearing high heels as most attractive, apparently because of the arch in their back.

Another series of studies tested how men and women reacted to the same person on the street when she was wearing high heels, medium heels and flats. The study is fascinating and you can read all the results in this article in Psychology Today, but here’s one example:

A woman wearing a modest outfit and holding a clipboard was stationed on a busy sidewalk. She approached people to ask them to take a survey. A third of the time she was wearing high heels; a third, medium heels; and a third, flats. The results? Women responded to the request almost equally, no matter what shoes the person with the clipboard was wearing. For men:

  • Flats: 47 percent of men were willing to take the survey.
  • Medium heels: 63 percent of men were willing to take the survey.
  • High heels: 83 percent of men were willing to take the survey.

Several trends are now working against the wearing of high heels. Casual dress in many workplaces gives women a broader range of shoe styles from which to choose. Active lifestyles, Fitbits, and other incentives to walk more often – even as opposed to sitting at a desk for many hours – make high heels more impractical and less necessary. Some women even feel, in a world that feels increasingly dangerous, they want to be able to run if necessary.  And shoe retailers are diving into the opportunity – designing high fashion sneakers and shoes that put comfort first.

Maybe women are becoming less willing to suffer for the attention of men. As they get older, they either have foot problems (possibly earned by years of wearing high heels) or don’t want them. And perhaps men are looking for more in their woman than a certain curve of the spine. This time, the downfall of high heels may actually happen.




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