Despite increasing levels of discomfort, the female love affair with the stiletto shows no signs of abating, writes FIONOLA MEREDITH.
THEY CAUSE hammer toes and ankle sprains, gammy knees and bad backs. Some experts have even linked them to incontinence and fertility problems. But despite all these decidedly unsexy side-effects, the female love affair with the high heel shows no signs of abating.
Heels are getting more extreme – spikier, shinier and even higher – resembling less an item of footwear than an exquisitely crafted instrument of torture. Right now, they are becoming almost unwearable. Models are clattering inelegantly to the catwalk floor, and what about Victoria Beckham, tottering around a theme park with her kids in five-and-a-half inch Christian Louboutins. That’s got to hurt.
And there was Charlize Theron’s stroll along the the red carpet in equally vertiginous Dior shoes – black snakeskin with golden spike heels – which resulted in a curious knock-kneed effect, every muscle in her legs straining to keep her vertical.
While the majority of us reject the five-inchers, we’re familiar with the distinctive agony of high heels. Chiropodists decry them as warfare on our feet, and chemist shops are coming down with those squidgy little gel-packs designed to soothe the agony. For those with the necessary cash, you can even get the soles of your feet injected with a kind of dermal filler to form an internal protective cushion.
It sounds crazy. So why do we insist on wearing the wicked things?
The easy answer is that they make us feel sexy. They have the power to make the most rotund and stubby-legged of us feel like lunar goddesses. The logistics are simple: back arched, boobs stuck out the front, bottom thrust out at the back. Yes, it’s a caricature of the female form, but one that exerts a powerfully primitive allure, for men and women alike.
Despite her reservations, postgraduate student Kellie Turtle has felt its force: “Being 5ft 11in, I’ve largely had a fear of stilettos. Somewhere in my early 20s I did grow into my giraffe-like frame, but still the idea of gaining another five inches just seems a little ridiculous. The one thing that does tempt me, and that I think may lie close to the heart of our obsession with heels, is the way they make you walk. Your right foot goes down, right buttock rises, left foot forward, bottom sways and the left buttock has its moment of glory. Repeat until hypnotic effect on whoever is behind you is fully achieved.”
But writer Anna Mullan is unconvinced: “They do make your legs look longer but, then, the discomfort makes your face look longer.”
For others, heels are a guilty pleasure, an obscure source of satisfaction. Jan, a teacher, confesses: “I have this pair of black high heels that I think of as my bad shoes. They have a kind of split personality all of their own: a really high, thin spiky heel at the back, then at the front they look like sensible, lace-up brogues, but the lace is a ribbon. So they’re both sexy and sweet, dangerous and demure. I love that.”
Heels are also a marker of social status, and always have been, since their origins in 15th-century Venice. Venetian courtesans required physical attendants to support them as they teetered around in crude platform shoes known as chopines. The higher the chopine, the higher the rank of the wearer. So a 20-inch wearer would easily trump a paltry five-incher.
In a similarly unsubtle way, Beckham and Theron’s fetish shoes announce their status as alpha females – sexually powerful, pampered, rich and famous. In slipping on those precarious Louboutins for a family day out, Beckham may also be implying that unlike other mothers, destined to spend the day mopping up spilled juice and rushing sweatily after their over-excited offspring, she rises fragrantly above such chaos. By historical standards, however, she’s losing the battle.
But for a small but hardy band of stiletto sceptics, this is all far from a joke. Historian and author Amanda Foreman says: “These fashions are a way of limiting women at times when they are getting more powerful. These shoes should go back in the box – they are ridiculous and essentially disempowering.” Academic Sheila Jeffreys takes it a step further, arguing that men get sexual satisfaction from seeing women tottering around in agony.
But others have argued that the latest shoe creations are so mean and spiky looking that they frighten men. It’s possible.
On one occasion, wearing an especially pointy pair of stiletto boots, a man of my acquaintance hissed in my ear: “You’re just wearing those to intimidate me.”
Killer heels indeed.
