Walk on the wild side: five-inch heels
I see them in all the stores these days.
They look like an exaggerated joke about the extent to which women will go to martyr themselves for the sake of beauty. I refer of course to the five-inchers, that latest manifestation of the sky-high spike heel—higher than anything I wore in my reckless youth, much much higher than anything I’d dare to hobble around in now, higher than any shoe a sane human being should ever wear.
But human beings are not sane, and high high heels make the legs look long and sexy. And so women wear them—young women, at least. There are a number of articles offering advice to the novice, including such obvious points as wearing them only on occasions when it’s possible to sit down for most of the evening after making the grand entrance.
Feast your eyes on a typical pair:
In my dancing days I used to sport pointe shoes and twirl around on the tips of my toes, so I know what shoe discomfort is. But I can’t imagine that pointe shoes are significantly more tortuous than these.
I gave up on anything but sensible heels when I moved to Europe and had to deal with cobblestone streets. I equate those examples with a broken neck.
I wish I could repeat what my physical therapist said yesterday about these abominations but it was definitely barracks language, i.e. not family-friendly at all. Orthopedic surgeons are another group with strong opinions about the negative health consequences (how’s that for a euphemism?) of these contraptions. And let’s hope that women who insist on wearing them anyway don’t get the short end of Dr. Berwick’s rationing stick when they need a foot or leg operation at some point down the pike.
As a man, I thank the gods that I never have to wear these things. I would fall down and break my neck.
But also as a man, I love it when women do wear them. They tend to be very sexy. I guess I’m just selfish.
As a man, I never understood high heels. I always preferred women wearing flat, normal, practical, comfortable shoes.
I also preferred unshaved legs.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that most women who met those criteria were lesbians.
When I was a wee youth in high school, not only did I walk in 5 inch heels, but I could to a slow run in them.
My doctor said my leg muscles were shortening, and issued a ban (back in the 80s). Haven’t worn them since – I rarely go higher than 2″. But I did have some very pretty shoes back in the day.
So. Is the newest style for women to look as if their working on the set of an “adult” film? and I don’t mean bringing the shooting crew coffee, either.
In the days of my youth, (40s & 50s) women routinely wore high heels. Seldom were they 5″, but 4″ heels were quite common. The effect that they had on showing off a well shaped leg was never lost on me. As heels became lower and less common, I silently mourned their passing.
It is, however, one of the many reasons I appreciate Sarah Palin. She wears heels often, effortlessly and proudly. To very glamorous effect.
On the other hand my sensible side says that, as sexy as they are, they cannot be good for the feet or legs. Should be used with caution and only for special occasions.
Those are stripper/porn star shoes.
While I wear 3″ to tango and on dressy occasions, most of the time I wear low heels for comfort.
And forget about a shoe like the one in the picture. I’m tall already and don’t need to look like I qualify for the NBA.
Fausta I’ll bet you look great! A tango should probably not be done in flats (nor, perhaps, sans rose). As evidence for the former I offer Jamie Leigh Curtis in True Lies.
For load bearing walks:
http://www.altama.com/footwear-by-activity/4-Load-Bearing-Missions
Nolan,
No rose, thanks, but I did get a pair of tango shoes Neoneocon recommended!
At least when you go en pointe you have presumably worked for years strengthening your muscles before hand.
Neo, I got a 404 Not Found error on your en pointe link.
What would the Manolo say?
When you factor in the very thick platform sole on this particular pair, I wonder if it’s more like walking on four inch heels rather than five inch heels.
Regardless….ouch.
You can’t go wrong taking Neo’s advice about dance accoutrements!
You women and your shoes. I remember when, as a joke, I complimented a women on her shoes and it opened up a whole lot of nonsense that required nodding and grinning. I tried it again, and yes, it worked. It always works. But then, I’m glad women like shoes and wouldn’t have it any other way. I just hope you understand, every dollar spent on shoes we get to spend on golf clubs.
What kind of error were you hoping for?
If she’s going to wear “Hooker Shoes”, she needs to paint her toenails a matching color, or something.
I guess. It seems that somehow I’ve managed to live a half century without knowing what Hooker’s toenails look like …
BTW, my lovely bride won’t wear heels almost at all any more, except for Cowboy (Cowgirl?) boots. They have a surprisingly high hee (2″?)l, but you get a lot of ankle support. And you don’t look like a Hooker. 😉
“It seems that somehow I’ve managed to live a half century without knowing what Hooker’s toenails look like …”
Right. And life on the road!
Good cover there Borepatch, but like a man who returns to the scene of the crime . . . me thinks thou dost protest too much. . . And the (2″?) mistype that fits inside the heel? Hummmm? Yeah? Hummmm?
When vogue goes insane, the law must intervene and stop such dangerous practice. There are laws about product safety, and this looks like a proper instance use them.
meh.. these heels are a bit much for me. I love women’s legs.. almost to the point of a fetish.. but mostly only with stockings.. which have gone the way of the dinosaur.. *sigh*
Those shiny bare legs? Ewww!
Designer stilts, the next wave …
I think it’s not the legs we’re responding to. I think we are responding at a much more primitive level, can’t figure out why, and just accept the leg explanation.
Heels make a woman’s butt stick out. I think that’s the draw.
More pedantry: tortuous or torturous. Language can be both! Maybe self-torturing would be better.
I know they’re tough on the feet, but there’s nothing like heels, phew!
5-inch heels are as bad as absolute flats.
And that’s all the choice we have in shoe stores now.
Btw, Palin does not wear 5″ heels. She’s a sensible woman – her heels are about 3.5″.
Do these high heels discriminate against women with small feet? It strikes me that one could apply a bit of high school geometry and identify a group of women eligible to file a classs action suit. Where is NOW on this?
Just another example, if one were needed, of women being the ones historically who have kept podiatrists in business. Check out the Victoria and Albert Museum in London for some fashion atrocities from the 17th and 18th Centuries if you need proof. Yes, noblemen also wore high heels back then, but the shoes themselves looked far more natural than the leather vicegrips that the high-born and wealthy women of the day forced their feet into.
I’m one of those men, btw, that simply doesn’t grasp the high-heels = sexy equation. I’m a practical kind of guy, and for me, the overriding concern is how painful the shoes look. Platforms don’t do it for me, either.
Sex is a dominant selector. that is in the absence of toning it down, it drowns out most others. So liberation, the way the free love core of the movement, is antithetical.
it was not the men who cover women up, its the women, who cover women up and get the men to enforce it. they present it 180 degrees so that the men are blamed and the women race to the bottom in some pretend way to make sure no one is oppressing them as they cant tell the difference between a common sense limitation (in an empirical and imperfect world), and someone limiting them (other than the leaders who dictate these mental positions to take).
so rather than a flourishing of womens intellect we got a race to the bottom in a cultural play out of the aristocrats joke… that is in the effort to stamp out a ghost that doesnt exist but in ideology, they persue every corner of every perversion they can find that someone might say no to. (while being told they have no power of their own, but the collective, which the leaders, the angels that they are, use that power for whose ends?)
eventually, when the ugly girls don’t equalize, the harridens of feminism (ever notice the trend in leaders?), will cover them up. they like the burka as it fits their ideological views!!! we as a mass public don’t believe their ideological views so we argue what we make up and then find the position inexplicable. [in essence they are reinventing the parts of the culture they despised before, as they no longer have the limitation that caused the dispisal, but now despise what the switch causes. forever pendulums never resting, never happy, constantly moving, and constantly serving the leaders who keep telling them what to do and explaining how it will work for them (which it doesn’t – it just keeps em hopping)]
Unleashing sex meant that the woman who wrote great poetry isnt worth squat over the woman with a good rack. of course the feminists tell the women to blame the animals that men are. which they dont realize is saying. if those men were completely turned off by you, like they were all gay, then you will be happy (of course not, as you cant turn them on again at will like a light switch).
they basically are cleverly told that they are never what they want to be, but only almost, which then they respond to some whipit telling them what they should be is what they want to be.
everyone knows this effect, and since the marxists define how we behave as how we learned to behave, us men are just uncooperative.
but women tend to be shortsighted (not if you accept their beating on you to prevent you from saying it), short horizons, constant changing of goals, gullibility, vanity… it causes a heck of a lot of their problems and since they are told (gullible) that men make them all as eternal oppressors, keeping them from being equals (defined as superiors, vanity), etc.
put a bunch of nice colored leds in a ring… each led shines bright as the newer qualities of man (you know the ones that get us to invent, be socially organized wihtout leaders, etc)… and in the center put a 100 watt bulb..
if you dont dim the bulb you wont see the other qualities. its not the person seeing that is the problem, their biology cant tune out the bright light. its a cornerstone of living and evolving. creatures without it, fade away to extinction (the point that short sightedness and vanity wont let you see – like its good to belive people who have exterminated people when they say they wont do it any more).
the extreme form of this covering is the burka, and the victorian era. the italians had something similar to the burka (but how many know that).
the whole idea that our ancestors had that moved the population forward as a whole was that it was important who you mated with and that women have a lot of value in being a resevior of the best human qualities.
indiscriminate and random mating, erases the qualities that we developed to get us here. hating those qualities moves us to ignore them in selection. in the absence of that, its random action like guppies and herds. (which fits the ideas the greenies are putting forth. we are animals, we are cattle, the men are stupid (and by extension their women too!!! duh), etc)
RIGHT-THROUGH STARE
by ALETHEIA PLANKIW http://www.artsandopinion.com/2008_v7_n1/plankiw.htm
its the road to the burka… the leaders know..
more and more it looks like the end result is a nice playground for elite men, and a population of women who become a collective harem, as they have no means of moving now from class.. and their mates dont.. so the only thing left is to out babylone the babylonian whores and get the attention of an elite..
they are NOT babylonian whores, but if we look at the social layout, and the number of mates, and behaviors. the leaders sure are moving them into that mold…
pretty soon, politicians and the wealthy elite will be the only way to change class. and like in india, women of course will be allowed to marry up (unlike men).
its THEIR utopia they are building, and defining. and they belive that only they, who worked for it, will get to live in it. there are tons of clues… and they say so all the time…
the removal of men as a norm (hard to wage wars)
women taking care of self (dont have to use your own wealth to support a harem. ie, a less honorable harem than harems!). women trained by porn and liberation to be experts at being COURTESANS and ENTERTAINMENT for those with great wealth and political attention or identity. since the men are gone, most children will come from the elite remaining and the prols.
so it all returns to the same old aristocratic mating game of before, but with a modern analytical twist to it.
after all, in a lot of this we refuse to look at whose father and fathers father have been a part of this.
as their cultural mandates have destroyed families, they have set their families up!!!
ie, they removed their enemies, and secured their position.
without good mates and such, women move from heterosexual single partners, to what? what is the only alternative? being shared in some way. serial monogamy is what a collective harem would look like if the men just decided not to taste the same things more than once. they are mathematically equivalent even if we set up trappings to make them seem different or superior
and the guys that can see this and think this is a very dispicable thing… and think that its better when we thought women were important, not disposable like men. and there were families and family history, and someone who really cared taking care of her (and him if alive) into old age. rather than state death through care limitation and dehydration!!!
but we were called bad names.. prevented from debate!!! without a change to the key foundational movement which took us from individual rights to the collective rights of harem life as chattel and cattle, they are not going to let go what they were told is going to be so great!
[with their natural defenders and providers gone, what will really happen?]
I would create a tax deduction for women who wear high heels. The higher the heel the greater the tax break.
“Democracy is the road to socialism.” — Karl Marx
[ergo all their crowing about democracy – which they define differently. they work towards THAT definition, not yours]
“Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.” — Karl Marx
“A world where men and women would be equal is easy to visualize, for that precisely is what the Soviet Revolution promised.” – Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York, Random House, 1952), p.806
waltj, you should see, even from your own comment, shouldn’t you? – that it’s not women who keep podiatrists is business. It’s men who perceive “high heels shoes = sexy”. Rules of attraction, you know.
An aside supportive argument is someone’s note above, re: “women with hairy legs who never wear hi-heels: lesbians”.
See, they don’t compete for male attention and so don’t care if men don’t find their legs sexy.
Unlike us, heterosexuals…
Perfected Democrat:
everything “new” is well-forgotten “old”.
Chopins.
“…that it’s not women who keep podiatrists is business. It’s men who perceive “high heels shoes = sexy”. Rules of attraction, you know.
Point taken, Tatyana. But I hold myself blameless in this regard. I was perfectly happy for my last girlfriend to wear flats, sneakers, and low-heeled sandals the vast majority of the time. The highest heels I ever saw her wear (twice) were about 2″, and I don’t know if she even owned anything higher than that.
OK, waltj, you personally are off the hook. It’s not you, it’s them!
Aww, Yer Mother Wears Combat Boots!
Hi neo:
The last thing in the world we need is Lady M in 5″ heels. I already have my hands full reflecting away her 3″ barefoot advantage over Big Guy.
Besides, those heels don’t look strong enough to carry the load.
Hugs,
M
“My Mama wears combat boots!”
It’s an ever-popular item among military post exchanges – the baby onsies and kid’s tee shirts.
http://www.zazzle.com/my_mama_wears_combat_boots_tshirt-235583100373917469
Speaking of shoes and the wear and profession-specific wear and tear on the feet – wearing military-issue jungle boots for months and years on end does put a distinct callus just at the exact point where the top of your foot joins your ankle. My dad and I had an odd sort of bonding moment, when I pointed out mine, and he answered that he had the same, when he was in the Army.
Perfected Democrat:
Zhanna Aguzarova, 1986′ record “Wonderful Land”
Look at the shooooooes!
@ Tatyana: Aguzarova is fabulous.
T, excellent shoes (they do kind of grow on you, no pun intended) and great hair; there’s hope yet for the world if we can still retain our sense of humor, and in tandem our fair sex wears just about anything just to be cute; liberty!
I am past the point of having to look young and sexy. I don’t even like wearing two inch heels. I never really understood the obsession some women have with shoes. Even when I WAS young and sexy I had at most three pairs of shoes. For me, shoes are like the wardrobe version of a car; I just want them to get me around reliably with some comfort. That sounds like something neo said on an earlier thread,
And on an unrelated note, I think artfldgr needs to get his own blog.
Tarquin – she is.
PD, your forgot the voice and what’s behind it…all that w/o the voice and her personality is just mindless clowning. See abhorrent Lady Gaga.
PD, for illustration:
sans shoes
For what it’s worth 🙂
I will be marrying a woman with a couple hundred pairs of heels…
Many of which have the platform. For some reason God made her have the ability to walk and be in them without too much trouble. 🙂
And that.. is why she’s with me. She’s perfect for me!
He he.
yum
And as I’m the lone dissenter here.
I recognize that they aren’t for most people. And…. just like the bikini where some people wear them and shouldn’t – you see that going on with these kinds of shoes also.
Pet peeve…. women wearing sandals with the scaly chapped skin on their heels. Grind that stuff off ! 🙂
Off topic :
Obama drops to 28% in AZ
http://azstarnet.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_5e04d913-6975-53ae-8ac2-e26ef55339b7.html
Every time I see that photo I feel like I should be counting out some one dollar bills….. 😀
Sexiness is power. Like Sarah, women who wear heels aren’t afraid of power. And who says they’re not practical? http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1465369.ece
I love what heels do to the line of a woman. AVI is correct, not only her legs, but her rump is put in a compelling display.
Five inches may be too much for long-term duty. But they help make special occasions special.
More disappointing are women (girls) young enough to be capable in heels who clomp around like livestock in their flip-flops. Even a sneaker or ordinary shoe has some lift for my eye and imparts some grace to her movements.