An older friend (she’s not all that old, really) told me that she could remember a time, back in the late nineties, when high heels briefly went out of fashion. She says low heels and flats were everywhere, and she gets a sort of dreamy look on her face when she thinks back to those times. ‘No teetering around,’ she says. ‘No sore feet or aching calves. You could even run whenever you wanted to and not worry about breaking your ankles. It seemed like a real step forward.’ (I don’t think she was making a pun).
Yet while my friend was telling me about this short golden age of short heels, she was wearing a pair of three and a half inch kitten heels. I pointed out the contrast and she sort of sighed and said: ‘Yeah, but you can’t really do without them.’
She’s right; we can’t do without our heels and they will always be with us (barring the occasional short blip), always making us look taller, always making us feel sexy. So, when the pain starts in your instep, or when you nearly take a flying header over a crack in a paving stone as you move between taxi and club door, just tell yourself the following, true facts. They will help to keep your morale up.
Remember, everything good that’s to be said about high heels comes under the heading of ‘Aesthetics’. Wearing high heels will:
1) Make your calves look thinner – they change the natural angle of course. Can your calves ever look too shapely? Is it possible? If your calves are so perfect that they need no assistance from heels, then I envy you, especially because they (that’s your calves) will look even more perfect when you put on a pair of heels.
2) Make you look taller. It’s one of those injustices in which the world abounds, but the word ‘tall’ is always associated with words like ‘slim’ and ‘thin’, while ‘short’ is predictably partnered by ‘squat’, ‘dumpy’ and other monstrosities. It isn’t fair and isn’t true, either, but the height has it. If you are not tall, borrow some inches.
3) Make your legs look longer. See points one and two. Then think about long, slim shapely legs and look in the mirror. Be honest about the view. Again ask ‘Can my legs ever look too long?’ then reach for your heels.
4) Make your feet appear shorter; which is weird when you first think about it, but makes sense. The length your foot normally takes along the ground has been hiked up at the back. Some of those kamikaze high heels are nearly all height and you have the footprint of a stilt walker. But shorter feet – it’s got to look good; long is good for legs, bad for feet.
5) Finally, and this is the most important, heels make you stand up straight and they make you walk in what is the accepted seductive, sexy, confident fashion. They make you feel good when you wear them. My friend was right.
