High-heeled shoe

High-heeled shoes are shoes which raise the heel of the wearer's foot significantly higher than the toes. When both the heel and the toes are raised equal amounts, as in a platform shoe, it is generally not considered to be a "high-heel." High-heels come in a wide variety of styles, and the heels are found in many different shapes, including stiletto, block, tapered, blade, and wedge.

While high heels are today mostly associated with female shoe styles, and the term high heeled shoe is generally understood to mean styles of spike-heeled footwear almost exclusively worn by women, there are numerous shoe designs worn by all genders which have elevated heels, including cowboy boots and cuban heels. A "low heel" is considered less than 1", while 1" to 2.5" heels are considered "mid heels," and anything over 2.5" is considered a "high heel" ^{[citation needed]}.

History

Raised heels are stated to have been a response to the problem of the rider's foot slipping forward in stirrups while riding. The "rider's heel," approximately 1-1/2" high, appeared around 1500. The leading edge was canted forward to help grip the stirrup, and the trailing edge was canted forward to prevent the elongated heel from catching on underbrush or rock while backing up, such as in on-foot combat. These features are evident today in riding boots, notably cowboy boots.

The simple riding heel gave way to a more stylized heel over its first three decades. Beginning with the French, heel heights among men crept up, often becoming higher and thinner, until they were no longer useful while riding, but were relegated to "court-only" wear. By the late 1600s men's heels were commonly between three and four inches in height.

In 1533, the diminutive wife of the Duke of Orleans, Catherine de Medici, commissioned a cobbler to fashion her a pair of heels, both for fashion, and to increase her stature. They were an adaptation of chopines (elevated wooden soles with both heel and toe raised not unlike modern platform shoes), but unlike chopines the heel was higher than the toe and the "platform" was made to bend in the middle with the foot.

High-heeled shoes quickly caught on with the fashion-conscious men and women of the French court, and spread to pockets of nobility in other countries. The term "well-heeled" became synonymous with opulent wealth. Both men and women continued wearing heels as a matter of noble fashion throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When the French Revolution drew near, in the late 1700s, the practice of wearing heels fell into decline in France diue to its associations with wealth and aristocracy.

Throughout most of the 1800s, flat shoes and sandals were usual for both sexes, but the heel resurfaced in fashion during the late 1800s, almost exclusively among women.

High-heels today

Throughout the last sixty years high-heels have fallen in and out of favor several times, most notably in the late 90s, when lower heels and even flats predominated^{[citation needed]}. Lower heels were preferred during the late 60s and early 70s, as well, but higher heels returned in the late 80s and early 90s. The shape of the fashionable heel has also changed from block (70s) to tapered (90s), and stiletto (50s, 80s, and post-2000).

Today, high-heels are typically worn by women, with heights varying from a cuban heel of 1½" height to a stiletto heel (or spike heel) of 4" or more. Extremely high-heeled shoes, such as those higher than 5", are normally worn only for aesthetic reasons and are not considered practical. Court shoes are conservatively styles and often used for work and formal occasions, while more adventurous styles are common for evening wear and dancing. High-heels have seen significant controversy in the medical field lately, with many podiatrists seeing patients whose severe foot problems have been caused almost exclusively by high-heel wear.

The Sabrina heel is the standard for court shoes and is named after the Audrey Hepburn film of the same name. The Stiletto heel is named after a style of narrow-bladed knife, and is higher with a narrower base.

Reasons for wearing high heels include:

they change the angle of the foot with respect to the lower leg, which accentuates the appearance of calves
they change the wearer's posture, requiring a more upright carriage and altering the walk
they make the wearer appear taller
they cause the wearer's legs to look longer

Reasons for not wearing high heels include:

they can become painful or damaging for some wearers.
they can shorten the wearer's stride
they can render the wearer unable to run

Men and heels

Although high heels originated as male footwear around 1500, since the late 1700s, men's shoes have had primarily low heels. The two exceptions are cowboy boots, which continue to sport a taller riding heel, and a brief resurgence in higher-heeled shoes for men in the 1970s^[1], and in Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta's character wears a cuban heel in the opening sequence. Some men today wear high-heels and fashion designers have occasionally featured men wearing heels on the runways since the early 1990s^{[citation needed]}. Some shoe manufacturers now market heels with significantly larger sizes to accommodate men.

Accessories

The stiletto of certain kinds of high-heels can damage some types of floors. Such damage can be prevented by heel protectors, also called covers, guards, or taps, which fit over the "stiletto" tips to keep them from direct, marring contact with delicate surfaces, such as linoleum (rotogravure) or urethane-varnished wooden floors. Heel protectors are widely used in ballroom dancing, as such dances are often held on wooden flooring.

Foot and tendon problems

High-heeled shoes slant the foot forward and down while bending the toes up. The more that the feet are forced into this position, the more it may cause the Achilles tendon to shorten. This may cause problems when the wearer chooses lower heels or flat-soled shoes. When the foot slants forward, a much greater weight is transferred to the ball of the foot, increasing the likelihood of damage to the underlying soft tissue which supports the foot. In many shoes, style dictates function, either compressing the toes, or forcing them together, possibly resulting in blisters, corns, hammer toes, bunions, and many other medical conditions, most of which are permanent, and will require surgery to alleviate the pain.

If it is not possible to avoid high heels altogether, then the wearer should ensure wearing high-heels no more often than twelve hours a day, and that they are spending at least a third of the time on their feet in contour-supportive "flat" shoes (such as exercise sandals), or well-cushioned "sneaker-type" shoes, saving high heels for special occasions.

One of the most critical problems of high-heeled-shoe design involves a properly constructed toebox. Improper construction here can cause the most damage to one's foot. Toeboxes which are too narrow force the toes to be "crammed" too close together. Ensuring that room exists for the toes to assume a normal separation so that high-heel wear remains an option rather than a debilitating practice, is an important issue in improving the wearability of women's high-heeled fashion shoes.

Wide heels do not necessarily offer more stability, and any raised heel with too much width, such as found in "blade-" or "block-heeled" shoes, induces unhealthy side-to-side torque to the ankles with every step, stressing them unnecessarily, while creating additional impact on the balls of the feet. Thus, the best design for a high-heel is one with a narrower width, where the heel is closer to the front, more solidly under the ankle, where the toe box provides room enough for the toes, and where forward movement of the foot in the shoe is kept in check by material snug across the instep, rather than by toes jamming together in the toe box.

Interestingly enough, despite the medical issues surrounding high-heel wear, a few podiatrists recommend well-constructed low to moderate heels for some patients. It appears a slight elevation of the heel improves the angle of contact between the metatarsals and the horizontal plane, thereby more closely approximating the proper angle and resulting in proper weight distribution of a normally-arched foot. This is one of the main reasons most Dansko clogs sport low to medium heels. Other foot specialists, however, argue that any heel causes unnecessary stresses on the various bones and joints of the foot.

External links

References

^ Time article on men wearing heels in the 1970s

[1] Time article on men wearing heels in the 1970s

[1]