I chose my heels and defied anatomy!
Here you will find stories that have a little bit of Satire, a little bit of exaggeration, some irony and a lot of humour. These stories are my take on the new trends and styles and the ever so glamorous fashion industry!!Hope you enjoy reading them. I promise to keep you entertained with them as often as I can!
After an unavoidable annual checkup and a very taxing disciplined week prior to that, I was on my way for pizza and cosmopolitan with my girls, when I passed this lady in a wheel chair. Her flawless makeup and her perfect manicure caught my attention, and her heavily bandaged feet had all my sympathy. My inquisitive nature again got the better of me and I found out that she had a very complicated foot surgery which was the result of her love for high heels. Well, that’s a passion I do share with her, and while my dear doctor friend was telling me this, I tried to keep a poker face and was so grateful to the chair that magically decided to come between me and the doc, covering my feet strapped in killer heels.
The image of the ‘heavily bandaged feet’ stuck with me throughout the day and after a very restless night; I met my doctor friend for morning coffee. What she said was highly disturbing and I couldn’t accept that my ever so gorgeous and innocent heels could be so badly maligned. Bunions, sprained ankle, hammertoes, foot spasm, chronic foot damage, skeletal damage, knee injury, back pain and so many more allegations were made towards them and with actual proof and reasoning. There was a full-fledged battle happening in my mind, but my heart kept saying, “I love my heels.”
Well, my heart always wins and I decided to do a little ‘heel analysis’, in an effort to rescue my precious feet accessory.
I went back to the origin of heels, and the internet told me that heels go way back to 1600s, when ‘Queen Elizabeth I’ wore them; the same queen who was the image of power and authority.
Even men wore heels. ‘King Louis XIV’ is known for his red heel shoes, and his style copied by so many.
Persian riding heels were considered a symbol of masculinity. So there, history tells us heels make you powerful and authoritative.
Little did I pay attention to the fact that the trend eventually ended and the queens certainly didn’t have to walk as much as we do, definitely not on the stone paved roads of today.
So the question is, why do we wear heels?
To find the answer, I spoke to almost every stiletto obsessed friend I have and concluded:
‘We wear heels because they make us feel more confident, more attractive, more feminine, more authoritative, adds grace to our gait, legs look all toned up and tall and it offers an immediate entry in an ever so glamorous world of style and beauty. In heels we feel like Divas walking on our private runways.’
Do I agree with what my data collection concluded?? Don’t know.
I am 5ft10 and with 6in high heels I am almost 6ft4, towering over almost everyone. I do love to walk into a party adorning my stilettoes, where people have to crank there neck to talk to me, the sway it adds to my walk and ‘I am so tall’ feeling it gives me. But there hasn’t been a time when I haven’t felt the pain of wearing them, when my toes have not gone numb, my calves have not been in spasm and my feet have not had the piercing pain even the next day.
I look back and wonder, if this pain is worth it? Is the damage for real? Will one day the ever so flourishing shoe industry have an epiphany and come up with a shoe design that takes away the feet destroying aspect of heels? Are the reasons why we love heels just uncanny ideas implanted overtime in our brains, with no truth in them? Can we walk as tall in flats?
These answers I wish to get one day.
“To go with the heels or not to go with the heels” is the real question.”
And while I so profusely ponder and investigate this, I also need to search my shoe closet for the Cinderella shoes I am going to wear for the evening…
And I have Carrie Bradshaw’s words going in my mind,
“The fact is, sometimes it’s hard to walk in a single woman’s shoes. That’s why we need really special ones now and then – to make the walk a little more fun.”