Fab Heels

Some women (and Miss Jays of the world) can't live without their heels, while most men and some women will be glad to see these bunion-causing invention face extinction.

Why do some people hate heels?

• they can cause foot pain
• they can create foot deformities, including hammertoes and bunions
• they can cause an unsteady gait
• they can shorten the wearer's stride
• they can render the wearer unable to run
• The altered forces at the knee caused by walking in high heels, may predispose to degenerative changes in the knee joint.

However, to an experienced heel wearer, heels are a god-sent, because:

• 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 gait in what is often considered a seductive fashion.
• they make the wearer appear taller
• they cause the wearer's legs to look longer
• they make the foot appear smaller
• they make the wearer's glutial muscles more defined while wearing tight pants

(FYI, these are not my words. They're from Wikipedia. I would never use words like 'gait' and 'glutial'.)

For me, heels should only be worn when you're not going to spend the entire day walking in them. This invention which originated in France as male footwear around 1500s, can cause you to lose your footing when you've walked around in them for 6 hours straight. Trust me, I did stumble for a bit somewhere in MidValley a while back after I've spent the entire shopping trip strutting in them. Well, at first, I could say I strutted. But, after the fourth hour, I wobbled. No amount of sitting down every 10 minutes could spare me the pain in my soles that throbbed like crazy.

The heels should also be of a perfect fit with both sides of your feet. Everyone knows that one foot is always bigger than the other. Your big toes and small toes should not be squashed closely to each other e.g. one toe is on top of another when you don your heels. For a while, it may not feel like a toe is being cut off, but over time, your feet will suffer. And remember, when your feet suffer, you suffer too. And it might be obvious to other people around you that you're hurting.
Never, ever buy heels (or any pair of shoes for that matter) because the design/color/brand/embellishment/whatever caught your eye from afar, but when you try them on, it feels weird. Forcing your feet to fit into those babies which are one size smaller is not going to do anything good to anybody, except the store that sells them. Go with your guts and feelings. If they don't feel right, they're not right for you. They're not the pair for you. Let some other girl (or Miss Jay) have them.

But for the time being, I like flats more.