I Blame The Italians

Many times I've pondered over the origination of the high heel. This is not only because I've broken my right foot twice wearing heels, but because a heel is counteractive to our natural foot mobility. The more though I give it, the more elusive our reasoning for heels appears to be.

After my research I found that although heels were depicted in Egyptian murals on tombs and temples, our first evidence of heels comes from 200BC when the Roman tragic actors wore high wood or cork soles in their performances. Jump to the 1500's and heels were used by European nobility to keep their boots in the stirrups while riding horses. In the courts, wearing heels became the trend for men. The term "well-heeled" referred to a person who could afford costly shoes.

Heels fell out of the scene until the first officially recorded instance in 1533 when fourteen year old Catherine De Medici married the Duke of Orleans. She wore two inch heels made in Florence supposedly designed by Leonardo De Vince. Those damn Italians! A few years later a ridiculous 24 inch high, cork and wood heeled shoe named the Chopine became all the rage by Italian and French women. Servants were needed to help the ladies down from their shoes!

During the French Revolution heels disappeared, thank god, but then slowly resurfaced soon after. In 1950s the trendy Cuban heel, at 1 1/4 inches, is swapped for the Italian 4-inch stiletto which appeared in America in 1955. The 1900s carried us from pumps to wedges to pumps again to platforms to stilettos.

Now, maybe I wont toss my swanky heels out the window but I AM allowed to vent about the absurdity that they are. ;)

Here are reasons NOT to wear 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
* altered forces at the knee caused by walking in high-heels may predispose to degenerative changes in the knee joint
* Women who wear high heels frequently have a higher incidence of degenerative joint disease of the knees. This is because they cause a decrease in the normal rotation of the foot which puts more rotation stress on the knee
* Podiatrists often comment that 75 percent of their business is caused by females wearing tall high heeled shoes.

Aesthetic reasons to wear heels:

* 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 considered a seductive fashion
* they make the wearer appear taller
* they make the legs appear longer
* they make the foot appear smaller
* they make the lower leg muscles more defined while wearing tight pants
* they make the wearer look flexibly strong