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Hi everyone. I'm interested in exploring the psychological side of wearing high heels. Does anyone know of any good books or research studies on this topic? Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

It’s a different form of movement - pitch, balance, stride length and will vary further with height. And real world walking conditions are vastly different than walking in a wooden floor at home which is where one practices. And not just guys - look on the how-to-walk-in-heels articles in fashion mags and they all advise learning at home. I’ve not had sufficient real world practice to feel comfortable in stilettos although 3.5 inch Chucky heel boots are fine for me. Towpaths these days are mainly for dog-walkers, joggers and cyclists although there are a few historic boats - for show - that are pulled by horses. Narrowboats these days are run in diesel engines although there are a few hybrid and electric ones out there (expensive!)

Nobody said a word as far as I can recall. There’s picture of me wearing those knee boots, quite happily. I guess I was about 12. I can’t think of a single comment that anybody made - and I’m sure I’d have noticed and remembered. They weren’t quite as cool as go-go boots but they certainly made me happy. I wish I had been a bit bolder and declared that this was my style, but I didn’t. Decades would pass before I’d dare out in a pair of feminine knee boots again

Hunter boots are great, when I used to travel to Antarctica regularly I wore them a lot - great for Zodiac landings but sturdy enough for moderate hiking as well. I did the last five miles of Shackleton’s hike across South Georgia Island in a pair of Hunter boots

We were very similar - white go-go boots got me. Loved them and really wished I could have and wear them. I’ve no sisters and my mother didn’t wear heels but she did have a pair of brown knee boots (low heels) that I liked. I broke a toe one winter doing something stupid and those boots fit my swollen foot, and so I wore knee boots all that winter - long after my toe heeled, Looking back I should have simply declared that I liked wearing them - I doubt my mother would have cared, I could have worn them the next winter too. That winter - or the few weeks left of it when I wore knee boots - nobody that I recall said a thing about my wearing women’s boots, I wish I had built off that!

Maybe your experience is different, but what I'm saying is that there is nothing to get proficient at. I mean, assuming the machine is operating properly, there is nothing difficult about walking in stilettos because they are stilettos (on hard pavement at least). In fact, some things are easier than when wearing thick block heels. My issue is the absolute steepness. I hit a wall at about 4 1/2 inches. If I'm really being honest with myself, it's more like 4 1/4 inches. I had to do a quick run to the grocery store yesterday afternoon, and I broke out some round-toed, 4 1/4 inch stilettos that I hadn't worn in a while to run the errand. Once warmed up, I was brilliant. I even got a sincere compliment from a man (how often does that happen?)! But, at that height, I can feel my achilles tendon straining, especially the right leg, with each step. To be fair, I weigh a mere 60 kg. Perhaps thin heels react differently to more torsional force than what I subject them to, but I don't really notice the difference except when I step in a crack and ruin my heel! BTW, are towpaths actually used for towing these days? If so, by what means?

That’s my same circular argument. I don’t wear stilettos much as I am not proficient enough, but I can’t get proficient enough without wearing them. In my case it is complicated by the fact that I am usually moored along a muddy towpath and not only would wearing stilettos be silly, it would just wreck them.

Interesting post. High heels certainly can be interesting devices in books or films for establishing a character - the worldly sophisticate, the arch villainess, the ambitious and empowered. The ingenue is never in stilettos or heels of any sort. I always thought it was interesting in The Devil Wears Prada how nice girl Andie is so scornful of the clackers, as she calls her stiletto wearing coworkers at the fashion magazine when she first starts her job. She mocks them to her friends but then, in fine morality okay style, is quickly seduced and becomes one if the clackers herself. This being hHollywood she sees the error of her ways, quits the fashion magazine job in favour of a job at a gritty newspaper on the other side of the tracks -real journalism - and as a final act of catharsis gives away all her high fashion clothes she scored at her old job. But not quite. In the final scene as she strides confidently through the city, having learned a valuable life lesson, she is still wearing her stiletto boots - one aspect of her time in the dark side nice girl Andie is not willing to give up. I’m a writer myself, albeit magazine writing. I’ve a few min fiction books to me credit but am about to take the plunge into fiction. I should explore more if the psychology of heels.

I do not know of any books on the topic unfortunately, but there may be some studies out there on why they are so popular, or the history of them and why some four hundred years later high heels are still around. You also might find what you are looking for in searching fashion magazines for magazine or online articles that delve into the phycological aspect of heel wearing that you are looking for. I write novels, and it has cropped up in my fiction Thriller type novels to some degree. My wife's first husband was very short and so she was forbidden to wear high heels because in them she would have been taller than him by several inches. Since I am tall anyway, her wearing high heels does not bother me, and while she has kind of run with that by having over 200 pairs of shoes, many high heeled, that is phycological in nature. For a friend of ours, she was born with a 6th toe, and while it was surgically removed, it left a scar. She is VERY conscientious of being barefoot, and to overcompensate has some 600 pairs of shoes, some being high heels. In the interest of characterization both of these situations have cropped up in my novels. I also had an unscrupulous attorney in one of my books who was a vile, greedy ambulance chaser type attorney trying to sway the jury with how she dressed, and chose higher heels than what was typically allowed in court to look imposing. And in the current novel I am working on, a legal thriller, a mother is a high heel wearing attorney that is highly contrasted against her daughter who is into organic farming. The shoes the two wears are really symbolism for how different the mother/daughter are. While I know these are not exactly what you are looking for, with no responses for awhile on this question, I thought it might help to show that the phycology of high heel wearing is really in many places... subtly. But as a writer I have to finish with this suggestion too. If it is something you like, and it is not available, write a book yourself on the topic. The world needs more books!