mlroseplant

Yes, we are waiting with 'bated breath (not literally) to find out how a walk around the block in 13+ cm boots goes. Last night, I wore stiletto pumps for the first time since last spring, and while mine were much tamer than yours, at an effective 10.5 cm, it was the fit and feel that got me way more than the height. I'm just not used to that style. Still, there were no injuries of any sort--not even a blister. I'll get used to them again in no time, I'm sure. I have no idea how far I walked, but I got to the event a little bit late, and had to park my car "in the Back 40," as they say around here. A couple hundred meters, for sure. I used to have the perfect place to practice if I came early enough or late enough--my church, with its long hallways and long flights of stairs. However, due to the times, they've installed security cameras which activate if there's somebody mucking about in there when they shouldn't be. Ask me how I know.

2012 happens to be the year I started wearing heels, but I never wore heels to a church service until 2013. At that time, I did have a very conservative pair of very plain looking, block heeled oxfords. I believe they had 3 1/2" heels. So evidently one could find heels that low in 2012, but they were somewhat unusual, or at least unusual in my memory! The small platform definitely tracks. Everything had a platform then. I have to laugh a bit at the rule, because evidently I've violated it every Sunday for years.

I spent the entire day yesterday in high stiletto ankle boots. When adjusted for size and platform, the heel height was 10.4 cm. I am not quite telling the whole truth about that. I intended to spend the entire day in 10.4 cm stiletto boots, but fate had other plans for me. As documented elsewhere, I broke a heel about mid-afternoon and had to switch to 10 cm slim heeled boots after that. I would say that hobbling around on a broken heel for the better part of an hour was good practice for 12 cm, but I really don't think it was. It just made me grumpy, and made me look funny.

I had my second shoe failure of 2025 yesterday. However, this one was not catastrophic--in other words, it can be repaired. I was wearing my Aldo stiletto ankle boots to shop at Costco, and I noticed as soon as I stepped out of the car that something was very wrong. The heel on my right boot had indeed come loose, and was flexing wickedly in a way it wasn't meant to flex. I didn't have any alternatives with me in my wife's car, so I had to walk very strangely the whole time in order to keep from damaging the heel further. I prevailed in the end, I believe this shoe can be fully repaired, but it ruined an otherwise enjoyable outing. I'm doing pretty well this year. On an average year, I have about half a dozen shoe failures, and the vast majority of those result in the shoes being reclassified as landfill material. This year, I've only had two, and like I said, I'm sure this latest one is an easy fix. This despite the fact that I've walked significantly further in 2025 than I did in 2024.

When I say The Era of Super High Heels, I don't necessarily mean the era of super steep heels. It's true, 15 cm heels were everywhere, but always with a 5 cm platform (at least). I see a lot of shoes from this era still for sale on the likes of Poshmark or ebay. I almost want to buy a pair, just to see how they are (or were). I assume your shoes from the mid 2000s had about a 10 cm difference between forefoot and heel? I must admit to owning several pairs of platform shoes in the 3 cm range, and even some up to 4 cm, but to me the heel must be more than 10 cm higher or the proportions just look "off" to me. For sure, in the midwestern U.S., heels were everywhere in the 1980s, but my sense of what was super high when I was a teenager was definitely different than it is today. When I was at university, one of my good friends was a violinist with whom I spent quite a lot of time. She always wore these really high black suede pumps when it came concert time, and we were required to wear formal black. I don't remember exactly how this happened, but her shoes got left behind in my dorm room overnight (without her, I must add). Although she was a 38, maybe a 38 1/2, which prevented me from actually trying the shoes on, I did put a tape measure to them. A touch shy of 9 cm. That's it. And those were super high heels back then to most people, including me. Today, this girl, now a woman of course, is really my only friend from uni that I stay in touch with. I have admitted examining her shoes way back when, and we got a good laugh out of it. Here's the kicker: She says she has no idea how she ever wore those shoes at all, much less every time she had occasion to dress up in the color black (which was pretty often for us music majors). I said to her, "Hon, you realize that 9 cm is like a mid heel to me, right?" Her max height is now about 3 cm. So very true: 8 cm heels count as heels, but they are quite manageable. I am trying to remember when it became thus for me, because I can recall my first public appearance in true elevated heel footwear that required a bit of walking, and it was to an event on our town square. It was about a half mile there and another half mile back to my house. I was wearing effectively 7 cm clogs. I remember the half mile home being impossibly long due to tired calf muscles. And I was pushing my then 3 year old son (now almost 17) in his stroller, so I even had something to hang on to. Now 7 cm barely even counts as a heel!

I must admit to being kind of jaded, having an industrial background, but I was kind of thinking the same thing. On the other hand, I absolutely hate dealing with automotive electrical gremlins.

Our snow is gone, also. Well, not gone, but the pavement is pretty much dry now. However, we're supposed to get more tonight. Don't despair, my friend. If you're now able to get out in 8 cm to actually walk, that will get you a long way toward your goal.

And yet, I still get approached regularly by teenaged girls, who usually say something to the effect of, "I really love your shoes. I wish I could wear them." This doesn't happen regularly, but it's happened enough times to mention. This is a big change from 10 years ago, when the worst group by far to heckle me in public was teenaged girls. @higherheels I guess you grew up in the era of the superhigh heel. Like Michael Jackson, I've come to appreciate the platform pump a lot more as I've gotten older. During my youth, in the mid 1980s, platforms weren't a thing. Stiletto pumps (often open-toed) were definitely a thing, but they all had this peculiar 1980s shape to the heel--they might look quite dated today. Also, they weren't really all that high. I used to think that 10 cm was some impossibly high heel that nobody would actually wear in public. Today, 10 cm is laughably tame. Well, to us anyway.

I stopped off after work yesterday to pick up my son, who was auditioning for a regional honor band. There were hundreds of high school kids at this audition, along with hundreds of parents. It was one of those deals where they expected the kids to dress nicely. Maybe not formal concert black, but they needed to wear something a little nicer than normal. When I finally found the place, and was trying to figure out where to find my son, the first thing I noticed was a mom in 4 inch chunky-heeled boots. Then I saw another mom in 3 inch heeled boots. In the 15-20 minutes I was there, I saw many high school girls in heels, mostly sandals (in spite of the season), and all of them were this modern style of super chunky, big heels, most of them with platforms. The way I figure it, girls these days buy heels for a high school formal dance, and then recycle these for occasions such as yesterday. What one does not see much of at all these days is just a normal, conservative black pump, something every girl my age who had any occasion to dress up would have owned from age 15 on. Nowadays, it's either boots or sandals. We are in a strange time. "They" say that heels are dead with Gen Z. I can tell you that this is not strictly true. I'm hoping that this is like the 90s, and that shoes will eventually get less huge.

I may be in a holding pattern with my training for a while. I had planned to take a couple of days off from walking just because I needed some rest, but then the snow hit. On the last day of November, I had some extra time, so I thought I would walk a mile in something a little bit high, like 10 cm, just to keep myself from going downhill too much. The snow was over, and I wasn't in a hurry, so I thought, "Why not? It will be fun!" I thought I might even leave a few footprints here and there that would raise eyebrows. I pulled on my knee high boots, put on my coat and scarf, and headed outside. I got about 20 meters down the street and looked at the continuous sheet of packed snow and ice ahead of me, thought of my smooth, slick bottomed boots, thought of my less-than-youthful age, and then actually said out loud, "This is a BAD idea." I turned around and went back inside. I took the next day off, too. On the third day, I did walk, but I chose lugged rubber soled boots with 8 cm block heels. One never knows what the weather will bring, but at least for the next couple of weeks, I'm not going to be pushing any crazy steep heeled boundaries. Even the garage floor is kind of slick.

Them days are over, friend. You can't afford to be too much of a lazy ass these days, or you'll probably be the subject of a one-man layoff pretty quick!

A lot of it depends upon what you wish to do in heels. As is the experience with most here, I started low and went gradually higher. I spent a lot of time wearing 3 - 3 1/2" before I got to where I was truly ready for anything higher. Not that I didn't go higher sooner, but it's always a shock to catch a glimpse of yourself in a storefront window, and think, "Who is that idiot, and why is he walking so funny?" "Oh, that's me." We would rather avoid those moments, so practice in lower heels is advisable. It also depends upon how durable you want to be. Do you want to wear 5 inch heels to Disney World, on multiple days? I'm sure there is somebody out there who can do it, but it would be a select few in the world, kind of like there's only a few Olympic caliber athletes in the world. Do you care what you look like when you walk? I can "walk" just fine in 5 inch heels, but I wouldn't want anybody to see me. I am living proof that it is possible to be able to wear heels that are quite steep for long periods of time, and over long distances, but I didn't get there very quickly at all. It took years. Some people can do it in much less time that me, but that's been my own personal experience.

I have a number of honorable mentions, but they are too numerous to be interesting to anybody but me. Many of my shoes failed after 30 or 40 miles. I've had that happen a lot. All of the shoes that I have gotten rid of for one reason or other over the years must have added up to quite a bit of mileage, because when I add up the distance I've walked in the examples catalogued above, that number is less than half of the total distance I've walked in the last 13 years. That mileage had to come from somewhere. It must have been all those shoes I broke, and all those shoes that I no longer care to wear. And then there are shoes that I have rediscovered, like my Miu Miu navy blue wooden sandals. According to my records, I bought these about five years ago, they sat on my shelf for two years, I took them out for one short walk, and then they sat on my shelf for two more years. This year, I took them out, and I guess I have decided I like them now, because I've put over 20 miles on them in the last two months. I know that one of the reasons I like them better now is because I had them reheeled. The stock heel tips were so obnoxiously loud that I'm sure I could be heard from several hundred meters away. I'm sure that inside buildings with hard floors, people had to stop their conversations until after I had passed. Now, with new rubber tips, they are far from silent, but they are pleasant sounding. I am toying with the idea of removing the back straps and making them into mules. I know I would like the way that would look a lot better, but what with this massive amount of snow we've received over the last two days, that has become a next year problem.

Our family has always done all of our own painting. In fact, I should have repainted at least the south side of my house this year, but I didn't instead. Every time I think I would like to hire it done, the price motivates me!

Hey, at least somebody is still wearing heels besides us!