mlroseplant

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!

Thank you, and I'll let you know that I'm probably taking the last two days of the month off. I barely made it under the wire before this snowstorm hit, which is supposed to last until 6 a.m. tomorrow. Maybe I will take some footprint pictures if the correct situation presents itself. Good luck with your editor. Hopefully, we'll both be back at the 12 cm thing soon.

I have only worked with actual plasterers twice in my career, and one of those was a restoration project, where they wanted period correct everything. All while having modern communications and HVAC systems, HA! If you can believe this, on larger jobs drywalling and mudding and taping are two completely separate operations, and never the twain shall meet. The drywallers are part of the carpenters union, and the tapers are in with the painters union! Both of them can be a pain in my butt.

The last time I was in such an establishment was 1991, and the definition of "stripper heels" was quite different back then. Leave it to me to be more interested in the shoes than the other bits. What dancers wore at that time was what we would consider quite normal, almost boring shoes. Pretty much pumps with four inch heels. Platforms were not a thing at the time, at least not around here. Sometime between 1991 and now heel heights that seem normal increased dramatically, and platforms for exotic dancers got ridiculously thick. To me, "stripper heels" have never really been all that steep, because after all, one has to be able to at least pretend to dance in them, and for the better part of the entire night at that! I can give a very good example of where "the formula" doesn't work quite right. I have over the years owned a few different pairs of a Michael Kors shoe called Oksana. If you buy them in USW 8 1/2, you get 5 1/8" heels (with 1" platform). If you go up to size 9, the heels suddenly become 5 1/2". That's a full centimeter difference in half a size bigger. Because they are Kors less expensive line, they obviously didn't make a different heel for every single size. I'm guessing 8 1/2 was the cutoff for one length of heel, and 9 was the beginning of the next. ________________________ In other news, most of the reason that I have not been practicing toward the goal of 12 cm heels recently is because I have been working toward the goal of walking 60 high heeled miles in a single calendar month. I have come really close a couple of times, but I've never actually exceeded 60 until now. Here is a picture of me (wearing boots, no less) right after I finished walking the last high heeled mile. Although with the new system of proportional measurement, I'd technically have to call these mid-heels, as they are 1/8" (3 mm) short of being actually "high."

That's basically 2, 3, and 4 inch in my imperial mind. Part of the reason why I came up with the 94% calculation is because the Italian Heels chart did not quite make sense to me. In particular, why in size 40 do I have to have a full 11 cm to equal a 10 cm in size 38, but I only need 12.7 cm to equal 12? The proportions are all a little bit off. Therefore, I came up with my own. It may be that an 11 cm heel is what you get when you order a 10 cm heel in size 40 from them, but the math doesn't quite math. Oh yes, it absolutely does! To be fair, it has taken me over a decade to get to that point, but I didn't exactly take the short route when it came to training. If I were in the main office far away from any construction job site, I might consider wearing heels to work, but the far more likely scenario is that I'd be in the field office, the temporary office that is right there on the job site. Those folks often wear tennis shoes or casual loafers to work, and then have work boots and all the PPE there for the occasions where they might have to step foot on the actual job site. If I could guarantee that wearing heels in such a situation wouldn't negatively affect my job somehow, I'd do it, but I certainly can't guarantee that. Even the female superintendents and other supervisors would have a hard time wearing heels to the job without negative consequences. I did it in inches. USW size 9 is 9 7/8", which is the actual measurement of my size 9 foot. This is also typically given as an equivalent for EU size 40. Size 7 (or 38) is somewhere around 9 5/16". Looking at it again, the charts disagree with each other slightly, and depending upon how you round certain numbers, I came up with something like 94.3%, which I rounded down to 94. It seems some charts list size 9 as being 10" long. Your mileage may vary. Also why would I divide by 94% to convert something bigger to something smaller? I have the size 9 (40) in my hand. I can measure it. I do not have the size 7 (38) in my hand. Therefore, I need to multiply by 0.94 (or 0.95) to find out the information I need.