mlroseplant

Don't you know I had a dream last night, that I wore suede pumps out in the snow and ruined them. It was a truly frightful experience. I swear I could feel the slushy ice all over my shoes, and they were actually starting to change color. But when I woke up, oh my dream, it was gone.

I have always gone on the shorter side of things simply because my legs are so short. I have recently had reason to review a couple of videos of me in longer shorts, as in what men traditionally wear, and they are not flattering on me. To be fair, this predated my heeling days, and also predated my days of training for triathlon, so perhaps my legs really did look that bad, but the situation was certainly not helped by the style of clothing.

I suppose it is wise to consider that silence doesn't necessarily equal tacit approval. The main point I was trying to make is that the internet allows people to be their worst selves, evidently without guilt. This refresher course in human fecal matter has definitely swayed my personal needle toward not making a "How to Walk in High Heels" video. Who needs that kind of abuse?

I failed to look at the comments section, but I suppose it's just as well. I was checking my social media feed the other day, and this random guy popped up. I scratched my head and said, "Wait a minute! That's that Mark What's His Face from Germany, innit?" Sure enough, it was Mark Bryan from Germany, and there was an article you could click on, which I didn't do, but I started reading through the comments. Hoo boy! Two thirds of them were pretty brutal, and 90% of those were pretty ignorant. To be fair, I'm not a huge fan, he lost me completely when he did that interview a couple years back, and for some strange reason started taking off all his clothes. Sorry, that's way too weird for me. I only wonder what my own comments section would be like, were it to exist. It's very easy to gang up on someone you don't even know, I really feel that my own success and acceptance here is because it's a lot more difficult to gang up on somebody you do know and have real, personal interaction with. Every once in a while, I get delusional and make a comment on somebody's video or post. This time, I resisted the temptation, because I believe that once you get more than about 50-100 comments on a post, even if the conversation is civil and semi-intellectual, who goes through and reads all that crap anyway? I think it would be easier to be heard shouting on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange than to be heard in the comments section of any popular post.

And then, there is social media. I am familiar with a certain gal who portrays herself as a young, self-made millionaire. She is always in high heels, except for sports activities. I do not know this young woman personally, but I know people who do. According to those in the know, it's all an act. She doesn't really dress like that every day. For some reason, I seem to have attracted this young lady's attention, because she sent me a private message and requested that I send her some pictures of my shoe collection, as she likes my style. As long as the conversation never turns into me investing in Vietnamese stocks, I'm cool with that. My point is, for us, it's not an act. We really do dress like that every day. I think people appreciate that.

I have never run across a pair of purple men's pants, but then again, I have never looked for such a thing up to now. @bluejay, I imagine that if you could find a pink suit, purple pants would be easy! I have found myself to be a pretty reliable size 4 Petite. U.S. Women's size, of course. I think that sometimes translates to Size 27 in some brands. Both of these purple pants are marked 4P, and both of them were listed as being cropped, meaning that they fit my short-ass legs perfectly as normal, full-length pants.

The guy looks pretty good. Edgy, but not outlandish. However. . . (long pause) . . . I do admit I had to fast forward through most of the video. That's too many pictures in a single album by about a factor of 10.

Interestingly, a friend suggested installing elastic in the linen pants. I used to have a couple pairs of suspenders, but I sure couldn't tell you where they are now. The pants fit perfectly, but you know how cotton is--after a couple of hours it loosens up somewhat. I need to either do something with them or get rid of them.

I have acquired two pairs of purple pants in the past week. One linen pair (shown with proper full picture), and one denim pair, which is of course much more casual. Both seem to go well with my mauve pumps, but I will have to experiment with some other color combinations for the fun of it. The linen pants are Loft brand, and the jeans are Michael Kors. For whatever reason the designers at Loft decided to omit belt loops entirely. This might be a dealbreaker for me.

What is the difficulty with sitting whilst wearing heels? I get that standing is way harder than walking, but sitting? Please expound.

And yet, easily 10% of the homes and businesses here in my neighborhood have a sign that reads, "NO SOLICITORS." You're welcome. 😜

Oddly enough, compared to my colleagues, my work shoes wear out completely evenly, left to right. It is interesting that you bring this point up, though, because I have often thought that the perfect walk, in heels anyway, is slightly pronated, and that is in opposition to my personal physiology.

I have two or three thoughts here. Number One, how and why are you quoting Justice Cardozo? I mean, he's kind of a figure revered in American law schools, but he's really a nobody in the grand scheme of things. Number Two, and if you've studied American law enough to be familiar with Benjamin Cardozo, I'm sure you realize that unlike in the U.K., suing for defamation in the U.S. is usually an exercise in futility, and only likely to make whatever damages suffered even worse than they were in the first place, and then you are likely to lose in the end. Number Three, we are not as sue-happy as is popular to report. In everyday life, it hardly ever happens. Here in the U.S., the U.K. has a worse reputation as a Nanny State. I am not sure either reputation is completely deserved.

I totally get the whole sensibilities thing. Although I do show my legs when it's warm enough to do so, you will never catch me without a shirt. And it's not because I'm embarrassed about anything underneath the shirt. I'm just not a no-shirt kind of guy. I haven't been swimming in over a decade, ever since I realized I will never complete a triathlon. I have a permanent farmer's tan as a result. My soon-to-be-16-year-old son is also a no-shorts guy like you.

For whatever reason, I'm working on the upper end of my range as far as heel height goes. I now own way too many shoes that are in that 4 1/2 - 4 3/4" range to not be comfortable in them. I'm noticing two things: 1) Yup, you've got to wear them, and wear them often to start to feel comfortable in them. I still don't go for walks yet, but I wear them for an hour at a time or so, not sitting down. You do get used to them eventually. However, 2) for some physiological reason, the higher the heel, the more bowlegged I become. This is not attractive. I still haven't quite determined the cause, but I'm not going to give up just yet. If I lie on my back and put my legs and feet together doing leg raises to work the abs, I can touch my knees together throughout the full range of hip and ankle motion. When standing in 12+ cm heels, I can't. Evidently, there is something fundamentally different going on there, and I ought to figure out what it is. So yes, height matters, but not in the way the OP intended to discuss.

I think you have to have punitive damages in order to discourage extreme bad behavior. If we stuck to mere compensatory damages, then certainly some, and perhaps many, corporations would simply see the lawsuits as part of the cost of doing business. We would really like them to sell us safe products in the first place. In some cases, the damages have to be really, really up there to have a punitive effect. This comes of letting corporations merge and merge and merge, and pretty soon you've got to have a $200 billion judgment to make them take notice at all. The real question is, should all of those punitive damages go to the victims and their lawyers? If not, where should the money go?

I never would have believed that a subject WAY down here at the bottom would take off like this. It must be due to our newer members. Thank you new members, by the way. Although I rail against the inequality, I often voluntarily conform to traditional male standards. I wouldn't mind wearing a tank top, but I figure if I do, I'll either look like a Freddie Mercury wannabe, or . . . well, the possibilities don't get better, they get worse from there. Therefore, I always have at least a t-shirt with sleeves and a high collar. The high collar is so that you don't get thick tufts of hair sticking out of a v-neck or scoop neck. I already shave way too much, I ain't shaving my chest also. On a different subject, @bluejay, where on earth does one actually buy a pink suit (and all those other colors)? And do they have one in a 36 short? 😆

That's just it, isn't it? You have to be rich enough to wear what you want to wear. If I decided to go back to my law career, would I wear what I wear to church to the job interview? Ah, hell no. I mean, I might get by with it, but probably not. To play devil's advocate, could a woman get by wearing a pink suit to a law firm interview? Again, probably not. It's just a matter of, the woman could get by with, and maybe would even be expected to, show at least the bottom half of her legs. I can't.

Don't worry fellas, I own enough suits to make up for all of you. Lately, I have not usually been wearing the pants that actually go with the suit(s) because I feel a slimmer cut gives me a cleaner silhouette, and I get to show off my heels better that way. It does not surprise me that a man would have to wear a jacket and a tie to have tea at the Ritz. The question is, what is the female guest dress code for the same activity? I assume a skirt or dress and some decent looking shoes are requirements, but are long sleeves and a high collar?

These days, we can easily get by with wearing colors that would have been mocked 20 years ago. I see pink shirts and even pink hard hats all over constructions sites on the regular. What has not changed, and probably will not change, is the general coverage of clothing. I'm not saying it's good or it's bad, I'm just saying that even in a modestly dressy situation, a man must be pretty much covered up except for his hands, neck, and head. The most he can get by with is a short sleeve shirt, and even that's out once you get to anything more dressy than business casual. Until and unless it becomes common and acceptable for men to wear skirts, I must keep what may be my best physical assets covered up. Even in casual situations, I still push it pretty hard with my shorts. Those are still the subject of derision every once in a while.

As far as walking in the snow in heels, I do it all the time, especially if it's only 2 inches. However, I do not labor under the delusion that it gives me any sort of tractive advantage. I'm just stubborn and foolish, and I like seeing those unique footprints behind me. If it's more than about 3 inches, heels are no fun at all, and they stay at home.

We missed all of the snow somehow, but none of the cold. Evidently, you live just a few degrees latitude south of where I do, and you were in its path. My friend who lives in the Cincinnati, OH metro got hammered, but my sister who lives in east central Ohio did not. Last year, we got all of our snow pretty much in one storm for the winter. I wound up buying some fleece lined knee high boots with a modest 2 3/8" block heel because of it. I also was forced indoors with all of my high heels for a couple of weeks, at least.

Not that I like to think about falling, which I do think about more and more as I get older (I turn 57 next week), but one thing I notice about these "fail" videos is that nearly 100% of the time, they involve extreme platforms. Every once in a while, you'll see a slippery floor fall, or catching a heel on something, but the vast majority of the time, it's like the old ankle just gave out. I can totally see this with a very high platform, especially if it's even slightly defective. The one time I have fallen in public, it was a slippery floor fall (involving ice) and not a wobbly ankle fall. However, since I do wear platforms, though not extreme ones, I am well aware of the instability they can exhibit. Luckily, I have strong ankles.

I wouldn't worry too much about wandering conversation. We are too few to be concerned about staying exactly on point. I can think of many examples of threads where we have sometimes strayed for several pages into such topics as electrical wiring methods or vintage outboard boat motors. And while I would not like to completely abandon the subject of walking, I find that if one creates a special thread to accommodate the conversation which has wandered away from the original subject, 99 times out of 100, the conversation dies very quickly, and usually in both threads. Therefore, I do not wish to stop the ball rolling, so to speak. Being a church musician is kind of a strange job in that you never have the time to get really good. Unlike preparing for a regular concert or recital, you've got to keep cranking out new material, week after week after week. Because of this, I sometimes have a difficult relationship with sacred music. I am familiar with about 90% of the hymns in the traditional hymnal, so if I don't have time to practice on any given week, those come last on the priority list. I know I can wing those for sure. What this means is that sometimes I find myself simply reading the words and not really thinking of it too much. It is not my preference, but it sometimes happens. I don't think it's part of the human condition to be "on" 100% of the time. There are times that we need to coast. The same goes for looking graceful and elegant. I think it's impossible to do it 100% of the time. I am made painfully aware of that on a weekly basis thanks to the church livestream. Not only do I have to play/sing five new songs every week, I have to be careful what I say in the background during the service (microphones are everywhere), and I have to be careful how I look and how I carry myself. That stuff is recorded and kept forever and ever, amen. If I have dropped my pencil and have to bend over to pick it up, a camera will see it. Potentially, the whole world will see it. This makes me think about things I never thought about before, such as how exactly am I going to bend over and pick up that pencil? How exactly am I going to walk in front of the altar to confer with my bandmates or to greet the organist? And why did I wear these stupidly high heels today? This is one of the several reasons that I have become much more interested in the mechanics of walking than I used to be.

In light of the comments, perhaps I'll have to give them another spin. I was talking with one of my fashionista friends, and she suggested that they be used as a pop of color in an otherwise conservative outfit. She would be a much better judge of such things than I am. As a complete aside, the poor thing broke her hand a few days ago, making getting dressed at all, much less stylishly, a bit of a challenge.