mlroseplant

Part of it is, I've been working more than I would like, but I still somehow manage to have time to come on here and comment. The other part of it is, like @Cali says, I just haven't really seen anything like I like. Specifically, the stuff I like is not high enough. I see plenty of stuff that looks cool. I see some stuff that looks absolutely beautiful. The problem is, it seems to be all mid-heels (or what is a mid-heel to me). I'm not going to buy yet another pair of shoes anymore unless the heels are 4 1/2"+ (11 cm). There isn't that much out there in that category that is not hundreds of dollars.

As long as we're off the subject (and I don't think anybody objects), in my boring adulthood, I've pretty much given up on the secret stuff, and it's why I'm not keeping a promise I made to myself several years ago. I told myself that as soon as I got my flat stomach back, I was going to get my belly button pierced. For a number of years, I felt very certain I was not going to ever have to worry about making that decision. Within the last several months, for reasons I don't fully understand, that time is now. However, I'm not going to do it for three reasons: 1) My wife would kill me. 2)I'm already tired of shaving as much as I do, and don't really want to add in another large region of my body. 3) What am I, at age 57, (make that age 58--winter is almost here) going to start wearing crop tops all the time? If I didn't show it off, what would the point be? I understand having secrets, but I don't understand having that sort of secret. It seems like it would be a pain in the neck for nothing.

I used to go through ebay and Poshmark on a daily basis, looking for the next big thing. I realized this morning that it has been a long, long time since I've bought any new shoes. I looked it up, and it's been over six months. I have several items that I'm watching, but I do not feel the desire that I used to. I suppose that's a good thing in many ways, but it does mark a severe shift in buying habits. It also doesn't hurt that I've had zero shoe failures so far this year, which is nothing short of amazing.

As time progresses, the chances of a lawsuit based on driving in high heels or bare feet continues to decline. Why? Because nobody wears heels anymore, and nobody goes barefoot anymore.

I happen to know somebody who's got a combined boot/trouser setup. I'll have to ask him whether he's actually worn it anywhere.

In the days before vacuum assisted brakes, I could see an argument for requiring footwear while driving, but even that is a bit of a thin argument. Unless there was something actually wrong with the brakes, they didn't require that much pedal effort. @Shyheels, I look forward to reports of your 12 cm adventures outside the boat.

I think we agree that walking on pillows is not the way to go, probably for anybody. Beyond that, yes, I also agree that each person has his own physiology, and therefore has a different solution to each issue. Not unlike the crafts and the trades. Each person has her own way of building something or fixing something. As far as the barefoot thing goes, I enjoy wearing heels too much to worry about going barefoot so much. I have had to walk home barefoot a couple of times when I experienced catastrophic shoe failure. I can remember wishing for a sign I could carry, saying "My shoe broke." I wouldn't feel that awkward if I were carrying tennis shoes or something, but carrying heels has a stigma to it.

No idea who that is, and I can't really empathize. I don't sweat much compared to most people. If I'm dripping in sweat, it means it's actually hot, not "Britain Sizzles in the 70s" hot.

Like walking on pillows. Who the heck wants to walk on pillows? Sounds like a lot of extra work to me. I'm fine with walking on the ground, thank you. Again, I sound like I'm repeating myself, but I rejected Doc Martens boots for the same reason--too squidgy. I think they created more problems than they solved. Maybe my wooden shoes are more cushion-y than I give them credit for being, but the point is that I haven't worn any soft shoes to any extent at all for years, and I don't have the foot pain I used to have. There's more to it than that, of course, but my basic reasoning was, "OK, I could walk barefoot on this concrete all day long, no problem. Yet when I wear my cushioned boots, I can barely walk at the end of the day. Why is that?"

Another thing that is difficult, but not impossible to do in heels is ride a motorbike. It seems exciting at first, but as a practical matter it is somewhat less than exciting, and very possibly rather unsafe. This is one of the reasons I switched to a scooter, with automatic transmission and no foot controls. Those things were made for heels!

To be fair, I will use a ball-of-foot insert for fitment purposes, where applicable. I never had any luck with them heel grippers. I do have one pair of mules that actually fit better with double foot cushions, but naturally, I rarely wear them because they don't quite fit right. So here's the weird thing: Many of my favorite shoes are wooden heeled sandals. I've liked that style from my youth. A lot of them do not have any cushioning at all--your foot rests directly on the wood. Despite the hard surface, these tend to be among my more comfortable shoes. I can't explain that, but it did get me off my search for insoles, and moved me toward a different approach to foot comfort.

I have my own interesting relationship with insoles and arch support. After many years of experimentation, I never use them. For me personally, they seem to do more harm than good. I've never tried Keds or Chucks, but I'm sure they'd agree with me just fine, given their minimal support.

I know I'm repeating myself, but now there's a new audience, so it won't seem like it! I can drive in heels, even a real car/truck with a real transmission, but I find no thrill in it. If I have to go more than a few miles, I'll take my shoes off. I just don't enjoy it, though some may find it titillating. I've said for years that I should make my own how to walk in heels video, but I doubt it will ever happen for several reasons. I do like some elements of the model walk or beauty queen walk, but it needs to be toned down for the street to avoid looking ridiculous. This thing they call the "horse walk," however, is completely unusable, and frankly, looks like an excellent way to break shoes.

That is a very nice feeling, indeed! Unfortunately, I don't have that feeling nearly enough. It's not that I feel clumsy or uncomfortable, but rarely do I feel like I actually know what I'm doing. I may expand upon that thought later. I will have to buck the trend here, and say that I do not find How to Walk in Heels videos to be very helpful at all. There are a significant portion of them that are just wrong, or give bad advice. Those that do give correct advice present it in such a way to be less than helpful with the motion of the walk, if that makes any sense. And whoever says you need to walk upon a straight line, or worse yet, cross your feet over each other as you take each step needs to be publicly shamed. Nobody walks that way on the street. It looks beyond absurd. I'm not saying that there aren't any good videos out there, but they are few.

There is often a blurry line between actual injury and just getting old. I don't think there's anything wrong with my knees, but they are definitely not the knees of an 18 year old. As far as the other stuff, there seems to be no sign of trouble from the old Achilles tendon injury, and my plantar fasciitis symptoms have left me as well, thanks to ballet-type exercises. I guess I'll just keep doing THAT. How old do you have to be to get a knee replacement? I didn't realize there was an age floor on that. My wife needs one, but I guarantee she won't get it until she's in a wheelchair.

Bringing us gently back on point, I managed to snag a photo of my friend in her bootcut jeans while I was tearing down my musical equipment on Sunday. I'm not entirely sure what this group of women was doing, but I think they were learning American Sign Language. Anyway, I took a picture of the whole group, then cropped it to show the relevant part, and to protect the identity(ies) of those involved. My friend doesn't wear super high heels, but she does wear heels almost every Sunday, and this style, though on the casual side for me, seems to suit her.

Oh, yes! I've said for years that I don't care how many floors you've swept, don't care how many loads of laundry you've done, once you step out on to the street it's a whole different world, and suddenly, 100 meters might as well be 1,000. But, these difficulties are not impossible to overcome.

I cannot think of anybody who has stuck around here saying to put up with the pain. This whole Beauty Is Pain thing is kind of a social media meme at best, and a fetish thing at worst. Having said that, I certainly have gained some experience and endurance over the years between walking thousands of miles in heels, and working farmer's markets with my wife in heels. That covers both the walking and the standing aspects. I have quit bringing backup shoes, because I've never needed to use them. Well, except that one time when I had catastrophic shoe failure. On the other hand, I certainly do not expect everyone to do what I have done, and I think backup shoes are just fine. I always joke that comfort is overrated, but when it comes to actual pain, that 's another story.

The runner up for the most miles on a single pair of high heels is my Nine West Sizzle oxfords. These have the distinction of being the only non-mule in the bunch, and also the only closed toe shoe in the high mileage bunch. Sporting a 4 3/4"(12 cm) heel with a 3/4"(2 cm) platform, they are a full 4 inch (10 cm) heel, and is among the oldest pairs of heels in my collection. Or was among the oldest. I wore them from January of 2013 until January of 2024 when one of the heels suddenly decided that after 11 years and 196.1 miles (316 km), enough was enough, and promptly snapped in half, a mile and a half from home. This was the first of three similar failures I was to have with Nine West shoes of this vintage and heel style. There is a reinforcing metal rod or tube inside the heel, but it only goes about two thirds of the way up, for some reason. Where it ends is where the plastic heel snaps in two, suddenly and cleanly. And naturally, just after I'd paid to have them resoled. I have been unable to find replacements for these in any color, and I believe they were made in 5 or 6 different colors.

My ex-wife was/is a good two inches taller than me in bare feet, and I encouraged her to wear heels as much as possible, which she often did. I really don't see what the big deal is. Unfortunately or indifferently, she was unable to hack wearing anything over 2 inch heels for very long. We had very different ideas about the significance of heels.

I decided a long time ago that I look better in slimmer cut jeans/pants. I can pull off skinny jeans, and I like them, but they sure can be a pain in the neck to get on and off. I used to wear boot cut pants all the time for the reason that @Puffer mentioned, as an attempt to minimize attention to my heels, but I guess I got over that some time ago. Because I like to wear mules, I was glad to get rid of boot cut jeans, as the two don't live together in perfect harmony. Perhaps I am mistaken in my self-assessment, because my 40-something woman friend, mentioned several times elsewhere, wears boot cut jeans all the time with 3 inch heels, and she looks awesome. She's a very tiny woman, as well. The downside is, you can't really see the shoes. That was definitely the style in the early 2000s, when she would have come of age. I can remember working at the Iowa State Capitol building in 2004 and watching for heels, which were very common at the time. It was sometimes frustrating, because all you could see was just a sliver of a stiletto sticking out the bottom of a pair of pants that were very nearly dragging the floor. It was against this backdrop that I started my high heel journey, thinking I could do the same.

In the 1980s, I can remember watching Vanna White on "Wheel Of Fortune." She always had on high heels for the show, and her letter turning job always showed them off well. I can remember reading some interviews with her at a later time, where she basically said she hated everything about wearing heels.

At No. 3 we have. . . BCBGirls Bonny beaded wooden mules. . . Wait, didn't I just list that two posts ago? Yes, I did, but this is pair No. 4. The above was pair No. 2. Pair No. 4 has somehow managed to survive and squeak by pair No. 2 at 117.3 miles (189 km). I honestly didn't think they would make it, because pair No. 4 has had what I perceive to be weak shanks from Day 1. The heels on this particular example of the breed have always been more flexible than what I would like. I would never have guessed that they would last longer than pair No. 2. However, since 2022 when pair No. 2 yielded up the ghost, I have changed my walk significantly, and I do believe I am much easier on heels than I used to be. But wait, there's more! In the very last miles, right before I was to surpass my previous Bonny record, I tripped on an uneven part of the pavement, and both shoes went flying. Somehow, I managed to stay upright, but I lost both shoes rather violently. I thought to myself, "Well, that's the end of those, and right before I broke the record, too!" Amazingly, there was no damage to either the shoes or to me. I do not know if anybody actually saw this happen, so it may be that my pride managed to escape damage as well. A word about mules in general, as @higherheels alluded to elsewhere. To me, there are two broad categories, and I'm not talking about open toe vs. closed toe, stiletto vs. block heel. I'm talking about flappy vs. non-flappy, categories that I am claiming creation of, because I've never heard anybody else refer to them that way before. To me, it's THE most important distinction. The Bonnys are flappy mules and have but a fairly thin leather band across the toes, which means that with every step, the insole of the shoe comes away from the bottom of the back half of your foot (similar to the much-hated flip-flop), then returns with a flapping sound. We'll save sound preferences and dislikes for another time, that being an intrinsic part of the flappy mule experience. Non-flappy mules typically come up much higher on the instep, and in this way, full contact between the bottom of your foot and the insole of the shoe is maintained at all times. Non-flappy mules have a sound that is indistinguishable from any other high heel with the same heel type. Despite being flappy mules, and being very easy to kick off (and put back on) at will, they are very good walking shoes. Don't ask me to explain it, but among four pairs so far, I've got 350 miles of walking experience, and I still enjoy them for that purpose. They've even been to Chicago on vacation! Stay tuned for the runner-up spot, and the winner, coming to a forum near you.

Coming in at No. 4 are my BCBGirls Bonny beaded wooden mules (pair No. 2). I often say that these are my favorite pair of shoes ever. I don't know in my heart of hearts if that's really true, but at least in a certain category, it is true. The downside to loving these shoes is that they're not super durable. I've owned six pairs of this exact model and color (I don't know if it came in any other color), and so far I've been through four, with two in reserve. What happens is that after about 100 miles or so, the shanks break. I managed to coax 115.6 miles (186 km) out of pair No. 2 before that happened. Ironically, I was feeling energetic one evening back in 2022, and I decided to take the Bonnys out for a 5 mile spin, which I'd never done before. The route I chose was largely on a bicycle path, so the plan was to walk 2.5 miles linearly, then simply about face, and come back home. Unfortunately, about 1.5 miles into the journey, something began to feel quite mushy and strange. Yes, the right shank had snapped in half, allowing the heel to flex radically. I had to limp home very slowly, and that was the end of Bonny No. 2. I posted about it if you want to scroll back in my "Ruminations" thread far enough. I love wooden heeled mules, and I have quite a number in my collection. Why this should be my favorite, I don't know. They aren't super tall, effective steepness being less than 4 inches (10 cm), and they tend to get worn looking fairly rapidly if you wear them like I do, but they've always had a appeal for me.

Haha, I do the same thing! In my case, it's for kneading bread dough. Better in every way when you can get your body weight into it. Your wife's idea is not so strange, it's practical.