Amanda

It's amazing what celebreties will wear these days especially the ones that no ones ever even heard of. Good on her!. A truly unforgettable appearance.

In the summer I do love flipflops.

It must be refreshing to be able to wear flip flops now and then when your stuck in heels.

It looks from the first picture on that page, as if she has just read my thoughts on exactly how she looks in that dress. It's the sort of thing one might be forced to wear to get oneself noticed on the cheap seats.

I travel a lot for work and spend up to 50% of my time away from home, I have two of them in completely different areas , one of which I spend more time at than the other. It's this one that I refer to here; Mostly women I come across in this area wear trainers, wellies or ugh boots. They often drag their feet. They have short hair and wear track suits. Most of them smoke cigarettes while pushing prams (strollers) It's fairly remote, fashion is not of utmost importance.

My opinion of metal heels is that they are a bit too sexy for me to wear. A bit sort of strippery if you know what I mean. Whether or not they will make a noise depends on what the tip is made of.

Hey! Amanda Snake...Do you get whistles?

Sometimes yes.

Summer breeze

I avoided replying to this post for sometime, eventually I was prompted by someone to answer it. I'm really not sure what other women would do if males began wearing heels as a part of normal dress. I'm not sure that I would bother wearing them much anymore. I feel that heels are a sacred bastion of femininity. Of course I wouldn't resent men wearing them as I strongly believe that we should all be free to do as we wish unless it's harmful to others. I wouldn't mind seeing the odd guy wearing them here and there but not mainstream. But hey, I am old fashioned and conservative at heart. High heels in my mind are very feminine like it or not and men can only give that impression. That's fine. Men have a feminine side too. I wouldn't want any man of mine to present a public image like that. I prefer to feel protected and invulnerable and no man wearing stilettos will manage to make me feel that way at his side.

I have a couple of pairs of Ballet style flats that I keep in the cars for driving. I hung onto my wellies until about 2 years ago. I loathed throwing them out for sentimental reasons but they were just too uncomfortable for me to walk in anymore and seemed to be of more use to spiders. So, I've not a lot to write about flats. Both of my pairs are inexpensive, both have bows on them. Neither of which would I want to be seen stepping out of my car in. (although I almost have before now). Perhaps I'll revisit this thread in a few years time once I've trained my feet to wear them again. When I expect to have hundreds of pairs and plenty to say. Until then....what is there to say about them?, they're flat...like leftover champagne in the morning, a car tire on your holiday or a dinner party to which you invited all the wrong people.

That's a tragic story Tanya. I feel for you. I always give mine to Louboutin in Knightsbridge for repairs. They know how to make them look as good as new. I don't remember the address but I do have the phone number here: 02072456510 Don't worry, give them a call, They'll know what to do.

bolero

sympathy

Third Wave Feminist Defends High Heels

by Claire @ 1:03 am. Filed under Aesthetics and Meaning, Aspiration, Defining Fashion, Gender

No discussion that intersects fashion and feminism is complete without a debate on high heels - are they a symbol of enslavement or empowerment? Why, in spite of the well documented health problems they cause, do they continue to inspire lust - not to mention reckless spending - by both sexes? Hannah Betts gives a great overview of both sides of the debate, and includes her own perspective suggesting that the whole matter might be more primal than theoretical. From the Guardian UK’s, Are We Just Masochists?

Christian Louboutin's Orlan Ponyskin Sandals, $930 at Net-a-Porter.com

Yet many women - myself included - who consider ourselves vehement, lifelong feminists feel no desire to relinquish our heels. In 1995, when Germaine Greer and Suzanne Moore enjoyed a public spat, Greer poured scorn on Moore’s “fuck-me shoes”. “The thing is,” sniffed a feminist contemporary at the time, “some of us don’t have a problem with fucking.”

And there’s the rub - sex - festering away like the blister it is. When I last experienced heel lust - for a pair of sumptuous 4in Louboutins - my pupils dilated, I had butterflies, and my cheeks turned florid.

…Dr Gad Saad is associate professor of marketing at Concordia University, Canada, and author of The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption. “High heels may well be the most potent aphrodisiac ever concocted,” he says. “The height sensuously alters the whole anatomy - foot, leg, thigh, hips, pelvis, buttocks, breasts. Men are perfectly frank in admitting that high heels stimulate their sexual appetite, and women, consequently, assign to stilted shoes all the magic of a love potion.

“In particular, heels alter the angle of the buttocks by 20 or 30 degrees to create a more youthful and thus fertile-looking body,” he continues. I have a vision of scarlet-buttocked baboons grotesquely parading their attributes. “Not far off,” he concedes. Saad is nonchalant regarding the self-harm aspect, seeing it as merely one of many sacrifices made in raising mating status; considerably less threatening, say, than the lunatic risk-taking inspired by testosterone.

Clearly I have get my hands on Gaad’s book. I find it interesting how he openly discusses the motive of attracting a mate as central to these fashion decisions. While most fashion theory that I read endlessly debates the nuances of status, class, lifestyle associations, trickle-up and trickle-down aspirations, perhaps it’s been too unseemly or unacademic to go to the all-too-simplistic “women - the statistical majority of whom are heterosexual - buy and wear high heels because they make them look and feel hot and they know that men respond to that.” Betts goes on to share her personal perspective as a straight, liberated woman who enjoys wearing high heels:

Personally, the sacrifice is minimal. Naturally high-arched individual that I am, I am steadier in three or four inches than I am without. My feet are deformity-free, and I am yet to fracture an ankle, both of which eventualities would stop me in my tracks. I rather enjoy the subversion of taking the ostensible tokens of women’s oppression and transforming them into a strategy to exploit and enjoy. The literal danger of heels I can live without; their symbolic dangers make them ever more appealing.

Flat shoes may be pragmatic, but they do not come freighted with any beauty, mythology, or exotica. Heels are the totemic object craved by want-to-be women, be it the little girl, the transvestite, or the legion of tottering teens for whom no weekend metamorphosis is complete without a little unelevating elevation.

I’m so jealous of Betts’s naturally high arches and ability to effortlessly and comfortably wear high heels in everyday life. She goes on to discuss the heels issue as a matter of choice, but for some of us our fallen arches have made the wearing of high heels for more than an hour at a time a painful impossibility. Luckily for me I was lucky enough to come of age in the 80s and 90s with chunky and sporty shoes being in vogue and not the 50s and 60s where heels, hose and skirts were mandatory. I also happen to already be an inch shy of 6ft tall in bare feet, so the addition of 3 or 4 inches tips me over into ‘alienating glamazon’ territory.

Miu Miu sculpted heels, $650 at Net-a-Porter.com

But the layering of cultural meaning onto objects is a collective endeavor, not an individual one. We can have personal reactions and interpretations to the context in which we find ourselves, but we don’t get to create that context. As much as I may wish that I could wear my uber comfortable Ahnu athletic mary janes out on the town and be just as sexy as the stilletto girls, that choice actually serves to take me out of that particular game. And that game is hardly limited to bars - Betts goes on to discuss the undercurrent of sexual politics in the workplace:

Spikes will always be de rigueur in the boardroom because they constitute a form of armour, suggestive of a certain ball-imperilling bravura. The authority they bestow is compellingly ambiguous: an S&M adornment where each party remains tantalisingly uncertain who is the S and who the M.

Contrast this with the more traditional academic feminist view of high heels as exploitative and crippling:

Sheila Jeffreys sees the vogue as revealing an anxiety about women’s position: “Women have gained entry to the public sphere and occupations once confined to men in ways unthinkable in the 60s. Increasingly, they are being required to pay the price, what I call the ’sexual corvée’ in which they compensate men for their lost power by creating sexual delight for them as they totter about.”

For the record, my day job is the last place I’d ever wear heels, even if they didn’t hurt my feet. Some of us gain more advantage downplaying those undertones rather than heightening them. Thank goodness my work speaks for itself, and that my job doesn’t mind my wearing athletic mary janes. I can get away with this living in Austin and working a non-fashion day job. But were I living in Manhattan, trying to break into the fashion industry? High Heels would be required wearing and comfortable shoes would elicit Ugly Betty style condemnations.

Betts gives a historical example to illustrate sexual politics as being interwoven into class politics:

As ever, one does not get far in a discussion of power without a high five to matters of class. The heel first became a fashion phenomenon when taken up by 15th-century Venetian courtesans in the form of chopines. The chopine, a stratospheric platform ranging in height from 7in to a literally staggering 20in, required its wearer to be bolstered by attendants. It was the ultimate expression of the heel’s ability to empower by apparently doing the reverse.

You can view this same dynamic in action today by seeing which high-heeled women get out of cabs, limos, or SUVs in the valet parking, versus those aspiring to such but still clacking and hobbling along for many a city block to reach their destinations.

In a milieu in which aristocratic women were barely educated chattels, so cloistered that it was thought provocative for them to appear at windows, the chopine vaunted its wearer as the comparatively sexually assertive, economically independent individual she was. She may have been a working girl, but her footwear declared the Venetian courtesan as boasting the leisure not to street walk, but teeter beguilingly amid an entourage.

Where's the best website to purchase quality 5 inch stiletto's ? I just wear my 5inch heels to the office for the first time and it was very exciting . I need to purchase more . The only store i know of is Bebe. Thank you

This is my favorite site for quality shoes. I use it if I'm simply too busy to go out shopping.....which is quite often :

http://www.net-a-porter.com/Shop/Shoes/High_Heels

Of course it's best if you go and try them on somewhere before buying online.

Amanda

Ps, I believe net a porter has a branch in the states too.

Seeing young girls who have crammed their poor feet into the pointiest cheap ill fitting shoes while wearing oversexed clothing. Not only are they are ruining their feet, they are also tarnishing the public image of heels. Do feel free to call me a hypocrite.

I think my Louboutin Declics have the highest heel. I did buy some hideously inexpensive 6 inch heel sandals from Pleaser last year just to see if I could manage them. They ended up in the back of the closet.

I hate being judged for liking/wearing them.

It's not just guys that suffer from that you know.

I hear you Histoletto.

Amanda, don't take a chance and run in heels to catch a bus or trolley. Don't chance an accidet. There will be any other bus or trolley by real soon.

Cheers---

Dawn HH

I don't catch buses or trolleys.

I was purely referring to having to hurry to make a connection at an airport..

Thank you for the advice anyway.

Lioness

"how do U walk in these"

Jen

Lol, if only I had a penny for each time I've heard that!

On the subject of suitability for office wear; it also depends which country or rather, city, you're working in.

I think it really depends entirely on your office environment. Whether or not you work in an office in the sex trade or a school or estate agents, science lab or social services can make a difference. Of course it can make a difference if you run that office as well.

My name is Lilo. And I am from germany.

This is the place where the weather is allways shitty.

Best,

Lilo

Tat's good to hear lilo, I always thought it was here that the weather was shitty.

Welcome.

Amanda:wave:

I don't like having to stand in one place for ages.

I think I dislike running to make a connection most of all.

Well, for spike heels, wouldn't steel last longer than plastic? I'm fortunate in that I've yet to repalce any of mine, but if I had to, I'd go with steel.

Steel does indeed last much longer.