Shyheels

Me too!

That’s horrific. You mother should have gone to prison. I can’t imagine being so twisted

Buying sneakers is a real rarity for me. I have nearly always worn boots of some sort, except for cycling or going to the gym. Or many years ago when I used to run marathons. I bought the Converse because I liked the pastel colours and so ironically they’ve ended up being like @higherheels Hot Chicks - purchased because they looked fun and ended up being left in the closet because they’re hard to wear!

@mlroseplant and @higherheels - Thank you for your presence and encouragement! I’m really quite chuffed. I really feel quite at ease. To be sure I’m not out striding a high street, on roughened sidewalks, taking curbs and hustling to cross that the lights, but as I walk confidently around indoors I can certainly now imagine doing such a thing and doing it with reasonable grace. i too find this who catwalk routine ridiculous. It looks exaggerated and absurd on the catwalk. In real life it would be comical.

Yes, Keds, like Converse, are flat, offer no support and in my case the thinness of the soles gives no cushioning to the nerves in the balls of my feet. They are much more painful than my leather soled stilettos

I think maybe I'm starting to get somewhere with my practicing, even if it is just indoors. I put on my heels this morning and felt really quite grounded, on solid footing. Its really nice!

I totally agree. Discomfort is one thing, actual pain is something else and is never something to put up with. Stop, recuperate, find out what caused the issue then fix it or modify whatever you need to prevent it from happening again. I have never done anything silly with heels, but I’ve ignored pain while training for distance running many years ago and learned to regret it. curiously enough the footware that seems to be most likely to give me problems are Converse trainers (sneakers) I bought a couple pair because I liked the pastel colours and then discovered that the thin rubber soles led to some serious pain in the nerves in the ball of my right foot. I stopped wearing them except on days when I know I won’t have to walk far - ironically not unlike I do with my 12cm stilettos!

Yes I guess that is very much a First World problem - the potential troubles with driving in towering Louboutin stilettos! Not a problem shared by much of the world. I can see too where the 13cm heels on Hot Chicks might not be suitable for a lot of situations. And a bit of overkill for grocery shopping! In a way our challenges are quite similar. There is nowhere within easy walking distance for me to wear my 12cm heels or indeed any stilettos. Simply getting off the boat in them would be impossible. I’m moored along a little jetty which is essentially a long fibreglass grate. A stiletto heel would simply go through one of the holes before you took a single step. And then there is the muddy chalky towpath for a kilometre before a very steep farm road up into town. So I have to put my stilettos in a backpack and change into them. I can do that in the park and practice there, but wearing 12cm stilettos in a small farm town grocery store seems overkill, Otherwise it’s a matter of catching a bus to a bigger town. And so the obstacles to real world practice start to build up.

Yes, Hot Chicks are a pretty serious challenge. I had thought my indoor practice in my heels would have meant more than it did. Real world walking is so much different. I kind of like the challenge though. I’m looking forward to another try at the park

@higherheels Thank you so much! This high heels challenge has been such a help and such fun too. I’ve bought myself a new pair of jeans to wear with my 12cm boots as a reward for my hard work - and hopefully will get to wear them soon to a cafe for cake and coffee. Just need to get in a bit more real world practice. I have to be certain I can ace this! How are things going with the Hot Chicks? Did you ever reward yourself with the night out you mentioned after your successful outing a few weeks ago?

I’ve seen the videos, read the articles and had advice from female friends who are extremely skilled in walking in heels and all of this is great, in the abstract, but nothing replaces the actual doing - practice, practice and practice.

So true. I have made the effort recently to go to the park and practice on a paved and gently undulating footpath and straightaway noticed the difference! As you say 100 metres might as well be 1000. I did a couple hundred metres, I would guess, and very much needed a break. It was fun though. I need to go back.

Yes. That’s what concerns me as I practice indoors with my 12cm boots. I love the idea of wearing them out to a cafe for coffee but have to find a way to get real world walking in before I even think about that. On the bright side, I continue to improve. I especially love cooking in heels.

Same with football with these vicious crunching tackles. I remember a particularly egregious one in an Australian Rules match once and the announcer saying, as they replayed it in loving slow motion at least a dozen times, “Boy, that’s something you never like to see …”

Funnily enough only yesterday I bought a pair of boot cut jeans - to wear with my ankle boots with 8cm chunky heels, and because they also look better with hiking boots. Yes, the boot cut partially obscures the heels on my ankle boots, but then I don’t wear them to show off or make a point, and actually the boots looks really good with these jeans.