CrushedVamp

I think some of the blame for the demise could be put on husbands and boyfriends too. My wife LOVES high heels, but sometimes on a date we ended up walking much further than we thought, or we ended up standing longer than anticipated. Other times her new shoes just hurt her feet quicker than anticipated. It was no big deal... my wife kept a pair of soft flats in her purse. They took up some room, but were no heavy, but more importantly were always there as a way out. While I preferred her to be wearing high heels, and thought it made a much more poignant fashion statement, the truth was her heels hurt her feet, so she switched to black flats. I think to some degree if husbands and boyfriends adopted that concept, it would not only be supportive, their loves might wear high heels more often since they have a way out of painful shoes. But it need not be just black flats. Having Keds at the ready, or even going to places where she can go barefoot are all painless alternatives. And alternative shoes can be kept in the car, the inside pockets of a mans suit jacket, etc. Its just the concept of them having a less painful alternative that might help make wearing high heels a little more attritive then the person thinking, 'It's going to be a night of painful feet".

I do not know of any books on the topic unfortunately, but there may be some studies out there on why they are so popular, or the history of them and why some four hundred years later high heels are still around. You also might find what you are looking for in searching fashion magazines for magazine or online articles that delve into the phycological aspect of heel wearing that you are looking for. I write novels, and it has cropped up in my fiction Thriller type novels to some degree. My wife's first husband was very short and so she was forbidden to wear high heels because in them she would have been taller than him by several inches. Since I am tall anyway, her wearing high heels does not bother me, and while she has kind of run with that by having over 200 pairs of shoes, many high heeled, that is phycological in nature. For a friend of ours, she was born with a 6th toe, and while it was surgically removed, it left a scar. She is VERY conscientious of being barefoot, and to overcompensate has some 600 pairs of shoes, some being high heels. In the interest of characterization both of these situations have cropped up in my novels. I also had an unscrupulous attorney in one of my books who was a vile, greedy ambulance chaser type attorney trying to sway the jury with how she dressed, and chose higher heels than what was typically allowed in court to look imposing. And in the current novel I am working on, a legal thriller, a mother is a high heel wearing attorney that is highly contrasted against her daughter who is into organic farming. The shoes the two wears are really symbolism for how different the mother/daughter are. While I know these are not exactly what you are looking for, with no responses for awhile on this question, I thought it might help to show that the phycology of high heel wearing is really in many places... subtly. But as a writer I have to finish with this suggestion too. If it is something you like, and it is not available, write a book yourself on the topic. The world needs more books!