Survey Explaination (ladies, give me your feedback)

[HeelsWearer]

I posted this originally in the For the Guys section, but then I decided to post it here as well. I am wondering if you gals agree with my theory (very unscientific)

Thanks all for participating. I wanted to explain a couple of questions. First the age question. Wow, I've heard a lot about that one. Let me explain my rationale behind that one. I am a hostess at a very upscale diner/restaurant. It's located in a section of the city with many banks, law firms, real estate offices, small corporations, and other businesses which tend to have workers who need to dress up. I see many women coming in and out in the course of a day. Not a day goes by where I don't get a comment about my high heels. One thing I've noticed is that many women will kindly tell me my heels look great but wait until I get older. I also hear comments from younger women about how their heels are killing them. 

Over the past year or so I've been paying close attention to who says what (this led me to the survey). Here is a very generalized overview of what I had thought and I notice the survey is helping to confirm my theory.

1) Most high heel wearers who complain about their shoes are wearing heels in the 2 to 3 inch range. Many of these women, I surmise, are wearing high heels because of the job they're in (implied dress code or societal pressure to present a certain look). I don't think many of these women want to wear high heels all the time but do it anyhow. Many times they'll have changed into sneakers to come in for lunch. I'm guessing their heels come off the second they get home and probably stay off all weekend. 

2) I am constantly told that I'll end up going into low-heels or very small heels or flats as I age. This comes from older women who tell me they used to wear high heels but couldn't hack it anymore and the same will happen to me. These ladies mostly are in the 55 to 65 year-old range. 

3) Women who tend to wear higher heels, 3+ inches, very rarely complain about their high heels. I have one customer who must be in her mid 60's who wears 4 inch heels everyday. We often chat about how much we love our heels and compliment each other on them. 

What I'm getting at is that I believe when heel wearers really enjoy their heels they'll wear them higher and usually put some thought into their footwear. They've learned to get a proper fit, they take care of their feet, they get cushion pads for their shoes, they find a style (small platform in front or low cut vamp for example) that works for them and they go for it. They are passionate about their high heels. People who are wearing their lower high heels who don't really want to do it but feel some pressure to wear them probably don't put in the work to learn the finer points of high heeling!. Some women refuse to bend to any pressure to present a certain look and wear flats, which is fine. 

The reason I put that age question in was to see if a lot of people who get to that age where they just can't take high heels anymore would give up their heels by around 60. My survey so far shows that very few people will give up wearing high heels when they get older. This makes sense because most respondents in my survey are high heel devotees who truly love them. (I've posted the survey to a few high heel websites including High Heel Place and Reddit High Heel Groups.) 

So when you read about 70% of wearers find high heels uncomfortable or have developed foot problems from wearing them, I'll bet you that 4 out of 5 of those women fall into the 2 to 3 inch range who feel compelled to wear high heels. People who go above the 3 inch range usually don't have problems and my survey shows that. Very few respondents have answered "yes" to high heels being uncomfortable and even fewer reported having any foot/leg/back problems. And quite a few of these people are wearing 4 or 5 inch heels daily!  Probably in a survey of all high heels wearers, 75% say they'll give up high heels when they get older but that includes all heel wearers with all heights included have been asked. That number appears to come down sharply as you ask higher heel wearers only. So that is a very long explanation of why I asked the age question. 

As for stilettos/spikes vs. platform/wedges, it's been my experience that women (I put women here because almost all my interactions about heel types are with women) usually break down heel types into one of those two categories. I realize their are many types of heels, but I believe in general heels can be classified as either having a thinner heel or a thicker heel or stiletto/spike vs platform/wedge.

In no way do I have any scientific evidence to prove anything at all. I just went with my intuition and wrote the survey that I thought would be interesting to study. I am sure there are problems with many of the questions but I'm not publishing anything. I will share with you in a post what the results are but that will take a little while to compile. 

I've read it here before on this website and I'll say it again, "High heels, either you get it or you don't" and I believe many who don't wear them because they feel they have to which skews any results of a survey to separate the ones who get it with those that don't.  Thank you, Carol

Edited February 11, 2020 by HeelsWearer