Magical shoes?

[Amanda]

Is there actually a scientiffic explanation for the attraction of high heels or do these powers (as I suspect) qualify as magic? Even after wearing heels for so long, I still feel like the pied piper when I see heads turn.

[dingpat]

I think there are explanations that make perfect sense (for us men, anyway). Heels really accentuate the curvature and tone of a woman's legs, and for me at least, a nice-looking set of legs is very nice.

[Thighboots2]

Amanda, Good question. Scientific explanation, I doubt it. More to do with aesthetics, form and the artistic as dingpat suggests. In the overall view, shoes are such a small item, but if the wrong shoe is selected, then it just looks wrong. I can't understand the current mens trend to wear sneaker derived shoes with everything. If you feel like the pied piper, then you have got the overall ensemble just right, the shoes just add to it, or it just may be that sexy little wiggle the heels give you Simon.

[Trinity]

As the previous comments state, it is aesthetics over science. A nice set of pins in sexy heels, is a dream to look at. As for you being the pied piper, i think its down to those great pins and that sexy wiggle. Gotta dash i think i can hear far off music!!!!!

[sassy heels]

To me, the click of a high heel, is the catalyst. You hear it ( I mean come on, a sneker is quiet and wont draw any attention), and you turn, simple as that. The sound does draw attention. From there it then goes to the leg, which then sets you up to either keep "inspecting" (so to speak) further. No magic, no real scientific explanation. Want o get attention , make a noise. If you have the (again, so to speak) whole package going right, then you will indeed feel like the Pied Piper.

[heelma]

I guess you should ask this question in another place than here, as for anyone of us, high heels are magic . So, I can't really answer why so many others, who don't have an attraction to high heels (that a woman wears) to the extent I do, turn their heads as well.

Is there actually a scientiffic explanation for the attraction of high heels or do these powers (as I suspect) qualify as magic?

Even after wearing heels for so long, I still feel like the pied piper when I see heads turn.

[dhn1]

The position of the foot when wearing high heels makes it easier for the energy to flow from the foot into the leg. As tought in traditional chinese medicine, 3 channels have their root in the big toe area of the foot. This are the kidney channel, the liver channel and the spleen channel. Now the kidney and liver channel are closely related to sexual energy, kidney energy is the raw sexual energy and the liver is what makes it flourish. The kidney channel flow through the depression behind the ankel and moves up inside the leg and the liver channel flows from the depression between the big toe and the next one and moves also upward inside the leg. So when you walk in high heels, it stimulate an ease the flow of sexual energy in the legs. When looking at someone's leg in high heel, even if you do not really see the sexual energy, you become aware of it. Also, shoes with a closed top tend to constraint the liver channel, that's why I like shoes with open tops (with or without heel). Now what happens if someone is looking at your legs in high heels? The eye is the gate of the spirit and energy can get in and out of it. When you look at an object your spirit and energy comes out and mixes with that particular object and becomes parts of your world. If someone looks at your legs, it's probably because he is attracted by your sexual energy, and in the process his energy mixes with yours, making you feel better (or worse depending on the situation). Some might say that it's only the beauty of the legs that is attracting, but I am shure that thay will also look at not so beautifull legs if these are full of energy, this is the life energy, we are attracted to it like children are attracted to water. Everything is energy and spirit, the materialistic people may not believe in it, but that the way it is.

[bladerunner]

Amanda you must be a stunning looking woman! or maybe your magic???

[dingpat]

Amanda you must be a stunning looking woman!

or maybe your magic???

that's a lot better than my explanation. Keep it simple I suppose!

[Amanda]

that's a lot better than my explanation. Keep it simple I suppose!

Magic is how I prefer to see myself.

Looks will fade while magic can burn bright until the very end.

[Trinity]

you certainly seem to have been sprinkled with that magic dust. Beautiful AND Magical

[fastfreddy2]

Beautiful AND Magical

Rather sadly, most of us here will never know.

[Trinity]

But let us imagine and keep those thoughts alive Fastfreddy

[WobbleFan]

From what I've read and seen, the following seems to be true for at least a part of *mand*kind: Deep down inside, most men are programmed to protect women. This was probably a good thing in the days we still lived in caves. High heeled shoes have a profound effect on the way women walk. Their stride is shortened and now matter how good they are at walking in heels, they look a bit more vulnerable compared to stomping around in sneakers. This seems to appeal to the 'protection-instinct' in a lot of men. Another theory: Heels make the legs look longer. And, again this dates back to the the ice ages, when a girl becomes fertile, the ratio of the length of her legs against that of her upper body changes. The legs become longer. Men are programmed to recognise this as a sign of a fertile youg woman. Now when combined with the altered posture that emphasizes the natural assets like breasts, bottom and hips, I think I know why I react to a high heeled lady when I meet one. WobbleFan

[euchrid]

Is there actually a scientific explanation for the attraction of high heels....

There is... sort of.

Desmond Morris described it in one of his "Watching" books (Body Watching or People Watching or Sex Watching... whichever)

Basically, it's the effect of the heels on the female wearers' posture.

She is made to stand on tip-toe, with her haunches (hips, buttocks, and upper thighs) raised and her posterior pushed outwards.

This is a female primate mating signal which basically sends out a message to males - "i'm up for it lads, if you're interested!". #

When combined with other body language and subliminal mating signals (bare flesh, revealing or tight clothing, red lips, long hair, etc.) the poor unsuspecting male can't help but be visually attracted.

I think the *click-click* attraction of the heel sound is a pavlovian response. We automatically turn to look because we assume we'll get to see an attractive woman making those sounds. This can obviously lead to disappointment but, as our 'strike rate' on spying an attractive woman in heels is usually pretty high, we are unlikely to stop responding to it anytime soon.

# That's Desmonds' theory not mine, of course.

Some might say it's a primitive, sexist, chauvanistic one but that doesn't mean it's incorrect.

[bootluvr]

Magic is how I prefer to see myself.

Looks will fade while magic can burn bright until the very end.

Very Eliquently put Ms. Amanda, and So So True with what's been happening around the World lately.

[Amanda]

There is... sort of.

Desmond Morris described it in one of his "Watching" books (Body Watching or People Watching or Sex Watching... whichever)

I think you're referring to his book entitled "Manwatching"?

[roniheels]

Amanda... High heels do excentuate the female anatomy making the legs look longer and sleek, and proportionately accenting the womans God-given attributes. You have described yourself in the past as a tall young woman. My guess is when you wear high heels, you look like a beatuiful amazon who would automatically turn the heads of most men and probably some women alike. So to answer your question, yes, in a matter of speaking, high heels are magical.

[Amanda]

Amanda...

High heels do excentuate the female anatomy making the legs look longer and sleek, and proportionately accenting the womans God-given attributes.

You have described yourself in the past as a tall young woman. My guess is when you wear high heels, you look like a beatuiful amazon who would automatically turn the heads of most men and probably some women alike.

So to answer your question, yes, in a matter of speaking, high heels are magical.

You guys, thanks for all the flattery but most of all thanks for being able to understand the true magic of shoes like most guys never do.

It makes me feel less of a shoeholic madwoman.

[Guest]

Nicely put Amanda As for the guys here we are probably more biased within the forum, or are we to twist words in your last line? "more shoeholic madmen" or should we be politically correct and say 'shoeholic people?

[hhboots]

Indeed, it would be difficult to get a non-biased answer from this crowd. We are all under the spell.

[heelma]

Indeed, it would be difficult to get a non-biased answer from this crowd. We are all under the spell.

... which I have said right at the beginning when this post started ...

http://www.hhplace.org/everybody/11548-magical_shoes.html#post175124

[Amanda]

By Robin Givhan Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 29, 2002; Page F01 It is no coincidence that a pair of shoes figures prominently in the relationship between Cinderella and her prince. Women have long adored shoes of all kinds, recognizing their ability to alter moods, announce authority and curry sexual favor. Is it any wonder that a pair of glass slippers could be used to broker a marriage proposal? In the grisliest telling of the fairy tale, by the Brothers Grimm, Cinderella's wicked stepsisters hack off their toes and slice at their heels, so desperate are they to squeeze their substantial feet into the dainty magical slipper. Many a dissertation has examined the subtext of this tale and the dangers of placing the responsibility for one's happiness on a flaky prince, a sketchy fairy godmother and an ill-fitting shoe. Yet despite all the warnings from feminists and mothers, modern women who look askance at illusions about princes regularly abuse their feet in ways that would make a podiatrist blanch. Who among us has not encountered a woman willing to risk hammertoes, corns and bunions on her peasant feet in exchange for the fleeting pleasure of walking into a cocktail party in a pair of needle-nose Sergio Rossi reptile pumps purchased on markdown? The holiday season brings with it endless occasions for wearing splendidly impractical shoes. And the spring 2003 collections are filled with candy-colored mules, multi-buckle sandals, metallic slingbacks and backbreaking pumps. Women, if the past is a guide, will wear them all, which is why Seventh Avenue loves women's shoes. When a fashion conglomerate wants to expand, it shops for shoe companies. When a designer wants to widen his name recognition, he searches for a shoe license. For all its dowdy sweaters and pleated chiffon, Prada is, above all else, a shoe and handbag house. Gucci is a leather goods firm. Women will tolerate discomfort and a slowed gait for a splendid shoe. Many will speak of these shoes with an affection often reserved for a beloved pet, in the hushed tones used to describe fine art or with the passion auto aficionados exude in describing the classic cars they own but cannot drive. "I actually bought a pair of shoes at Bergdorf [Goodman] about four years ago that I couldn't wear. They were so beautiful. They were slingbacks and I can't wear them. I walk right out of them," says Lynda Erkiletian, the owner and president of T.H.E. Artist Agency in Washington. "I have literally put them on in my dressing room and said, 'Jeez, I wish I could wear them outside.' " The shoes are Italian, intended for the evening, pale pink and covered in beadwork. "I'd never done anything like that before," Erkiletian says. "But I could rationalize it." Not history, Seventh Avenue, self-analysis, "Sex and the City" nor the corner cobbler can satisfactorily explain a modern woman's fascination with shoes. American men spent $13 billion on about 284 million pairs of shoes by October this year, according to NPD Fashionworld, a research company that tracks retail sales. So why did an inner voice drive women to spend nearly $16 billion on 545 million pairs? The answer, perhaps, lies with mythmakers who have infused shoes with magic. From the moment a little girl slips into her first pair of Mary Janes -- the kind with the delightful grosgrain ribbons -- she is advised through fantasies and legends that shoes are a magnet for Prince Charming, a reward for a job well done and a talisman of individual power. Not even a tiara can compete with that. In times of lucidity, women will proclaim their admiration for the Aerosole, the Naturalizer, the Birkenstock, the Arche, the Mephisto. Teenage girls may keep a wardrobe of sneakers. Graying hippies may swear by their clogs and beach bums may love their flip-flops. But these brands and styles, known for their comfort and practicality, are not the shoes that make women gasp in delight, cause men to stare in admiration or send drag queens into a swoon. Glory be to the slingback, the mule and the kitten heel pump. "I'd have to say that probably of my three favorite shoe designers, Manolo Blahnik is my favorite. He's number one bar none. He designs a very sexy and comfortable shoe," Erkiletian says. "Second to that would be Prada. I like them for the expressiveness. The pink suede mule they're doing now -- with black slacks -- it speaks. It says something. Jimmy Choo would be third. I think they're also very comfortable but they usually have a lower heel and they have a lower price point, but not by much." There is undeniable, physical pleasure in shoe shopping. Oh, to sit down on a velvet tuffet and peel off worn and cracked loafers and glide into a fresh pair of pumps in which the insole feels like a cloud and the sweet smell of new leather wafts into the air and tickles the nose. Is it really an overstatement to describe the pleasure of footwear as distracting, all-consuming, orgasmic? Perhaps. But women's shoes -- unlike a man's captoes, monk straps and wingtips -- are awfully pretty. So very, very pretty. New shoes represent a fresh beginning. They signify the start of a journey and alter the manner in which it will be traveled. Consider a pencil-slim, three-inch heel with its ability to transform the whole body. Forget for a moment those words of warning from any podiatrist worth his or her degree, do not consider aching knees or the pressure on the lower back. Just stand for a moment and consider the figure with the elongated legs, the flexed calves, the suggestive tilt of the derriere as if it is being served up for proper admiration on a silver platter. Let she who is without shoe lust cast the first stone. In a 1994 issue of Allure magazine, the actress Ann Magnuson wrote: "The bones in my ankles cracked. . . . Hobbling down the avenue, I became acutely aware of . . . my body. My breasts jutted forward, while my back was severely arched. . . . Are these shoes disempowering? Do they enslave us? Are we rendered helpless by wearing them? The answer is yes! Yes! Of course! What other point would there be in wearing them?" Freudian Slippers A woman's love affair with shoes should not be confused with the mostly male sexual fetish for them. Freudian theory suggests assorted explanations for men's fascination with high heels, most of which focus on the notion of the foot as the penis and the shoe as the vagina. But one need not veer very far down that path to agree that there is sexual satisfaction in watching an attractive woman walk down the street atop a pair of three-inch heels. But what is the thrill for women? Why can they find as much pleasure in a new pair of ballet flats as in three-inch mules? Why is it that, to quote my wise mother, "A woman can't have too many pairs of black shoes." It may be that women have fetishized shoes in other ways. "Fetishism is not only 'about' sexuality; it is also very much about power and perception," writes the fashion historian Valerie Steele in "Fetish: Fashion, Sex & Power." Shoes are items of indulgence that women have always bought for themselves. More public than lingerie, less expensive than a diamond and without the politics of a fur, good shoes signify that one has arrived. In "The Silence of the Lambs," Hannibal Lecter made this observation when Clarice Starling came to interrogate him: "You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well-scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste." A woman's shoes are the foundation of her public persona, the point from which everything else rises. Shoes may be classified as accessories, but more often they are the main event. Few elements of a wardrobe can so quickly alter the way in which an ensemble is read as a pair of shoes, which is why a woman can justify having four different pairs of black leather boots in her closet. A woman in a simple black sheath and sturdy oxfords comes across as practical and solid. If she exchanges the oxfords for strappy sandals, her ensemble crackles with sex appeal. Wear pumps with the sheath and the message is professional. Choose knee-high boots and she's a bit of a hipster. Shoes are the fashion equivalent of talking points. They keep an ensemble on track, defining its agenda. When the tornado swept Dorothy and Toto to Oz and their bungalow flattened the Wicked Witch of the East, the pigtailed heroine was rewarded with the villain's glittering red pumps. When Dorothy strutted down the yellow brick road it was inevitable that she would pick up a motley band of admirers. As Dorothy battled flying monkeys trying to get back home to Kansas, all she really had to do was click her heels three times. A pair of shoes can take a woman home, evoking nostalgic memories like few other items in her closet. A woman will remember the first shoes that her parents let her select: a pair of white go-go boots, purple Mary Janes, rubber platform sandals or red iridescent ballet slippers. She will recall her first pair of heels and how grown-up she felt, maybe even how they made her feel sexy and womanly for the first time. She secretly hoped that her black patent leather shoes did reflect up. Shoes are a prop in defining sexuality, as evocative as a first bra. They can be a statement of character -- one that may be either true or false. In Adams Morgan, a footwear boutique uses its name to make this pronouncement: Wild Women Wear Red Shoes. Footwear is not subtle when delivering a message. It's like cars in that way. (Wild men drive turbocharged El Caminos.) And if a woman is not careful she can easily overstate her point. Surly women with mullets wear white pumps with three-inch heels. And women who make their home on street corners wear thigh-high boots. Shoes also can express religiosity and an ascetic sensibility. A few blocks away from Macy's in Herald Square sits the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi. Tucked down a narrow brick corridor is Sebastian's Sandals, a cobbler's shop run by Sebastian Tobin, a Franciscan monk. He crafts handmade sandals based on religious traditions and blesses them with a brand of the Tau cross. His shoes are alluring in their plainness. And if there is another advantage to Tobin's sandals, which have the rough-hewn look of a Polo and Prada mix, it is this: "Usually, my shoe is a size smaller because I'm making it to your foot." Shoes are a measure of vanity. They have signified narcissism at least since Hans Christian Andersen wrote his cautionary fairy tale "The Red Shoes" in which a vain girl is forced to pirouette and leap in her red shoes until she dances to the door of death. How uncomfortable might a woman willingly be for the satisfaction of cutting a striking figure in evening pumps? Cooling Their Heels on West 54th Shoes do not make a woman feel fat or look sallow. They are egalitarian in their sizing and merchandising. A woman who may have to shop in a plus size store or the petite department to buy her clothes can swim in the mainstream when she's on the hunt for fine shoes. Shoes are among the least expensive ways in which to update a wardrobe. A scandalously silly pair of shoes can go more places than a whimsical garment. There is a shoe for every mood. Shoes can bridge the generation gap, inciting silliness in both mothers and daughters. Twice yearly, a multi-generational footwear feeding frenzy erupts in the small townhouse on West 54th Street in Manhattan where the Manolo Blahnik boutique is located and where women line up for the biannual sale. The store can always be spotted from a distance due to the crowd of waiting women -- and dutiful husbands, boyfriends and diva men who want to know if the Carolyne slingbacks come in a size 12. At the last sale this summer, the boutique moved almost 700 pairs of shoes -- regularly priced at more than $400 each -- in a day, said George Malkemus, president of Manolo Blahnik USA. Barbara Haley came in from Long Island for the sale and was waiting in line with her daughter, who, in the manner of an unrepentant addict, declined to share her name. At the last sale, Haley walked away with a pair of burgundy alligator boots that at $1,750 were about half their original price. That is enough to make a shoe freak erupt in a cold sweat on a 90-degree day. Haley pulled out a little purple battery-operated fan and proceeded to muse about shoes. "It's always shoes and bags. I love them. I rotate them. I take care of them." How many pairs does she have? "I will never confess that to anybody." Said the daughter: Taking care of shoes "is like practicing taking care of kids. . . . If I have twins, it'll be even better!" About two dozen women waited patiently in line. And for every customer to exit the store, the kindly guard allowed another shopper to enter. No one was fearful of there being no good shoes left, of leaving the sale empty-handed. There is always something: a pointy-toed chocolate-brown flat with a side button, a strappy snakeskin sandal in an impossible shade of pink, a peau de soie evening shoe dotted with rhinestones. Not being able to find a pair of shoes that sparkle with magic? That's akin to saying that there is no magic left in the world.

[PatentHeel]

don't get me started on this lol. magic, powerful, alluring, appealing, attractive, tempting, interesting, fascinating, enthralling, charming, glamourous, captivating, commanding, potent, great and thats just the heels themselves wthout even describing how a pair of legs looks in them!

[Guest]

Amanda

Is that an abridged edit from your degree dissertation?

WOW

What a stunning piece!

we are not worthy as She that holds the magic runs around us, known to us as Amanda Snake.

I stand bowed before the High Priestess.

Al

[Amanda]

Amanda

Is that an abridged edit from your degree dissertation?

WOW

What a stunning piece!

we are not worthy as She that holds the magic runs around us, known to us as Amanda Snake.

I stand bowed before the High Priestess.

Al

Thanks very much Al, however, if you had read the first line you would see that it's an article by By Robin Givhan of the Washington Post.

[secondtake20]

Thank You for the post Amanda Snake.

[SNYer]

I also have to say thanks for showing the article Amanda. You are a true lady in every sense of the word!

[Histiletto]

Most all that has been said in this thread comes from the present point of view society has concerning men and women. Had men kept their claim for wearing high heels, perhaps our conversing would be more to the magical appearance from the styling of the footwear. This is in no way saying that the attraction of the female form to a male observer isn't given the extra something while sporting a pair of heels, but nature has given the feminine human the properties of beauty that make their masculine counterpart go completely out of their minds to companion with such beauty, even with out heels. The magic we attach to heels effects in multi-faceted ways, which means the magic doesn't effect everyone in the same way. The magic comes from a set of an individual's senses derived from who you are. Wearing just any high heel may give you a lift in height and cause you to walk in shortened steps, but with the particular heels that attracted you, there is an additional measure of ecstatical feelings of magic which permeates your existence. You really feel great about your appearance, no matter what those around you may infer due to their senses. It's great when they concur with you, but if they don't, they aren't the ones adorning your appearance either way.

[Amanda]

Are we just masochists?

Women cast off their corsets long ago, yet high heels - which make it just as hard to move freely - keep getting more precarious. As Christian Louboutin launches an eight-inch spike, Hannah Betts asks why

• Hannah Betts
• The Guardian, Tuesday October 28 2008

High heels just keep getting more precarious. Photograph: Linda Nylind

I am standing frozen in the middle of the A1203 as two lines of traffic hurtle homicidally toward me. My heel is caught in a manhole cover, my foot intricately buckled into the shoe. Hack that I am, it is not my life that flashes before me, but the headlines: Woman Killed by High Heels. As a women who grew up in Start-rites, idolising women who chained themselves to lamp-posts, this is not the finale I had in mind.

I lived to tell the tale with my penchant for teetering undiminished. True, I am yet to succumb to the current vogue for 7in swaggerers á la Posh or Paltrow; a trend that has been so fervently emulated that even sturdy old John Lewis is offering curiously infantalising lessons in how to walk in them. And my head is as yet unturned by Christian Louboutin's recent declaration that he will produce the first 8in stiletto outside the world of fetish.

Nevertheless, I do sport heels day and night, at home and at large, content to be an individual whose feet are not entirely planted on the ground. In flats I moonwalk, lurch, engage in slapstick collapses; en pointe I glide.

The cause lies deep in childhood. A strapping lass, I grew up with everyone predicting I would be 6ft. When I stopped growing at 12, I was left with 6ft attitude on an averagely squat frame. Fakery was the only option. I have won tennis matches in heels, shovelled cow dung while wearing them, even scaled the lower reaches of the Matterhorn.

Yet, there are those who find my choice of footwear a dereliction of feminist duty. British activist and academic Sheila Jeffreys, professor in political science at the University of Melbourne, and author of Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West, speaks for many when she expresses her contempt: "Men have traditionally demanded that women walk and dance in pain and gained great sexual satisfaction from this. The fashion industry that creates the rules is dominated by men, many of whom are shoe fetishists. They project their interest on to women's broken feet."

For Jeffreys and others, this fashionable fetishism is a form of self-harm on a level with wearing tightly laced corsets, or foot binding.

"I feel distress when I see women in high heels," Jeffreys says. "I shudder at the pain they must experience and the long-term damage being caused to their bodies. When I see young women struggle to walk and remain upright, I am enraged at the depths of degradation women have to bear in societies where lip service is paid to their equality."

The rhetoric deployed by heel opponents brings to mind the campaign against corset wearing, specifically the practice of tight lacing, current from the mid-Victorian period onwards. From the late 1860s to the early 1890s the Lancet published at least one article a year on the dangers of tight lacing, a custom held responsible for curvature of the spine, rib deformity, displacement of internal organs, respiratory problems, circulatory diseases, birth defects and a range of fertility issues, as well as broken ribs and puncture wounds.

The corset-opposing Rational Dress Society, founded in 1881, included heels as part of its offensive against "dress that either deforms the figure, impedes the movements of the body, or in any way tends to injure the health".

And they certainly had a point. NHS podiatric surgeon Emma Supple decries the current vogue for "Killer, statement, gladiatorial heels" as "warfare on your feet". Thousands of British women are rendered immobile by high heels, she says. Corrective surgery is occurring to the tune of £29m a year, be it bunion or corn removal, toe straightening and joint replacement, or the removal of trapped nerves. Four out of 10 women admit to having had accidents, with statistics suggesting that as many as 20,000 women a year are hospitalised by their heels. "There has to be a change," Supple says, "because this really is a form of self-torture. We have enormous rates of obesity, osteoporosis. Women have to be able to get out of their cars and pound pavements.

Cosmetic foot surgery is also on the increase, with treatments including plumping the ball of the foot with dermal filler to provide greater cushioning, and Botox injections to firm up damaged tissue. Dr Michael O'Neill, a podiatric surgeon at the Princess Margaret hospital in Windsor, has noted that prolonged wear may lead to incontinence, stress fractures, back and hip problems, in addition to more than the odd broken ankle. Jaw, neck and head pain may also be a consequence, with menstrual dysfunction and fertility problems completing the lamentable package.

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. Freud took the shoe to be a symbol of the vagina, by which logic the heeled shoe becomes vagina with penis, chick with a dick, a 6in emblem of the act of congress. Be this as it may, heels certainly impart suggestive body morphing qualities: not least, the arched back and tilted pelvis of orgasm.

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.

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.

Heels supply entry-level vampishness, are the object by which constructed, faux-femininity is bestowed. My own attitude is that of the playful homovestite - a woman who gets a kick out of hamming up her femininity - content to be an object of the male gaze so long as I get to feel in control of matters, and give just as good as I get.

Feminism counts for nothing if it is not a guarantee of choice. And while I choose to pursue politics proper in a state of high seriousness, so I see no contradiction for the politics of dress to be pursued in a spirit of high camp. What heels inhibit in terms of speed, they restore by means of swagger. The stiletto, after all, was originally a weapon, infamously becoming so again in Single White Female, in which the identity-purloining Hedy lends fatal meaning to the notion of bringing a man to heel.

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.

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.

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 prostitutes pioneered, so the high-born followed suit. Catherine De' Medici carried the vogue to France when she married the future Henri II in 1533. A diminutive teenager, Catherine exploited her heels to provide her with the stature of a queen and a gait to rival the towering presence of Henri's mistress, Diane de Poitiers.

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries both sexes availed themselves of strategically supplemented stature to gesture toward their patrician idleness. Until, of course, the French Revolution, when patrician idleness was the last attribute anyone cared to advertise. Marie Antoinette went to the guillotine on a defiant two extra inches, symbol of a swaggering old order brought brutishly down to earth.

Two centuries on, the rich still choose to signify their covetable inactivity by means of added inches: the well-heeled inseparable from their cab spikes, the arriviste most precariously shod of all. Sex and the City, that obsession of contemporary womanhood, embraced the chopine legacy with gusto. Patricia Field, chief architect of its modishness, declared that she used stilettos to "symbolise the characters' sexual power, as well as their independence". If the series' fifth character was New York, then the sixth was Manolo Blahnik, the consummate dream man against which any passing Priapus might be measured.

In the celluloid take, Bradshaw's apotheosis comes when she discovers a place where she can lay her Blahniks (a moment that provoked a collective gasp of pleasure in the cinema in which I saw it). Later, the hero re-presents her with these heels in place of an engagement ring, provoking a bout of rapturous intercourse.

Whatever appetites are depicted, the insatiable desire for footwear will always prove dominant. Heels exert a mythical hold over Sex and the City's protagonists as surely as Moira Shearer's ballet slippers did in The Red Shoes: an addiction both slavish and exquisitely arousing. Would these girls go all the way for a good eight inches? Damn right.

And, yet, much as I am in thrall to Monsieur Louboutin, I am not feeling it for the 8in spike. As Emma Supple notes, there is something unappealingly ludicrous about fetish wear outside the boudoir. Gad Saad sees scope for only more ridiculousness: "What we're looking at is a form of runaway selection in an attempt to create an ever more alluring visual stimulus. In a sense it will only stop once it is not longer feasible for women to actually move." Victoria Beckham certainly approached this in her recent outing in 5in, "heel-free" heels, requiring her spouse to function less as arm candy than as a crutch.

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."

Even the high priest of foot fetishism isn't taken. "I think there's a limit," Blahnik says. "Anything over 11.5cm [4in] is just too much. You can't walk properly; it's no longer elegant." Four inches and a girl's going places, eight and she will have difficulty merely rising to her feet.

Doubtless, fashion itself will prove the great leveller. Just as the corset was eventually spurned as anything other than an occasional fetish by modish women keen to dance, cycle, and make strides into the workplace, so the 8in heel will deservedly be shunned. Women of the world, you have nothing to lose but your bunions, hammertoes and stress fractures. Best of all, I could pass for a sensible-shoe girl in saying so.