"She looked quite uncomfortable and unstable. ... We began to consider what might be happening at the muscle and tendon level."
—Scientists Look at the Dangers of High Heels.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
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I will wear heels until my feet, legs, and back rebel. It's the only way 5'2" me can pretend to be statuesque.
Also, they are pretty.
@OhShesArtsy This almost 5'3" girl is with you all the way.
@OhShesArtsy Another 5'3" girl here. I love wearing heels (especially due to the 6'7" boyfriend) but I don't do it enough so I'm always clunky and awkward.
@The Everpresent Wordsnatcher Yeah, what this 5'3" lady took away from the article is "achieve correct heel/flat timeshare balance in life," and in my case then the answer is MOAR HEELS, pretty pretty shoes. I just, man, it's so much work. I dunno how people do it 40 hours a week.
@MissMushkila Today I am regretting this decision. I am a staffing agent (and a receptionist and an assistant and and and...) for industrial plants. I have had to unexpectedly come to a client's plant today. Nothing quite like walking the floor of a massive tire factory in three inch heels. Perhaps I need to keep a pair of flats in my car?
@OhShesArtsy Yes! I always stash a pair of flats somewhere available when I'm heeling it up. Makes a huge difference.
@OhShesArtsy I'm 5'0", and you will NEVER catch me in heels unless it's a special occcasion. They hurt so much!
YOU GUYS I am also 5'2-5'3 (depending on how much I feel like exaggerating, ha) and I'm with @jen325, heels hurt my poor feet. I only wear them on very special occasions or maybe on not-so-special occasions where I can change into a pair of flip-flops once my feet start hurting (usually about an hour in).
One exception: WEDGE SANDALS which I will wear forever.
@emilylouise Yes! I cry at every wedding, and not just for emotional reasons. And the worst part? I don't even want to take them off at the reception, because I know that if I do I will never be able to make myself put them back on when it's time to go home.
I can't do wedge sandals. My feet are very square and wide, so my poor little toes get all squooshed up, and the less coverage there is the more they dig in. No heels OR wedges for me!
@OhShesArtsy Sniff, I used to wear heels just about every day, and then my bad ankle got worse and worse until I switched mostly to flats, and now when I switch back to heels (which I LOVE and MISS) it's much harder to do. Heartbreaking.
@emilylouise OMG I love wedges so. But I haven't found any that are orthotic friendly AND huge.
@thebestjasmine I've had to tone down my heels because of my bad hip (seriously, I'm 25. Arthritis? WTF?), My daily ones are about two inches. I'll stick it out, though. I love my heels.
@jen325 I USED to feel the same way, until I bought these semi-expensive heels from Indigo by Clarks - which I think was suggested on a Hairpin Beauty Q&A a while back. Anyway, they are amazing and soo comfortable and I want to wear them all the time! (I swear to god I don't work for Clarks)
@heyad I'm glad you found something that works for you! I'm still skeptical though, because I've got weird feet. They're square like Fred Flintstone's, and very wide. It's rare for me to find a comfortable shoe that's not shaped like this.
@jen325 I was about to post the same thing! Any heels I do wear are generally extremely low - proper ones just look so painful. I like my flat shoes.
I borke my foot (fifth metatarsal) not once, but twice. After the second break healed, my foot still regularly puffed up (ew, I know) because the bones weren't used to being flat/not in heels. This was concerning. My doctor told me that if I didn't alternate the height of my heels regularly, I would regret it when I got to be 50+ because my feet would just rebel! Because I cannot imagine having to quit salsa dancing just because I turn 50, I now wear flats at least 4 times a week and alternate heel heights for the remaining 3. Gone are the days of 4" heels 5 days a week (how did I even DO THAT?)
Lesson: TAKE CARE OF YOUR FEET, PEOPLE!
@dj pomegranate I want to hug you because right now I have a broken toe (my third broken toe! Only seven to go until I collect them all!) and I cannot IMAGINE how much it must have hurt to break a metatarsal.
I'll be over here if you need me, icing my foot and drinking away the pain.
@dj pomegranate It's true! I used to work in a full-service shoe store that catered to people with foot problems and wide withs. We had a lot of old lady customers who could only wear shoes with heels. I sold a lot of these.
We had this one tiny octogenarian who was super cute and always dressed to the nines. She only ever wore one shoe: a Hush Puppies pump (size 4 1/2!) with a 2 1/2 inch heel. She owned it in every color they made. She couldn't be comfortable in anything else because she'd been wearing the same thing for so many years.
@dj pomegranate Oooh, I broke a metatarsal (4th) in college and now if I wear the wrong heels for too long I can feel that bone very clearly. Luckily my current job cares less that I wear heels unless I'm in client meetings (my last job was 60 hours a week, and I was on my feel for most of it - in heels. I once wore a pedometer and discovered I walked 4-5 miles a day).
Flats for life!
I love the idea of heels, and have some hella cute pairs that go unworn, but I live in MN - wearing heels is just too cold/treaturous for at least half the year. How do you cold weather ladies do it?
@NeverOddOrEven I never wore heels until I moved to NYC--there's no where near as much ice and snow. I feel like heels in Minnesota would be a knee replacement death wish.
@NeverOddOrEven Um, my snowboots have a wedge heel. Not a high one!
@Lily Rowan Oh girl, I got a running shoe for you: http://www.lordandtaylor.com/eng/Shoes-viewallshoes-Alfa_Wedge_Sneakers-lordandtaylor/203838
@Lily Rowan Even those look dangerous to me!
@parallel-lines Hahahaha!!
@NeverOddOrEven FLATS4EVA! My philosophy on heels is like my philosophy on waxing: any beauty-related object or treatment that causes excruciating pain is NOT WORTH IT. Makeup, sure. Nice dresses, sure. Blinding pain, NONONO.
@NeverOddOrEven In the winter, I only wear heels on nice nights out when I know I only gotta go car to restaurant (or wherever) and table to bathroom and back. Much less treachery to worry about from the sidewalks.
Lily Rowan, my snow boots have wedge heels too! Low ones, lots of traction.
@NeverOddOrEven Team Flats! I am WAY too prone to tripping over myself and falling down to wear heels. My "heels" are just little bitty nubbins, like if a kitten heel had a kitten and that kitten was a runt.
@NeverOddOrEven I have a shoe basket in my office and change when I get to work.
@tortietabbie Most adorable heels EVER.
@PistolPackinMama My entire filing cabinet (2-drawer, lateral) is filled with impractical footwear. Between that and the desk drawers full of hand warmers, Snickers bars, and hoarded highliters, I'd be in sad shape if I ever needed to file something in the traditional way.
@werewolfbarmitzvah WORD. Or an inordinate time commitment. Which for me is like, 5 minutes.
@PistolPackinMama I have shoes under my desk too - a bunch of flats, to change into when I have to wear snow boots : /
Seriously though, I'm just up and about too much throughout the work day for heels. I think I'm going to be stocking up Goodwill with them sooner than later.
A nice googling of bunions every now and then reminds me to mix up my footwear options.
@parallel-lines I was thinking "pfffft google got nothin on my mom's bunions" until I got to a certain point at which I just said HOLY FUCKING FUCKBALLS
That's interesting. I spent years wearing mid-height heels every day, and don't any more (sometimes but not every day), and my calf muscles are a HOT MESS. I think they get worse when I wear flats now! Not that I am keeping up with the stretches my massage therapist gave me...
@Lily Rowan Your tendons might be part of the problem? I have seen this complaint amongst ladies who spent years wearing heels almost exclusively and then had to like, gradually scale down the heel height until they could wear flats again comfortably. The tendons get too tight from all the time not being asked to accommodate a normal barefoot human standing posture.
@wharrgarbl I had thought it was just tendons, but the linked article suggests also changes in the actual muscles, which fits my experience.
@Lily Rowan Ah, sorry, I misunderstood what you were saying.
@wharrgarbl A former coworker had this happen. Her foot was permanently shaped like Barbie's. The last time I saw her, she was in better shape foot-wise, but was almost exclusively wearing Birkenstocks. I'm hoping that my own Birkenstocks as slippers scheme will ward off the Barbie foot.
Eeeeeedith!!! Much love for the "Air Force Ones" title!
@MoonBat GETTT MEEEE TWOOOO PURRRR IIIII NEEEEEEED TWOOOO PURRRRRRRRRRRRR SO I!
@MoonBat I KNOOOOOOW!!!! I almost didn't believe it when I saw it. "Kyjuan where you gettin' them colors--are you dyein' em?"
(oh no, I messed up the call & response! jump in, MoonBat, don't leave Edith hanging.)
@Edith Zimmerman
So I can get ta stompin in my urrr force ones!!!
@MoonBat We're up in footlocker I'm lookin like I NEED those, ten n a half n if ya gottem gimme TWO a those.
@MoonBat :D
"So by stretching and straining their already shortened calf muscles, the heel wearers walk less efficiently with or without heels, he says, requiring more energy to cover the same amount of ground as people in flats and probably causing muscle fatigue."
i'm pretty sure anyone who has ever wore heels could have told them this without doing an entire study on it
@shhhhk The "with heels" walk was expected, but I was a little surprised that it persisted so noticeably even while the heels-wearing ladies were barefoot.
Though I am counting the seconds before "inefficient gate" is translated into "calorie-burning walk" and used for marketing purposes by heel manufacturers.
@wharrgarbl Pretty sure I've seen a piece in Ladies Home Journal or the like suggesting women alternate wearing flats and heels to "tone your calves."
@wharrgarbl I wonder how much this has in common with those sneakers that are supposed to tone your entire lower half? I demand another experiment!
@miwome I think those are supposed to work, insofar as they do, by having a slightly elevated heel, so probably a fair amount.
@wharrgarbl well i mean, from what i understood from the write-up, they had the heels women do the barefoot walk, like, right after they did the heels walk, or at least within a short amount of time? so if they had just taken their heels off after wearing them for a while, of course they were limping a little-- i could have demonstrated that to them any day of the week! i would have been more interested to know how a heels-wearing person's gait was changed after they had been out of the heels for a while, i guess?
@shhhhk I wondered the same. I wear practical shoes to work and impractical (heels) at work. At the end of the day, when I switch to flats, I can feel that my gait is off. By the time I get home (40 or so minutes on train/bus then about a mile walk), my gait feels pretty much like it does on the weekends when I exclusively wear flats.
@datalass One would think they'd have accounted for that, but I guess without seeing the study itself, we're left in the dark on how long they gave the heels-group to rest before measuring again. That would make an interesting follow-up study, though. Chart a group of heels-adapted women over the course of a lengthy period (like, 8 hours, with the shoes coming off at the mid-point) from when they first put them on to four hours after they take them off.
I can only wear old lady-ish shoes for the rest of my days because I have Charcot foot. It's super depressing sometimes.
@Megan Patterson@facebook Yeah, I can't wear heels because I underpronate so much I can't keep my balance. It makes me sad :(
@Four Horsemeals of the Eggporkalypse I can't wear heels because my feet are shaped like Fred Flintstone's and high-heeled shoes just don't fit. None of them.
But does this apply to people who wear 2-ish inch heeled boots? :( I am a big fan of heeled boots...
@Third Wave Housewife I wear heeled boots a lot (like, riding boots and cowboy boots with 1-2" heels) and I don't really consider that "wearing HEELS" you know? They offer a lot more support and structure than a pair of pumps or something.
@Third Wave Housewife Plus, boots with a "heel" also have a normal heel width. Not ballancing on a pencil has got to make all the difference.
On Monday I went to this event where Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke and I wore a suit and heels and I got to ask her a question (she is so nice and wonderful!!!) and when I sat down I realized there was BLOOD POOLING IN MY SHOE from where the back of my heel was rubbing my Achilles tendon. Forget lasting musculoskeletal damage, the sight of all that blood has got me in sneakers and Wallabees for the rest of my life.
PS Clorox wipes got the blood out of my shoe really well, in case this happens to you.
@cuminafterall Clorox wipes for life! I like the kind with the scrubby fibers in them.
@cuminafterall That's awesome that you risked blood to speak to her!
But yes, like a goddamn fool, I walked to a singing audition in new, unbroken-in heels, ON COBBLESTONES, because, as mentioned, I was a goddamned fool. Only after the audition did I realise the slippery feeling was not sweat from nerves, but blood pooling in my shoe. But I had great posture.
@LolaLaBalc i once wore an unbroken-in pair of heels to a presentation with a really nice pair of pantyhose. when i got home, the blood had scabbed over and fused the hose to my ankle. the pantyhose had to go, but i still wear those heels on the regular-- the make my legs look fab!
@cuminafterall This happens to me all the time, but I actually can't really feel it on my one foot. So I have many a bloodied shoe. I feel like it's not my shoe until I've bled all over it.
@shhhhk Ahh, this has happened to me before! Only slightly terrifying. It's amazing, I am horrible at sucking up any pain related to doctors - something to IMPROVE MY HEALTH - but when it comes to looking good in shoes, I will determinedly march around with blisters and bruises all night.
@shhhhk The blood-pantyhose fusion happened to me, too. After the event I went to the bathroom, took off my pantyhose (gently) and rinsed them in the sink. No stains! Jolie would be so proud.
@cuminafterall Did you see her give Obama that huge hug last night at the State of the Union? It made me all teary.
@thebestjasmine Sadly, no-- I was at my German class instead of watching SOTU. I got home about 40 minutes into it.
She did tell us that her husband was making dinner for all the justices before the speech. (She herself only knows how to make tuna casserole and "it's not anybody's favorite.")
@cuminafterall Can't edit posts in this browser, but must clarify that her husband is dead actually! He USED to cook dinner on SOTU night. Before he died.
@cuminafterall Hah, okay, because I was about to say "...her husband died last year, is Ruth getting a litttttle forgetful?" Thank goodness that's not true. The hug was so cute, she did that throw her arms wide open "gimme a hug!" thing when he came up to her, it was super adorable. Though of course right after he hugged Gabby Giffords, and everyone in America cried.
Would you excuse me? I cut my foot before, and my shoe is filling up with blood.
@thebestjasmine OK, sorry I'm a moron, but I thought you were talking about Jolie giving Obama a big hug at the SotU address and then had my mind blown and saddened all at once once with the husband/dinner/deceased thing. Which, is very sad for Ruth, but it felt SO DIFFERENT when framed with my favorite Clean Person in mind.
COMFORTABLE SHOES FOREVER! FASHION BE DAMNED!
@jen325 Yay, comfortable shoes! My favourite shoes are these: http://www.clarks.co.uk/p/20333909 Boringly practical, but so comfy.
Wedges forever. I even ride my bike in them. And this impresses people and then I feel tough. True story.
Had to google the title...well played!