Why it’s time for us women to bring shoe fetish to heel

By Felicity Morse

– 06 March 2014

High heels are to feet what cages are to canaries: as much as they show off the canary, they enslave and damage the bird. For years women have been infatuated with this form of footwear, yet now we’re realising we’ve been writing love-letters to our own prison guards.

Sex and the City’s Kristin Davis is the latest high-profile figure to turn her back on stiletto servitude. Earlier this week, she apologised for encouraging women to wear high heels, saying, “I do feel guilt about the heels. It did seem we were trying to say to women, ‘You should be wearing heels like these’. But we definitely weren’t.

“Were they beautiful shoes? Yes. Were they appropriate for the characters? Yes, that’s what women like that wear. But it became a bigger picture thing, where it seemed women should be wearing them every day.”

Squeezing our feet into these fashion Bastilles can lead to irreparable damage.

High heels force our spine and hips out of alignment, they pile pressure on our fragile knee joints, they cause abnormality in the heels (the gruesome-sounding affliction Haglund’s Deformity), as well as inflaming tissue on the soles of the feet and shortening your muscles.

Up to a third of women suffer permanent problems as a result of wearing high heels.

Sarah Jessica Parker recently admitted going to a foot-doctor who told her, “Your foot does things it shouldn’t be able to. That bone there – you’ve created that bone. It doesn’t belong there.”

We are told sliding into high heels makes us feel powerful, taller, stylish and more feminine.

Manolo Blahnik has said that heels “make life more exciting… it’s about elegance… If you are a woman, it’s a way to appeal to the male species, it’s a way to attract”. Christian Louboutin told us something similar.

Even scientists have set out to prove that high heels make us look sexier. Historically, it was never so, but for generations now, high heels have been associated with eroticism. This form of footwear has moved from being a fetish into a fashion item and now high heels are practically an obligation for some women.

It is this that is most worrying and has the potential to do the opposite of what retailers promise when they sell us their tall tales.

This consumerist construct has teetered so far into la-la land that women are now choosing to wear high heels for interviews, believing heels make them look businesslike, well-presented and competent. Some bosses even expect us to wear heels, as a TUC report highlighted. But the truth is, we’re crippling ourselves.

Plus: there’s nothing well-put together about trotting 10 paces behind your male colleague to make it to a meeting on time. Or having your handbags stuffed with a pair of flats instead of a laptop.

Today, high heels are one of the only items of clothing (excluding lingerie) made exclusively for women.

There is nothing empowering about that.

Let’s get men to look us in the eye because they respect us – not because we’re in six-inch heels.

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‘The Face’ Contestant Amanda Gullickson Tells Us What It’s Like to Model …

[Season 2 of The Face premiered last night and today we’re recapping the episode with contestant Amanda Gullickson (you can find out more about her here). The South Carolina native will be blogging for us exclusively about the show and we encourage you to tune to Oxygen next Wednesday at 9/10 C to find out whether Amanda continues on to the next round. And be sure to check back in with theFashionSpot on Thursday, for an inside look at the previous night’s episode.]

Yay! The time has finally arrived and I am so glad The Face competition has finally started.

Originally, I had no idea what was in store for us at Bryant Park. I figured we would see the coaches walk, and maybe we would as well, BUT only in a bra and underwear??…I definitely did not see that one coming. On top of that, there was a full audience of complete strangers just waiting to watch us.

I am pretty comfortable in lingerie so thankfully that wasn’t too nerve wracking for me. My biggest concern was, oh my…when my dad watches this ha! I was a little bit nervous and I definitely feel I could have done better. Watching, I also remember how hot it was outside! We were all so sweaty. Hopefully it was not too obvious!

Getting back to the loft, nobody was really sure what to expect. When we walked in they had it completely hooked up! Each team room had a completely different style, which I liked.

Then it was time for the choosing of teams…Talk about nerve wracking! I had it in my head that I wanted to be Team Anne because of her Sports Illustrated and Victoria’s Secret background, which is the path I want to take. However, I was one of the last to go in and team Anne was full already.

As you saw, I am Team Lydia and so excited about it! I am really glad everything happened the way it did. My teammates are Ray, Allison and Nakisha. 

The first challenge was at Juicy Couture and pretty challenging. I definitely thought we could win it, but it was hard for us in certain ways just because we all have such different personalities. I must say though, we got better by the minute! It was our first time working together and we pulled it off.

When Nigel revealed Naomi had won, their team was happy and screaming. We didn’t see the other team’s window, but it was disappointing we didn’t win. The worst part of not winning isn’t missing out on the prize (even though that stinks too), it is knowing Lydia has to put one of us up for elimination. When it came time for her to choose someone, I wasn’t too nervous, but the whole situation got emotional.

Early tears started flowing for Ray and Allison. I knew Allison had trouble with the perfume bottle, but I really wasn’t ready to see her go…or any of my teammates. I liked Isabelle a lot as well, even though she was not on my team. Elimination days are always tough but thankfully for our team, Ray pulled it off and came back! Lydia is absolutely amazing and so supportive. I can’t wait for you all to see everything our team and the competition has in store as the weeks continue to unravel. There is so much to come and I can’t wait to watch it all with you all!

Be sure to watch The Face Wednesdays at 10/9C on Oxygen. You can follow me on Twitter at @A_Gullickson.

All images via screenshot

Related:

• Season 2 of The Face Premieres Tomorrow Night: Meet Amanda Gullickson, theFashionSpot’s Exclusive Model Blogger
• Watch: ‘The Face’ Open Casting in New York with Season One Winner Devyn Abdullah
• After ‘The Face’ Finale: An Interview with Karolina Kurkova and [Spoiler!] Winner Devyn Abdullah
• The Face: Here’s What You Need to Know About the Second Season of Naomi Campbell’s Modeling Show

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