There's two schools of thought going on here.Mugs-n-such wrote:Incidentally, I think cowboy boots are also rather high-heeled, some of them, and of course no one would accuse a cowboy of being girly, imo (at least not most of them).
One is the "classic" cowboy-boot which has a heel of which a portion sloped forward so as to positively catch the stirrup; the heel on those would be about an inch-and-a-half to two inches to make sure that proper engagement was had. A two-incher isn't a bother to walk in, and bear in mind this is work-wear where one is out in the elements, not something that one wears to the singles bar in the evening.
Then we have the "Urban Cowboy". These are the ones with all talk and precisely none of the walk because the heels on their boots are designed for show, not function. As the Texans are said to say, "All hat and no cattle."
Heels, note, are nothing new. The Romans understood well that human performance (and armies need that) is enhanced by footwear with a moderate heel (about 1/2 to 1 inch), and constructed their footwear accordingly. Once one gets much past an inch, it starts entering the realm of "design" rather than "function" (save for the specialists' tool mentioned above), and (in my opinion) once it exceeds 3 it's fetish.
