High Heels!

[DALederle]

I just got my very first pair of high heeled shoes last Saturday!
Why is that important?
It was one of those things I used to wear growing up as my mother used to encourage me to dress in girls clothes. Even after my dad came home from the war (WWII) mom kept secretly trying to get me into girls clothes. As an example every Halloween and any costume parties that were held. I wore her high heels anytime I wanted, often changing into them after school before doing my homework. I even played in her old, second hand heels outside. And yes, some kids teased me and it cause some fights, but I didn't care it was what I was used to. I was big for my age and almost as tall as my mother (who was, herself 5'10") by the age of 11. So most of the fights didn't last long. Not that I was a bully. But the girls in the neighborhood were sometimes jealous of how easil I wore heels.
But after the age of 12 my feet were too big for her heels anymore.
But wearing heels has always been very important to me and I can't even explain why.
I tried "dressing up" as an adult and joined TV groups but was never satisfied with that sort of thing. It involved too much time trying to not be who I really am. I prefer to be just me, and feel the rest of the world should take it or leave it.
I searched for high heel that would fit me for years. I wear a size 16 shoe. Yeah, I know, I got big feet. Hey! I'm 6'4" and 250 lbs. But even though I found heels they always cost in the hundreds of dollars, which I never could spare. So I did without.
And then, a few weeks ago, looking on the web site All Heels For Men I found a pair in my size for only $47.00. Wow!
So hear I am, at my computer wearing and getting adjust to my new heels. Two inch block heels with pointy toes in solid, shiny black. They have been a bit of a shock.
I was used my mother's old round toed, thick heeled shoes. This pair have much narrow heels and I have to be careful as I walk in them.
I know that at 6'4" I don't need to wear heels. It is just something I wanted re-experience once again before I die. Now that I'm retired no one can tell me what not to wear anymore so why not.
Dennis A. Lederle

[SkirtedViking]

Well,I thouroughly support men wearing high heels as men!When was that women started wearing men's apparel?As I have read it all commenced during WW2, so we are just making the balance here.Keep up the good work!

[DALederle]

I've just discovered something new that I had never thought of before.
I decided to go outside and bring up our garbage can up from the curb. Our garbage day is Monday.
Being all ice and snow outside, winter in the Chacago area, I didn't even concider going down in my heels. I slipped them off and put on a regualr pair of slip ons I keep by the back door. And then I went "Wow!" and had to laugh at myself.
After six hours in my heels the flat heeled shoes I've usually worn felt strange to walk in. I almost fell over trying to walk out the door and had to catch myself since the angle of my foot was suddenly all wrong.
Boy, it sure makes me wonder how women can switch around between heels and flats the way I've seen some of them do.
Dennis A. Lederle

[Departed Member]

Sooner you than me! Your free choice, of course, but have regard to the likely damage they do to folk, regardless of gender! Figures released by our National Health sources have revealed they 'cost' the country £35 million last year! And we're heading for recession? Not my wife's 'podiatrist' (Where did that word come from? A year ago, he was a chiropodist!) - he's rolling in clients, turning 'em away, too! Same at the hospital I went to for physio. The NHS accountants (grr! 'hate word'!) wanted to cut the numbers of physio staff there, but the recent 'fashion putz' is pushing 'high heels' once again, and they're short staffed!

[SkirtDude]

Deleted.

[crfriend]

Heels of moderate height can work reasonably well, so long as there's some "roll protection" (this rules out "stiletto heels"), and the actual workable height is likely determined as a ratio of the length of the foot. I've got (US) size twelve trotters, and used to routinely wear 2-inch heels when they were still available for guys (OK, I'm dating myself). I liked them -- a lot -- and I miss them. Sapphire might take umbrage with me returning to that style because of our own height differences, but that doesn't mean that I don't want the option.

Put bluntly, I don't "get" some of the more "fashionable" styles peddled to women in this day and age. I've never liked "extreme" heels (it puts the engineer in me completely off; I abhor bad structural design) and I especially despise the current style of "roach-killer" shoes with their extreme points. I happen to believe that a lot of the "evils" attributed to heels can be mitigated with good engineering design and an understanding of how the human foot actually works. Too, there needs to be an understanding on the part of the wearer of such footwear of what's appropriate and what's too much; however, there seems to be precious little of that in evidence.

[sapphire]

CR, Have no worry. If you can find men's shoes (I doubt that women's styles would appeal to you) that have 2 inch heels, go right ahead.

You do have a point that most women's shoes are not well engineered to provide proper support for the foot, not matter what the style. "Fashionable" shoes are the worst of all and I completely agree with SkirtDude's label of "owie" shoes.

Dennis, what you experienced when you switched from heels to flats was simply an adjustment of the achilles tendon. While wearing heels, the achilles tendon compresses. When the footwear is switched to flats the tendon stretches. It can be startling and uncomfortable if you aren't used to it. The ladies who switch from one heel height to another are used to the sensation.

[Sasquatch]

Dennis,
Have fun with those shoes...you even beat me on shoe size and I'm the Sasquatch!! I should surrender my title to you, I guess.

I have a creeping jealousy of the range of shoe styles available to women, but high heel pumps are not prominent among the styles I like.

I first tried the wooden-soled Scandinavian clogs I usually wear after a podiatrist (that's a chiropodist for you, Merlin ) recommended surgeon's rubber clogs to alleviate the heel pain of plantar fasciitis. The elevation of the heel reduces the stress on the tendons which connect beneath the heel. I like the clogs, but all elevated heel shoes entail some risk of injury from a mis-step. The clogs don't cause the toe problems that heeled pumps might. You can wear clogs all day, but I can't imagine wearing high-heel pumps all day. Ah, how noble the vanity, that women would suffer so in the name of fashion! But then again, they don't have to wear neck ties, do they?

sasq

[Bryan]

Dennis,
"but I can't imagine wearing high-heel pumps all day. Ah, how noble the vanity, that women would suffer so in the name of fashion!" But then again, they don't have to wear neck ties, do they?

sasq

I agee so far, but women don't have to wear them if they don't want, in quite a few jobs men have to wear neck ties as part of their job, like it or not! It should come down to choice a for everyone in this world of "equality".


Bryan

[DALederle]

I did it again! When will I ever learn to look before I jump right in.
My new heels are 16 in women sizes. Which mean they are only 14 in men's sizes.
It's not that I can't walk in them but it is hard on my left foot.
Everything fits on my right foot which is an actual men's size 14-1/2. But my left foot is a men's size 15-1/2 which is why I have to buy 16 to fit that foot. So I kind stuck. I would have to have a women's size 17 to make them really comfortable.
I should have known it was too good to be true.
Well I am adjusting but this is going to go slower now.
I guess I have to "break them in" like we always had to with new shoes in the past.
That's how I came to wear high heels in the first place. Mom would let me clump around in her new shoes to "break them in" before she wore them.
I just got so good at it that high heels felt fine to me after a while. It was normal, while I was growing up and before my feet got to big.
I don't have a shoe fetisth. I just want to re-experience something from my childhood in orde to see how it now feels to me as an adult.
Sigh!
I wish it would warm up!
Is spring very far off?
In warm weather I'll be back into skirts full time instead of just once in a while, inside, right now.
Dennis

[Sasquatch]

Dennis,
"but I can't imagine wearing high-heel pumps all day. Ah, how noble the vanity, that women would suffer so in the name of fashion!" But then again, they don't have to wear neck ties, do they?

sasq

I agee so far, but women don't have to wear them if they don't want, in quite a few jobs men have to wear neck ties as part of their job, like it or not! It should come down to choice a for everyone in this world of "equality".


Bryan

Yes, outside of a topless cocktail lounge there are probably few places where the stated dress code requires women to wear heels, but that doesn't mean there aren't unstated pressures on women in certain jobs to wear these shoes. A lot of female office workers feel compelled to wear them largely, I fear, because the subtle pressure applied by female co-workers is even worse than the desires of the (often male) bosses. In this regard, you could say that high-heel injuries are self-inflicted, but that's not an entirely fair statement. A lot of women who present a public face for business - from executives to sales persons - may also feel that they must wear heels, as heels still, for better or worse, represent the haute couture in dressing. And maybe, to a variable extent, there is a social pressure to look sexually appealing to men (and maybe a competitive pressure among women) that will take a long time to dispell...and heels are part of the equipment that Big Fashion requires as part of mass-market sex appeal.

If women despised heels as much as I despise ties, they would all be wearing Birkenstocks!

sasq

[DALederle]

One of the reasons I'm so curious about high heels is because my mother and other female relatives did have to wear them all the time.
Back in the late 1940s to 1950s all women's shoes sold had some sort of heel, from a low heel of an inch to as much as three inch heels. There wasn't any of the more fetish types of four inches or more. But normal footwear for women did include heels.
My mother often complained about this.
She had worn two and three inch heels working as a waitress in restaurants most of her life.
Of course, waitresses today no longer wear high heels. Mom would have loved working for Hooters. Shorts and sneakers.
Mom's other problem was the size of women's shoes. The norm while she was growing, the largest size offered to women, was 7C. Mom wore a 9 or 10 later on in life as soon as these sizes became available.
Can you imagine how much she hurt just trying to walk around on heels that were only a size 7? I can't.
So I guess I've got a bit of curiousity to know, a little bit how she felt.
Also just to see if I can do it, to satisfy my own curiousity.
It is amazing to me, sometimes, by how much of history we tend to forget today.
Panties have only been worn by women on a regular basis since the late 1920s. That's what made the Can-can such a daring dance. They didn't wear ANY underwear.
Pants on men as our exclusively allowed garment is less then two hundred years now and less then that depending on the area of the world you live in,
High heels were all a woman could wear until the mid to late 1960s.
And there it still a lot of pressure on executive women to be in high heels.
Look at all the police shows out there that show women as detective, wearing slacks but each one has on a pair of killer high heels.
So it's still there, the pressure for women to wear heels. Watch the Oscars and try and find a starlet not wearing heels.
Anyway,
this is my rant for today! LOL

[SkirtedViking]

I agree about movies with you Dennis!Not only Westerns, even if you take Pirates of the carribean for instance you will see women in trousers being sooo normal for the 17th century and while not being historically correct of being accepted and unnoticed that fact forms the perception about women wearing whatever they please as something from the beginning of time.I am not against women as some people might erroneously imply, just trying to visualize the inbalance in fashion opitions between sexes nowadays!About women being obliged to wear heels or whatever else - I work in a public building with 400 hundred people mostly women and most of them do not wear heels,they do not have to do that,many of them come to work in trousers,men's styled shoes and so on even wear ties(not as a part of an obligation,but by their free will) And guess what If I go to work as narrow-minded people supporting gender inequality or have a complex of not being masculine enough would say "in a drag" (I consider myself a freestyler with a beard)i WILL LOSE MY JOB!I AM NOT AGAINST WOMEN, ON THE CONTRARY - TAKING THEIR EXAMPLE OF COMPLETE EXPANSION IN FASHION is what I do.

[ChrisM]

Dennis you CAN stretch those shoes out enough to fit, I'll wager.

I wear a woman's size 12 (which is a lot easier to find than a 17+ !!) but on occasion I have had to make do with a size 11, and I can stretch 'em that far with patience.

Stuff them with objects and let them sit over night. Google shoe stretching and there are some techniques involving bags of water in the freezer...

With patience I think you will find that in a week or so you can make them comfortable on both feet.

Congratulations! From another heel-fancier.

Chris

[DALederle]

Here is something to think about!
Men were the first ones to wear high heels. And the men in the French court wore them for years when most average men didn't wear them. It was intended for men to try and out do each over how tall they were, with tall men appearing, in some people's conceptions, as being strong or more masculine.
It was hundreds of years before the women of Venice began wearing high heeled shoes and then the fashion went wild all throughout Europe until the Catholic Church outlawed high heels on WOMEN as being a sign that a woman was a witch.
Kind of makes you wonder how the current trend of women wearing heels ever came about.
Of course, since most women are smaller then men they wear heels to give them height. And being competitive by nature women compete with each other to see who can wear the highest heel.
The reason it died out as a man's fashion (except for Cowboy Boots) is that men didn't need to wear a higher heel to be taller then women and men did more rugged things than women, except of course for having babies. Let a man try that? (LOL)
So it's another case of women stealing our fashion and clothing for themselves and now, making men feel wrong by wanting to try out this for themselves.
Remember that men first wore corsets (the forerunner to girdles) and silk stockings (the forrunner to modern nylons.
The only form of modern clothing that was actually woman's wear from start to finish is the bra. It's the one thing we have no use for too.
Dennis