The Power of High Heels
What is it about high heels that makes them so alluring to women and men?
Perhaps most basically there is the increase in height which is achieved by wearing heels. Height is sexy, in the most primal way, we respond to tall people. Perhaps it's because they are perceived as being stronger and therefore better mates, perhaps it is because they subconsciously remind us of the way adults looked when we were children, at any rate, tall men, and tall women engender feelings of respect and admiration almost as a matter of course.
High heels range from just an inch or two high, to the impossibly tall twelve inch heels designed by Manolo Blahnik and his ilk. That's a whole foot in height gained simply by slipping into a pair of shoes.
Because height = power, it also = attraction. (Watch out, we're getting all pseudo mathematical up in here, it must be serious!) Power is always sexy, whether it is a man or a woman who holds it. I hate to reduce the complexities of the human heart and mind down to base concepts like 'big' and 'small' that we learned as very small children, but it would appear that this is the main draw of high heels.
Of course, it is not simply enough to whack a person up on bricks, or give them a pair of stilts with which to stalk around the neighborhood. The high heel must be done with style, whether it is subtly concealed in a man's boot, or celebrated with a pointy little stiletto on a woman's shoe.
A stiletto is sexier than a wedge heel, which means that we must at some level appreciate the risk taking nature of the wearer. There is an undeniable element of dramatic flair that accompanies the sight of a woman tottering casually about the place precariously perched on one square centimeter under her heel. The rest of the world clomps clumsily about on the ground, but she floats with ease, barely needing contact with the earth.
Is it any wonder then, that some men also desire to taste a little of this power? We are quite some way off seeing the mass marketing of a stiletto for men (though it's a concept containing so much awesome, its hard to fathom why that is), but in the meantime there are millions of men who roam about their homes in heels, and really, who could blame them?
