"He praised Clinton for the strides that her campaign made on behalf of women, noting that his daughters will benefit from her efforts. “They can take for granted that women can do anything that the boys can do, and do it better and to it in heels,” Obama said and then joked, “I don’t know how she does it in heels!” Clinton laughed with the crowd."

From CBS News' Maria Gavrilovic: June 27, 2008, 4:03 PM

Barack Obama may have been making an off-the-cuff joke, but when I heard it, after I laughed at  remark, I began to wonder...'well why DO women wear such things?'

Why do women wear high-heels and where did the practise originate?  

I know that if you had to provide a one-word answer that answer would be 'vanity'. "Vanity of vanities,all is vanity" says Ecclessiates in the bible, but is it really so?

Are women so simple that they would do anything, including wearing a small, pinchy,pointy,forty-degree-angled piece of wood and leather/plastic on their feet for hours at a time and in conditions of high-danger or at the very least high-stress, just because 'it makes them look good?' After all, other fashion trends that were equally if not more painful to flaunt, like girdles and bustles, have faded into the mists of time, whereas high-heels have never wavered in their popularity right down to the present day, as Hillary Clinton herself proves.

According to L.Langner in his book The Importance of Wearing Clothes,clothing does more than just keep us warm and dry.

It also has a symbolic significance in that it allows us to both modestly cover up things we most want to hide (in particular sexual organs) but at the same time, draws attention to those very things without it being obvious. (People are never

simple and women especially so.)

Thus we have bras, which cover the breasts for modesty and yet pad and lift them for attention. The now out of date 'bustle' which properly hid the 'bum', but made up for this deception by making it ten times bigger than it really was.So, feet, being far away from the genital area, need more than average ornamentation, in order to make their sexual point, which according to Langner is one of a phallic nature.

So we see in the middle ages shoes for women being long, tapered and pointed, and not at all unlike an uncircumcised penis. So scandalous did this style become that Charles V and Pope Urban tried to squash the style with decries and declamations.

But at this time women were not alone in seeking the long-toe-look, as there are numerous examples of men following this fad to fullest as well.

At any rate, the other element which is involved in the high-heel style is the heel itself. What was the inspiration of this elevated-element?

Most certainly it came from the original need to keep 'good shoes' from being soiled by filthy medieval streets for one.

And so an attachment was invented, a 'patten' which, when fixed to the shoe, would allow the wearer to ride above the muck and shoe, dress and all would be free of dragging in the dirt until one was safely inside in a relatively clean place where the mud-soaked patten could be removed. But of course this was not the only reason for elevating shoes.

The other was, as we see in the Venetian styled courtesan shoe, that the elevation is built right into the shoe. This was done for reasons of status, as well as for the definite psychological advantage it provided the wearer--namely that the taller the woman the more dominant she felt--both over shorter men and over society at large.

Our modern day has seen elevation in shoes from platform heels to the kinky thigh-high boots popular in the 1960's and many in-between styles. Do they all say, really, the same thing? I am bigger, sleeker,slimmer,sexier in these than nature made me, and that is worth the discomfort?

Why have high-heels survived, and indeed, thrived in today's world?

It's always the same answer.

Sex is always IN.