High heeled footwear

History

High heels are not a modern invention but there is confusion regarding when it was developed. Research shows that high heels can be traced back to ancient Egypt. In the middle of the second millennium BC, Egyptians began to frequently uses sandals. Retention was obtained generally by the Egyptians by a T or V thong passing through the sole. Egyptian butchers also wore heeled shoes for practical purposes, that is, in order to keep their feet clean of any blood while slaughtering animals.

Things started to change when during the European renaissance, the high heel became a status symbol worn by both male and females from the higher social statuses. Catherine de Medici a Franco/Italian noblewomen pioneered the use of heels as a fashion statement. Catherine de Medici is believed to have worn them to impress the French court when she wed the Duke of Orleans, the future king. It is believed to be the first instance when heels were worn however, this reference may be apocryphal, as the development of heels did not begin to come about until the late 1580s, based on iconographic evidence and extant pieces. Two hundred years later King Louis XIV of France decreed that only nobility could wear heels. Seventeenth-century portraits of King Louis XIV depict the various intricate heels worn by the king and they were often decorated with miniature battle scenes.

During the 16th century, European royalty, such as Catherine de Medici and Mary I of England, started wearing high-heeled shoes to make them look taller or larger than life. By 1580, men wore them, and a person with authority or wealth was often referred to as "well-heeled". Since the French Revolution (1789-1799) the trend wearing high heels was ended to avoid any associating with the old aristocracy and its opulence. Since people wished to avoid the appearance of wealth, heels were largely eliminated from the common market for both men and women and replace by casual fashion and shoe wear. From the beginning of the Baroque the heel came back to shoes.

It is sometimes suggested that raised heels were a response to the problem of the rider's foot slipping forward in stirrups while riding. The "rider's heel", approximately 1 ¹⁄₂ inches (3.8 cm) high, appeared in Europe around 1600. The leading edge was canted forward to help grip the stirrup, and the trailing edge was canted forward to prevent the elongated heel from catching on underbrush or rock while backing up, such as in on-foot combat. These features are evident today in riding boots, notably cowboy boots.

Contemporary scene

Since the Second World War, high heels have fallen in and out of popular fashion several times, most notably in the late 1990s, when lower heels and even flats predominated. Lower heels were preferred during the late 1960s and early 1970s as well, but higher heels returned in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The shape of the fashionable heel has changed from block (1970s) to tapered (1990s), and stiletto (1950s, early 1960s, 1980s, and post-2000).

Today, high heels are typically worn with heights varying from a kitten heel of 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) to a stiletto heel (or spike heel) of 5 inches (13 cm) or more. Extremely high-heeled shoes, such as those higher than 6 inches (15 cm), are normally worn only for aesthetic reasons and are not considered practical. Court shoes have conservative styles and are often used for work and formal occasions, while more adventurous styles are common for evening wear and dancing. The wedge heel is informally another style of the heel, where the heel is in a wedge form and continues all the way to the toe of the shoe.

In terms of design, high heels can be seen with plain construction or with embellishment. Depending on the design concept, embellishment materials include leather, wood, metal chain, plastic appliqués, lace, and others. The majority of embellishments are for aesthetic purposes. The rest are for functional support.

High heels have caused significant controversy in the medical field lately, with many podiatrists seeing patients whose severe foot problems have been caused almost exclusively by high-heel wear.

Negative effects

The case against wearing high heels is based almost exclusively on health and practical reasons, including that they:

can cause foot and tendon pain;

increase the likelihood of sprains and fractures;

make calves look more rigid and sinewy;

can create foot deformities, including hammer toes and bunions;

can cause an unsteady gait;

can shorten the wearer's stride.

can render the wearer unable to run;

can exacerbate lower back pain;

alter forces at the knee so as to predispose the wearer to degenerative changes in the knee joint;

can result after frequent wearing in a higher incidence of degenerative joint disease of the knees. This is because they cause a decrease in the normal rotation of the foot, which puts more rotation stress on the knee.

can cause damage to soft floors if they are thin or metal-tipped.

Positive effects

The case for wearing high heels is based almost exclusively on aesthetic reasons, including that they:

change the angle of the foot with respect to the lower leg, which accentuates the appearance of calves;

change the wearer's posture, requiring a more upright carriage and altering the gait in what is considered a seductive fashion;

make the wearer appear taller;

make the legs appear longer;

make the foot appear smaller;

make the toes appear shorter;

make the arches of the feet higher and better defined;

according to a single line of research, they may improve the muscle tone of some women's pelvic floor, thus possibly reducing female incontinence, although these results have been disputed.

offer practical benefits for people of short stature in terms of improving access and using items, e.g. sitting upright with feet on floor instead of suspended, reaching items on shelves, etc.

Types of high heels

Types of heels found on high-heeled footwear include:

Cone

A round heel that is broad where it meets the sole of the shoe and noticeably narrower at the point of contact with the ground. It is closed on the front back and sides.

Kitten

A short, slim heel with maximum height under 2 inches (5 cm) and diameter of no more than 0.4 inch (1 cm) at the point of contact with the ground.

Prism

Three flat sides that form a triangle at the point of contact with the ground.

Puppy

Thick square block heel with approximately 2 inches (5 cm) length in all dimensions.

Spool or Louis

Broad where it meets the sole and at the point of contact with the ground; noticeably narrower at the midpoint between the two.

Stiletto

A tall, slim heel with minimum height of 2 inches (5 cm) and diameter of no more than 0.4 inch (1 cm) at the point of contact with the ground.

Wedge

Occupies the entire space under the arch and heel portions of the foot.

Viennese

The heel is longer than the shoe itself and is impossible to walk on, only found on fetish shoes, just for sitting or lying down.

Men and heels

Elizabeth Semmelhack, curator for the Bata Shoe Museum, traces the high heel to male horse-riding warriors in the Middle East who used high heels for functionality, because they help hold the rider's foot in stirrups. She states that the earliest high heel she has seen is depicted on a 9th-century AD ceramic bowl from Persia.

Since the late 18th century, men's shoes have featured lower heels than most women's shoes. Some attribute it to Napoleon who disliked high heels; others to the general trend of minimizing non-functional items in men's clothing. Cowboy boots remain a notable exception, and they continue to be made with a taller riding heel. The two-inch (5 cm) Cuban heel featured in many styles of men's boot derives its heritage from certain Latino roots, most notably various forms of Spanish and Latin American dance, including flamenco, as most recently evidenced by Joaquín Cortés. Cuban heels were first widely popularized by Beatle boots, as worn by the English rock group the Beatles during their introduction to the United States.

Although high-heeled shoes or boots have more often been worn by women, in various times and places they have been standard features of men's footwear too, either for practical reasons or as fashionable items. Mongolian horsemen were among the first to use heels as means to keep their feet from sliding out of their stirrups. Actors playing tragic roles in ancient Greek drama wore the buskin, a boot with a platform sole, designed to give them greater height over other actors.

The Romans, both men and women, wore cothurns, or sandals with platform heels; these were intended to lift the wearers above mud and garbage in the streets. Geta, which are based on a similar concept, are still used in Japan today. American cowboy boots, first developed in the 19th century and still popular today in some parts of the United States, have high underslung heels to keep a rider's foot from sliding through the stirrup. High-heeled platform shoes were a widely popular form of men's footwear during the 1970s.

Foot and tendon problems

High-heeled shoes slant the foot forward and down while bending the toes up. The more the feet are forced into this position, the more it may cause the gastrocnemius muscle (part of the calf muscle) to shorten. This may cause problems when the wearer chooses lower heels or flat-soled shoes. When the foot slants forward, a much greater weight is transferred to the ball of the foot and the toes, increasing the likelihood of damage to the underlying soft tissue that supports the foot. In many shoes, style dictates function, either compressing the toes or forcing them together, possibly resulting in blisters, corns, hammer toes, bunions (hallux valgus), Morton's neuroma, plantar fasciitis and many other medical conditions, most of which are permanent and require surgery to alleviate the pain.

If the wearer believes it is not possible to avoid high heels altogether, it is suggested that the wearer spend at least a third of the time they spend on their feet in contour-supporting "flat" shoes (such as exercise sandals), or well-cushioned sneaker-type shoes, saving high heels for special occasions; or if it is a necessity in their job, such as a lawyer, it is recommended that they limit the height of the heel that they wear, or, if they are in court, remain seated as much as possible to avoid damage to the feet. It is recommended to wear a belt if possible with heels, because the elevation of the foot and extension of the leg can cause pants to become looser than wanted. In the winter time, one could use seat warmers with heels to relax and loosen muscles all over the body.

One of the most critical problems of high-heeled shoe design involves a properly constructed toe-box. Improper construction here can cause the most damage to one's foot. Toe-boxes that are too narrow force the toes to be crammed too close together. Ensuring that room exists for the toes to assume a normal separation so that high-heel wear remains an option rather than a debilitating practice is an important issue in improving the wearability of high-heeled fashion shoes.

Wide heels do not necessarily offer more stability, and any raised heel with too much width, such as found in "blade-heeled" or "block-heeled" shoes, induces unhealthy side-to-side torque to the ankles with every step, stressing them unnecessarily, while creating additional impact on the balls of the feet. Thus, the best design for a high heel is one with a narrower width, where the heel is closer to the front, more solidly under the ankle, where the toe box provides room enough for the toes, and where forward movement of the foot in the shoe is kept in check by material snug across the instep, rather than by the toes being rammed forward and jamming together in the toe box or crushed into the front of the toe box.

Feminist attitudes

The high heel has been a central battleground of sexual politics ever since the emergence of the women's liberation movement of the 1970s. Many second-wave feminists rejected what they regarded as constricting standards of female beauty, created for the subordination and objectifying of women and self-perpetuated by reproductive competition and women's own aesthetics.

The American-British journalist Hadley Freeman wrote, "For me, high heels are just fancy foot binding with a three-figure price tag", although she supported the freedom to choose what to wear and stated that "one person's embrace of their sexuality is another person's patriarchal oppression."