They’ve taken over my posture, the way I walk, and the way I think about myself. I feel that they’re shaping the way I’m seen. My experience is different, as if I am floating. Never have I felt better, had legs longer or walked more confidently.
I used to feel this way every day, but now I have to manufacture this feeling on my own.
Not wearing heels has been my choice for the past two years. I do it as a social statement. It’s not that I can’t wear them, but that women don’t need to wear them to appear attractive or dressed up.
For me, it’s a social experiment. I have to contort my fashions in ways to remedy or substitute the lack of wearing heels in certain situations.
It’s strange to be oddly short when my friends and I go out, because even the people that are my height, 5 feet 2 inches, are wearing heels.
I never wore them to be taller and never noticed I was short, until I wasn’t in a social situation with heels on my feet.
I understand that at this point in time, heels are an indispensable part of society, but at the same time, they are only this way because, in our modern perception of the world, heels have always been regarded as attractive.
I go into shoe stores and see flat shoes outnumber heels in many stores’ spring lineups. I’ve never been so excited to go shoe shopping in my life.
My customary counterculture instincts, however, were telling me to try heels again, to react to the trend.
I had to follow my instincts. I wore them for a day out in San Francisco to see what happens to a body foreign to heels.
Conveniently, I was home for spring break, so I was able to raid my closet for high school artifacts, namely the 3-inch black boots I used to wear nearly every day.
I put them on and immediately got foot cramps. My arches had never been so squished before. It made me wonder how I could have done this for so long.
I decided there was no choice but to do this all day, just to see the experiment through.
I took breaks: sitting, elevating my feet, stretching my legs and taking them off just to see what normal hamstrings felt like again.
Then it was back to walking, keeping in mind everything I’ve learned about posture over the past two heelless years.
Walking around in them made me tired, cranky and long desperately for new shoes ““ flats ““ immediately. To me, heels propagate consumerism ““ wearing them while shopping made me frequent shoe stores, looking for a more comfortable pair than the ones on my feet.
Regardless, I’ve decided to wear heels every day.
Just kidding! I’ll probably never wear them again. The sheer physics of wearing them are astounding. All of the body’s weight rests on the ball of the foot instead of being distributed throughout the sole.
Women walk differently in heels because they change posture, arching their backs, and subsequently sticking their posteriors out.
After studying posture for so long, where I learned how to center myself through my core and relax into my spine’s natural good posture in flats, heels were like a shock to my system.
By the end of the day, I was hobbling around in a very unattractive manner. So much for heels being inherently beautiful.
The day concluded with me being carried in my 3-inch heels to the car a la piggy-back by my best friend.
For details on how to wear heels more comfortably, e-mail Rood at drood@media.ucla.edu.