What makes a woman a woman? I say it is the  heel on her shoe. The higher the heel,  the slower she walks and the curvier she looks. She even has to lean forward if the heal is too high. Most importantly somehow a high healed shoe on a woman just makes her legs look better too. I think she feels like she is walking tall too. The right footwear can make or break an outfit too. Men and women can go toe to toe on many different subjects and tasks but when it comes to footwear, the women have all the colors shapes and options. Shoes are really a women’s world.

The old movie Some Like It Hot from 1959 starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon and Marilyn Monroe says it all.  There is Marilyn in all her curviness trotting around in her high heels  with those two clowns dressed like women falling all over themselves trying to walk in women’s shoes. However, these days some men can do it better than most women.  Jack looks at Marilyn and says to Tony, “It is just like Jello on springs.” You gotta love it. To celebrities at award shows high heels has come to symbolize sexuality and power. Is there any other accessory that has been as enduring as high heels? The high heel certainly has a history.

Women used to wear gloves and hats all the time and they don’t anymore but they still wear high heels. Interestingly enough, women were not the first to wear heels. High heel shoes were first worn by men. The men wore heels not so much about mobility but more about nobility. There is a very famous painting of King Lewis IX of France wearing high red heeled shoes.  It was the idea that height and elevation was always having something to do with class, privilege, confidence and leisure. Women began to adopt high heels for many the same reason. One of the oldest is a 16^th Century shoe called the Chopine. It was a platform shoe. Aristocratic women wore them because the longer your dress was, the more you were indicating how wealthy you were.

Just look at all the wealthy celebrities that showed up to the Met gala this week celebrating China. They still wear platform shoes and all the fabric their shoulders can withstand. Rhianna’s train was so long she had men carrying it around wherever she walked. The platforms was not easy to walk in then and aren’t much better now either.  By the late 18^th Century high heels became associated with the excesses of Marie Antoinette.  As the 19^th Century evolved flat shoes became the look of the completely relaxed woman.  In the 1940’s and 50’s there was the all around heeled shoe that was comfortable and wider width and wider heel to be worn any time of day.

Technology then made the stiletto, a more stable high heel. They used steel and other metals to insure the heel wouldn’t crack off. A company called Skyscraper has been making sturdy high heels for a while now. Men notice the change of a woman’s walk to a much sexier gate when in high heels. In 2013, the Journal called Evolution and Human Behavior published the results of a study that focused solely on the way women walk. Those who wore high heels were judged as significantly more attractive by both men and women than who wore flats.

Some women feel powerful in their heels and others feel exposed in their heels, I just like the look.