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Probably because shoes mean a lot to women and they've become a status symbol. As for why society has made women wear painfully uncomfortable shoes (i.e. high
by kpanghmc 17y ago
Probably because shoes mean a lot to women and they've become a status symbol.
As for why society has made women wear painfully uncomfortable shoes (i.e. high heels), that's easier to explain. It makes them taller while also giving the appearance of longer legs and a firmer butt, which men find desirable.
- dkimball 17y agoI think the real explanation goes back to the Restoration. Charles II and his court wore 17th Century cavalry boots, which were high-heeled as a means of ensuring that the foot stayed in the stirrup, like the modern cowboy boot; this style carried over to women sometime in the late 18th or early 19th century (women's shoes for most of the 17th and 18th centuries were delicate rather than high-heeled; there's an anecdote, I think in Fernand Braudel's _Structures of Everyday Life_, of a lady complaining to her tailor that her shoes had disintegrated; the tailor examined them and replied that of course they did, she had walked in them); and once high heels were established as a female fashion, a sort of sartorial folk etymology came along to explain their popularity. This is why I don't have much respect for contemporary fashion; the extent to which it's dominated by accidents of English history is even greater than that admitted in the article.