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Why did men stop wearing high heels?
- pg 14y agoThey didn't. This is what cool people were wearing when I was a kid: http://www.etsy.com/listing/113052867/vintage-mens-1970s-dexter-genuine http://www.etsy.com/listing/113052867/vintage-mens-1970s-dex...
- brudgers 14y agoAs in earlier times, royalty (of cool) wore even more impractical shoes: http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/k/kiss/album-destroyer.jpg http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/k/kiss/album-destroyer.jpg
- corin_ 14y agoSurely the fact that you added "when I was a kid" implies that "they didn't" is incorrect? But yes, does seem to be (or at least have the potential to be) a cyclical trend rather than a long-term change.
- btilly 14y agoThey acknowledge that. From the article: The 1960s saw a return of low heeled cowboy boots for men and some dandies strutted their stuff in platform shoes in the 1970s. But the era of men walking around on their toes seems to be behind us. Could we ever return to an era of guys squeezing their big hairy feet into four-inch, shiny, brightly coloured high heels? Indeed, looking at those shoes, they are much more comfortable than high heels for women. (But I would not want to wear them. At 6'3" I already am taller than I'd like...)
- pg 14y agoYes, I saw that. But what the author doesn't acknowledge is that this counterexample invalidates his thesis. Clearly someone who read a previous draft pointed out that he was mistaken, and the author added a qualification to try to minimize the damage. But in fact it was not merely "some dandies" who wore high heels in the mid 70s. It was the default fashion for young men.
- btilly 14y agoMy limited memories of the time didn't have them being so popular, but I was kind of young so might not be remembering very well. Also anigbrowl has a good point that fashions in the USA and England were different. Your memories are from the USA, the BBC is concerned with England.
- ScottBurson 14y agoHuh -- I (born in 1958) never wore them, nor do I recall knowing anyone who did. (I do recall seeing them on TV.) Maybe it was the crowd I hung out with (prep school).
- laughinghan 14y agoI didn't see a clear thesis to the article, nor do I see how this would be a counterexample to any possible thesis of the article. The article appeared to be primarily an expository piece on the history of heeled shoes. The thesis, if there was one, seems to be that the rise and fall of heels was driven by the whims of fashion, and that just as associations with attractiveness drove its rise again among women, associations with social status or any of the other drivers of fashion could easily drive its rise again among men. If anything, your example seems to further validate that thesis: local fashions did, in fact, get men to start wearing heels again in places.
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoCowboy boots
- robbiep 14y agoAre platforms really high heel? I mean if you shaved an inch and a half off front and back it seems to me you would have a normal height male shoe.. As opposed to the toes on the ground and a raised heel of a true high heel
- anigbrowl 14y agoThose are platforms rather than high heels. If you take away the thick sole (ie make it the same thickness as under the instep) and reduce the heel by the same amount, it's not that high relative to current norms. Also, consider that while platforms were fashionable in the US during the disco era, this is a BBC article. They didn't catch on over in Europe at all. Thinking of 70s movies, I'm not sure that platforms were even that popular outside of the youth culture, and the disco culture at that, whereas high heels are ubiquitous among adult women of all ages except the very old who are unable to wear them in comfort.
- bane 14y agothat sounds about right, performance oriented shoes ended up replacing them as "cool" shoes sometime in the 80s. http://www.liketotally80s.com/reebok-hightops.html http://www.liketotally80s.com/reebok-hightops.html
- russell 14y agoI was on the cusp of 30 when men were wearing platform shoes and turned 30 with the entrance of disco. I will admit that I was not fashion conscious; my girlfriend would call me fashion unconscious. Those of us in software were into hiking boots and camping in the Sierra and running shoes in the flatlands. Our girlfriends wore long hair and little makeup and never appeared in the pages of Seventeen or Cosmo. We laughed at guys in platform shoes. They were shorties trying to look tall. Annie Hall was a few years down the road but we were all moving in that direction.
- wheels 14y agoWhere I grew up the men still wear high heels. We call them "cowboy boots".
- incision 14y agoI'm confused... Most men's shoes have a raised heel. If you spend time wearing intentionally flat shoes for weightlifting or similar it can be quite awkward to put on a "normal" pair of shoes.
- _delirium 14y agoIt's common to have a low-rise heel, but heels >2" on men's shoes are pretty uncommon.
- corin_ 14y agoOn the subject of your being confused between "men don't wear high heels" and "most men's shoes have a raised heel" - a colleague/friend of mine (woman) was wearing shoes and I remarked about them being high heels (can't remember exact context) and she got rather argumentative about the fact that they were just shoes, not high heels (heels were a good ~1inch raised). I guess my point is that any shoe raise your heel at least a tiny bit, so it depends where you draw the subjective line between "normal" and "high".
- pestaa 14y agoMy girlfriend sometimes asks me why impractical and uncomfortable shoes dominate the markets; why can't they make simple and useful ones that men wear? I've always speculated it was simply demand & supply. Now I know it is the great legacy of our male aristocrat ancestors. What a joke. Though, she makes a much better impression on me than Louis XIV ever could.
- thisone 14y agoI feel for her. I recently tried to find good looking but practical (ie can walk 4 miles in) shoes. Yes I found a couple of pairs, all over £130, and all out of stock in my, normal, size. I would have paid that much, if only they had them in stock!
- pestaa 14y agoAh yes. Combine that with the fact that her foot size is EU 35. Conversion table: http://www.i18nguy.com/l10n/shoes.html#adult http://www.i18nguy.com/l10n/shoes.html#adult In other words, it is the smallest foot size registered for adults. Practically non-existent, as it is too small for adults and too big for kids. A very effective filter for a full shoe store to be boiled down to 1-2 pairs immediately.
- undergroundhero 14y agoMy girlfriend has the exact same shoe size (5 in the US). She buys all of her shoes from Chinese companies on Ebay, as they always seem to have her size in stock. I have no idea if there are regional foot size differences, but shopping online may be a solution.
- snogglethorpe 14y agoHaha, I used to have a Chinese couple as flatmates, and the woman had horrible problems buying clothes in the U.S.; at most stores the only clothes which fit were those in the kids' department, which obviously often proved problematic when trying to dress for work, etc! [I currently live in Japan, and although my feet are only medium in the U.S., I have a lot of problems buying shoes that are big enough here ... they exist, but it's usually the case that if I just choose something I like, the store doesn't stock it or has run out (typically they only get a few pairs of "fringe" sizes). I either have to buy only the most boring and standard shoes (which they sell in large enough numbers to justify carrying fringe sizes) or have to be on a constant lookout for new shipments. As a result, I really hate buying shoes, and often end up wearing them into the ground, getting my feet wet through the holes in my soles when it rains.... TT ]
- Mz 14y agoWithout bothering to read the article: High heels were invented to help with stirrups while horseriding. Cowboy boots still have them. If most modern men do not wear them, it might be because they drive cars rather than ride horses.
- darien 14y agoReminds me of the theory that men stopped wearing hats because of cars. http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/05/04/152011840/who-killed-mens-hats-think-of-a-three-letter-word-beginning-with-i http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/05/04/152011840/who-k...
- Mz 14y agoThat's been discussed here before. I was kind of pissed on for agreeing with it. After most of the smoke was over and the party disbanded, someone (thaumaturgy, iirc) pointed out that cars became more aerodynamic because of the higher speeds of highways, and that might be the missing link as to why interstates and cars helped kill men's hats. Before that, cars were boxy enough to still wear a hat in one. Edit: Having now read the high heel article, they aren't 100% correct about heels being useless in the muddy streets of the era. Staying up out of the mud was part of the point of heeled boots of the three musketeers type era.
- edmccard 14y agoFor brimmed hats, the problem in cars (at least in my experience) is not crown-to-roof clearance, but the fact that the brim hits the headrest, forcing you to lean forward uncomfortably (or to squish the brim). Looking through car advertisements, it seems like headrests became common in the mid-to-late Sixties, after hat-wearing had already started to decline.
- rmc 14y agoCars didn't always have headrests. They are much more common (maybe even mandatory) is now for safety reasons. Just look at old cars from the 60 and you can see they didn't have headrests.
- fakeer 14y agoBecause not wearing them is not stupid and and not painful either. I am sure about the latter, BTW.
- fakeer 14y agoBecause not wearing them is not stupid and and not painful either. I am sure about the latter, BTW.
- martinced 14y agoThe question is: "Why are women still wearing them?" TFA talks about it a bit but, basically, it's sexier because of the curves it gives to the women wearing them (I apologize for being rude here but it gives them what many men consider a nicer looking ass). But IMHO it only started to make sense once women started to dress with fit/slim clothes. Which may be related what TFA mentions: that when they first started appearing regularly it was on nude or kinky postcards in the late 19th century. Why do male like them, because, from TFA: natural courting pose found amongst mammals, with an arched back and protruding buttocks
- jamestc 14y agoThat's weird. I didn't think humans were susceptible to "natural courting poses". Is there any scientific literature on this that isn't based purely on speculation?
- stcredzero 14y agoI cannot lie...
- ChuckMcM 14y agoThere is lots of literature in psychology and in design (makes you see a Ferrari in a whole new light). It was the only interesting part in my freshman psyche class at USC.
- marvin 14y agoThis is the kind of pseudoscientific, evo-psych stuff I have a very hard time believing unless someone comes out with very compelling evidence.
- lookACamel 14y agoArched back, i.e. boobs sticking out.
- xijuan 14y agoSomehow, I wish men could still wear high heels now. Then woman may not prefer tall men so much.
- StavrosK 14y agoWhat makes you think tall men won't wear high heels?
- Mz 14y agoI kind of doubt that. Recent discussions on HN have indicated that height is probably a proxy for good nutrition. (I linked to some of those discussions and supporting articles in a recent blog post of mine: http://www.novemberwest.com/blog/2013/01/28/beauty-and-the-glass-ceiling/ http://www.novemberwest.com/blog/2013/01/28/beauty-and-the-g... No, I am not going to get the links for you. HN freezes up my browser. I am not that much of a masochist.)
- cdrxndr 14y agoArguably a little off topic, but it struck me that Louis XIV had a well known "trademark" of always wearing contrasting red soles and heels, and that this was even historically notable since he "protected" his trademark by not allowing people out of his court to wear them. And still Christian Louboutin has won the right in the US to a legally granted monopoly on contrasting red-soled shoes? Slapped down: http://nymag.com/fashion/11/fall/christian-louboutin-red-soles/ http://nymag.com/fashion/11/fall/christian-louboutin-red-sol... Wins on appeal: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/nyregion/court-rules-louboutin-can-enforce-a-trademark-on-its-red-outsoles.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/nyregion/court-rules-loubo... I just can't get over the fact that a private company owns the trademark right to contrast red soles on high heels ... Louis, back me up.
- jseifer 14y agoI'm reasonably sure this HN submission came from a discussion on the latest Geek Friday (http://5by5.tv/geekfriday/59 http://5by5.tv/geekfriday/59). I say this because someone posted the article to the Google+ group (https://plus.google.com/107635569257603441624/posts/HmNguCkZoiS https://plus.google.com/107635569257603441624/posts/HmNguCkZ...) and then it wound up here. It's a pretty interesting article, though I still think heels and wedge shoes are, at this point, an elaborate prank.
- bane 14y agoI don't think that we did in high-end shoes. Any window shopper looking into a modern day high-end shoe store will see plenty of shoes with heels. It's just that the current fashion is to make them a bit lower. Plus when fashion dictates trouser length to be long, it keeps the trouser bottoms from getting dirty. https://www.google.com/search?q=fine+mens+shoes&hl=en&safe=off&tbo=d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=TrINUfT-IrK40AHXroHADg&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAA&biw=1120&bih=643 https://www.google.com/search?q=fine+mens+shoes&hl=en... also see many forms of men's dancing shoes
- fauigerzigerk 14y agoIt's intersting that men were the ones who picked up Persian fashion first. Nowadays, men's clothing is utterly boring. The small men's section is mostly located in the basement or on the top floor of department stores, and what you find there is basically two or three kinds of uniforms.