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It's too bad this got killed off the main page. I guess maybe it's not relevant to HN. Anyway, as a mid-20s straight man who likes wearing 5" stilettos, findin

It's too bad this got killed off the main page. I guess maybe it's not relevant to HN. Anyway, as a mid-20s straight man who likes wearing 5" stilettos, finding out the history of when and why men did and didn't do the same is interesting to me. As it is, the only time I feel comfortable wearing them out is during the Folsom Street Fair (and maybe Pride too but I feel that doing so might encourage assumptions of my being gay among viewers/my friends, which is not necessary bad, but just not a view of myself that I particular want to promote, as it is incorrect.) Finally, the two men who mentioned attempting to walk in them and failing make me somewhat disappointed; whether or not they expect women to wear heels, they probably generally enjoy it when they see a woman in heels and could get a much better appreciation for her efforts (especially if she's still out after an 8 hour day wearing them.) Edit: apparently it's not nuked off page 1. Could have sworn it was.

lisper 11y ago
> a mid-20s straight man who likes wearing 5" stilettos Not to be judgmental, just out of honest intellectual curiosity, can you explain the appeal? Because I totally don't get it.
- arbitrage 11y ago
  They look nice, I want to look nice. They feel powerful, I want to feel powerful. Men's shoes are boring, I don't want to be boring. That's the appeal for me. Everyone is different, though.
  - the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
    > They look nice, I want to look nice. They feel powerful, I want to feel powerful. Men's shoes are boring, I don't want to be boring. I'm sorry, but that makes very little sense. If you want to look nice then you need to go by what society judges as nice and society does not consider a man with heels to "look nice".
    - throwaway94105 11y ago
      That's only true if you're wearing them out and trying to please others. Society doesn't inform my preferences at home nor does it see what I'm wearing behind closed doors. Plus, with the right body type and shoes, you too could look quite nice in heels. Or full drag. Except I'm not into that but you are free to do as you like. Edit: I haven't been able to post for an hour so I have nowhere else to put this: sorry Silverstorm I'm 6'3". Doesn't mean I don't like being taller though.
    - sjolsen 11y ago
      You're making the assumption that by "nice," he means "what society judges as nice," rather than what he personally considers to look nice, and that assumption is almost certainly wrong.
    - wahnfrieden 11y ago
      Some people dress for themselves or for a core few others. Lowest common denominator doesn't rule all valid aesthetics. Anyway one recent popular menswear designer, Rick Owens, wears heels: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lg0ahygW5j1qazwkm.jpg http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lg0ahygW5j1qazwkm.jpg
    - tjradcliffe 11y ago
      > you need to go by what society judges as nice Why? You've been down-voted, probably because this assertion seems somewhere between weird and offensive to most people here, but I'm genuinely curious as to why you believe it. This is particularly relevant to HN because most of the people here are interested in innovation, and innovation comes from precisely deviating from the standards of society. As Henry Ford famously remarked, "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse." This is the reception that innovators of all kinds get, and currently men's dress is incredibly restricted. We aren't quite stuck in Victorian days, but the diminishment of acceptable fashion choice for men in the past 200 years has been huge. In 1800 a man could still wear colourful clothing, jewelry, and makeup. Fifty years later, a man could wear clothes that would shock no-one if seen on the street today, and nothing else. I don't quite buy "the Enlightenment" as the whole answer, or even part of the answer, but there is no doubt that cultural shifts around that time had the effect of putting all men in uniform clothing. Think about that for a minute: women are allowed to wear almost anything today. Men are given a tiny number of acceptable choices, and no one much minds. I'm considered extravagant because I sometimes wear a bright red blazer to the theatre, which would be permitted if I were gay, but when I show up with my girlfriend it gets me insulted. 200 years ago men who were a hell of a lot more manly than me wore far more extravagant clothing and no one batted an eye (except maybe a few women who thought they were particularly attractive dressed like that.) This is a lousy situation for straight men in the modern world: we deserve to be more than uniformed ciphers in the public eye, and rejecting society's judgement of what looks nice is a necessary step to take, just as rejecting society's judgement of what suitable entertainment is was necessary to the radio and film industry, rejecting society's judgement of what suitable travel technology is was necessary to the automobile and aircraft industry was, and so on. And you better believe that conservatives were frequently strongly against those innovations as well. Innovation is driven by people with the courage to reject society's judgement and replace it with their own, and we should honour that courage, not denigrate it.
  - modarts 11y ago
    Had no idea that straight men wearing high heels was a 'thing' until just now...
    - throwawaykf05 11y ago
      And right there's why this is relevant to HN: I think we just found a niche market that needs to be catered to, folks [1]. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinky_Boots_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinky_Boots_(film)
  - stefantalpalaru 11y ago
    > They feel powerful, I want to feel powerful. What's powerful about walking on your feet's balls and toes and abusing your body ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-heeled_footwear#Health_effects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-heeled_footwear#Health_eff... ) ?
    - sliverstorm 11y ago
      Well, height. I don't wear stilettos, but plenty of studies have shown height is both correlated to perceived power and actual power.
    - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
      This is on about the same rhetorical level as "Why do you kids like Apple Jacks when they don't taste like apples?"
      - stefantalpalaru 11y ago
        Really? You missed the whole "self-harm is not a manifestation of power" argument?
        PhasmaFelis 11y ago
        No, I got it, but it doesn't actually follow. Popular perception has no correlation to health value. Saying that something is bad for you does not disprove the idea that it is often perceived as "powerful," just like Apple Jacks can (I assume) taste good without tasting like apples. Note that I'm not saying that wearing high heels is a good idea.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      As a male, heterosexual ballroom and latin dancer -- who has never worn heels higher than men's 1.5" Latin dance shoes -- I totally get that there can be a real powerful, masculine feeling from walking strongly on the balls & toes. Health effects are a different issue, and you aren't going to learn feeling from Wikipedia, or intellectually at all. It is experiential.
- tjradcliffe 11y ago
  While he's answering that, can you explain why you like grapefruit (if you like grapefruit) or don't like grapefruit (if you don't like grapefruit)? Because I totally don't get it. :-) "Because I enjoy the sensations it provides" is often the only analysis we can provide for our tastes. Sometimes we can break it down further, and people with unusual tastes are frequently pressed (politely or not) to "explain" their tastes. This is understandable--we're genuinely curious about tastes that differ from our own--but it's also a bit myopic, because we so rarely turn the same unanswerable attitude on our own tastes. Simply because something is common does not make it immune to analysis, and I strongly encourage anyone who wants to ask this kind of question to give a preamble for their own taste in similar matters. So if you're straight and want to ask a gay man, "What is it about the male body that turns you on?" first say, "The thing that makes women attractive to me is..." I have no idea how to answer this: I'm boringly straight and just find the female body inherently attractive. I can appreciate male beauty the way I can appreciate a beautiful building, but there's simply no attraction. I've come to accept that my gay friends are just wired differently from me. I'm not saying "all differences of taste are unanalyzable" but that our legitimate curiousity about other people's tastes should be an opportunity to analyze our own.
  - dsr_ 11y ago
    And I'll bet that not all women's bodies are equally attractive to you; that not all men's bodies are equally attractive to the next gay male you ask; and that not all high-heeled shoes are equally interesting to Mr. Throwaway. An awful lot of attraction and esthetics is cultural, and the rest of it is personal.
  - lisper 11y ago
    Well, grapefruit is food. It's good for you. It has fiber and vitamin C... Grapefruit I get. Being attracted to men I get (despite the fact that I'm straight). But I don't get stilettos because they just look like they'd be so damn uncomfortable. The only reason I can see to wear them at all is to conform to some societal norm. If I met a straight woman who claimed to enjoy wearing neck ties I would be equally nonplussed.
    - 11y ago
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say your parent is probably on the short side, maybe 5'5"-5'6" or so, which might be an unspoken reason. I could be wrong, but if your parent is already 6'2" the heels put him at 6'7"...
2muchcoffeeman 11y ago
When I see a woman wearing heels, I just think of the damage she is doing to her feet and how uncomfortable she must be. I am not sure why I should be appreciative of her efforts.
- throwaway94105 11y ago
  You actually are appreciating her efforts with your thoughts. Appreciate doesn't mean value/like necessarily, it can mean to understand the implications of in a neutral-preference manner. Regardless, there are many men who appreciate heels in the other sense (sexy, etc) who give no thought to the effort required to wear them. Wearing them myself lets me do both :)
  - jacobolus 11y ago
    I mostly feel sorry for women who feel pressured to wear heels even though they might not personally want to. Likewise for makeup, jewelry, plastic surgery, black women with straightened hair, bald men with hair transplants, men in suits on hot days, people eating too little because they feel pressured to stay thin, etc. When people choose to do/wear those things because they like them, or choose to have extensive piercings or tattoos, etc., more power to them. In other words, the problem for me is with social expectations that discriminate against people who don’t put extensive money, time, discomfort, and sometimes injury on the line to look the way society expects.
    - detcader 11y ago
      Exactly. But you will be told that you are policing choices, restricting freedoms, or even oppressing people for pointing out that social expectations exist. Because of the natural process of selection, the ideology of social neoliberalism has reached its peak in the last 20 years. Choices of the individual are reflexively defended in every case, because the framing of individuality won; it was the framing most rewarded by those social groups with the most power.
      - 11y ago
mahouse 11y ago
/^throwaway/
- throwaway94105 11y ago
  I have no desire to publicly out myself on this. My girlfriend, mother even, and quite a few friends know. I did mention wearing them publicly at Folsom, but I expect no judgment there as there are much more interesting things going on than a man wearing black boots (plus, Folsom is an event about acceptance as much as it is about an particular fetish). If you're pointing out the zip code in the username, oh no! I mentioned SF and used an SF zip code! Someone might recognize me! why bother even trolling?
  - mahouse 11y ago
    Trolling? You said that, on a man: >They look nice, I want to look nice. They feel powerful, I want to feel powerful. Who is trolling?
  - throwaway94105 11y ago
    For some reason I cannot reply to your reply, so my apologies, here's a sibling. You mistake that other user for me. Check the names. He seems to mind his privacy less, and I applaud him for that. Anyway, I don't see how what he has said is a troll either. Ask s businesswoman if she feels more powerful in slacks and 4" heels (tastefully covered by said slacks because the height itself confers the power, the heels may actually serve as a distraction from that.) I'm sure some will say "no, I just wear these because firm X has a policy" but many others will feel oppositely. Edit: yet another confused poster. Why would I log out and log back in to my main account to respond? Sometimes multiple people have the same surprising preferences and choose to respond to add their own voice to a thread. Who knew? Edit2: you edited your post to call out a comment after I explicitly said that it's another poster. Had you been correct, I would have deleted said comment. As it remains, I suppose he must be just another heel wearing man. Crazy! Maybe I should email to find out his favorite brands. Edit3: the homophobia, transphobia, and inability to be comfortable with an anonymous person's personal choices is precisely why I decided to post so much on this thread today.
MostInteresting 11y ago
as a mid-20s straight man who likes wearing 5" stilettos I think it's time to revisit your assessment of yourself as it seems to me that you're half way through to jump the fence and join the other camp.
braythwayt 11y ago
> Anyway, as a mid-20s straight man It is not necessary to proclaim that you are straight to strangers, and making this kind of disclaimer before talking about clothes or hair or disco, or anything else merely serves to perpetuate stereotypes. I can tell you that I take my children to Toronto Pride every year. Is it necessary for me to get into my sexuality?
- icebraining 11y ago
  You don't counteract stereotypes by pretending they don't exist.
  - braythwayt 11y ago
    Not perpetuating a stereotype != pretending it doesn’t exist. :-)

lisper 11y ago

> a mid-20s straight man who likes wearing 5" stilettos Not to be judgmental, just out of honest intellectual curiosity, can you explain the appeal? Because I totally don't get it.

arbitrage 11y ago
They look nice, I want to look nice. They feel powerful, I want to feel powerful. Men's shoes are boring, I don't want to be boring. That's the appeal for me. Everyone is different, though.
- the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
  > They look nice, I want to look nice. They feel powerful, I want to feel powerful. Men's shoes are boring, I don't want to be boring. I'm sorry, but that makes very little sense. If you want to look nice then you need to go by what society judges as nice and society does not consider a man with heels to "look nice".
  - throwaway94105 11y ago
    That's only true if you're wearing them out and trying to please others. Society doesn't inform my preferences at home nor does it see what I'm wearing behind closed doors. Plus, with the right body type and shoes, you too could look quite nice in heels. Or full drag. Except I'm not into that but you are free to do as you like. Edit: I haven't been able to post for an hour so I have nowhere else to put this: sorry Silverstorm I'm 6'3". Doesn't mean I don't like being taller though.
  - sjolsen 11y ago
    You're making the assumption that by "nice," he means "what society judges as nice," rather than what he personally considers to look nice, and that assumption is almost certainly wrong.
  - wahnfrieden 11y ago
    Some people dress for themselves or for a core few others. Lowest common denominator doesn't rule all valid aesthetics. Anyway one recent popular menswear designer, Rick Owens, wears heels: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lg0ahygW5j1qazwkm.jpg http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lg0ahygW5j1qazwkm.jpg
  - tjradcliffe 11y ago
    > you need to go by what society judges as nice Why? You've been down-voted, probably because this assertion seems somewhere between weird and offensive to most people here, but I'm genuinely curious as to why you believe it. This is particularly relevant to HN because most of the people here are interested in innovation, and innovation comes from precisely deviating from the standards of society. As Henry Ford famously remarked, "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse." This is the reception that innovators of all kinds get, and currently men's dress is incredibly restricted. We aren't quite stuck in Victorian days, but the diminishment of acceptable fashion choice for men in the past 200 years has been huge. In 1800 a man could still wear colourful clothing, jewelry, and makeup. Fifty years later, a man could wear clothes that would shock no-one if seen on the street today, and nothing else. I don't quite buy "the Enlightenment" as the whole answer, or even part of the answer, but there is no doubt that cultural shifts around that time had the effect of putting all men in uniform clothing. Think about that for a minute: women are allowed to wear almost anything today. Men are given a tiny number of acceptable choices, and no one much minds. I'm considered extravagant because I sometimes wear a bright red blazer to the theatre, which would be permitted if I were gay, but when I show up with my girlfriend it gets me insulted. 200 years ago men who were a hell of a lot more manly than me wore far more extravagant clothing and no one batted an eye (except maybe a few women who thought they were particularly attractive dressed like that.) This is a lousy situation for straight men in the modern world: we deserve to be more than uniformed ciphers in the public eye, and rejecting society's judgement of what looks nice is a necessary step to take, just as rejecting society's judgement of what suitable entertainment is was necessary to the radio and film industry, rejecting society's judgement of what suitable travel technology is was necessary to the automobile and aircraft industry was, and so on. And you better believe that conservatives were frequently strongly against those innovations as well. Innovation is driven by people with the courage to reject society's judgement and replace it with their own, and we should honour that courage, not denigrate it.
- modarts 11y ago
  Had no idea that straight men wearing high heels was a 'thing' until just now...
  - throwawaykf05 11y ago
    And right there's why this is relevant to HN: I think we just found a niche market that needs to be catered to, folks [1]. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinky_Boots_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinky_Boots_(film)
- stefantalpalaru 11y ago
  > They feel powerful, I want to feel powerful. What's powerful about walking on your feet's balls and toes and abusing your body ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-heeled_footwear#Health_effects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-heeled_footwear#Health_eff... ) ?
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    Well, height. I don't wear stilettos, but plenty of studies have shown height is both correlated to perceived power and actual power.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    This is on about the same rhetorical level as "Why do you kids like Apple Jacks when they don't taste like apples?"
    - stefantalpalaru 11y ago
      Really? You missed the whole "self-harm is not a manifestation of power" argument?
      - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
        No, I got it, but it doesn't actually follow. Popular perception has no correlation to health value. Saying that something is bad for you does not disprove the idea that it is often perceived as "powerful," just like Apple Jacks can (I assume) taste good without tasting like apples. Note that I'm not saying that wearing high heels is a good idea.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    As a male, heterosexual ballroom and latin dancer -- who has never worn heels higher than men's 1.5" Latin dance shoes -- I totally get that there can be a real powerful, masculine feeling from walking strongly on the balls & toes. Health effects are a different issue, and you aren't going to learn feeling from Wikipedia, or intellectually at all. It is experiential.
tjradcliffe 11y ago
While he's answering that, can you explain why you like grapefruit (if you like grapefruit) or don't like grapefruit (if you don't like grapefruit)? Because I totally don't get it. :-) "Because I enjoy the sensations it provides" is often the only analysis we can provide for our tastes. Sometimes we can break it down further, and people with unusual tastes are frequently pressed (politely or not) to "explain" their tastes. This is understandable--we're genuinely curious about tastes that differ from our own--but it's also a bit myopic, because we so rarely turn the same unanswerable attitude on our own tastes. Simply because something is common does not make it immune to analysis, and I strongly encourage anyone who wants to ask this kind of question to give a preamble for their own taste in similar matters. So if you're straight and want to ask a gay man, "What is it about the male body that turns you on?" first say, "The thing that makes women attractive to me is..." I have no idea how to answer this: I'm boringly straight and just find the female body inherently attractive. I can appreciate male beauty the way I can appreciate a beautiful building, but there's simply no attraction. I've come to accept that my gay friends are just wired differently from me. I'm not saying "all differences of taste are unanalyzable" but that our legitimate curiousity about other people's tastes should be an opportunity to analyze our own.
- dsr_ 11y ago
  And I'll bet that not all women's bodies are equally attractive to you; that not all men's bodies are equally attractive to the next gay male you ask; and that not all high-heeled shoes are equally interesting to Mr. Throwaway. An awful lot of attraction and esthetics is cultural, and the rest of it is personal.
- lisper 11y ago
  Well, grapefruit is food. It's good for you. It has fiber and vitamin C... Grapefruit I get. Being attracted to men I get (despite the fact that I'm straight). But I don't get stilettos because they just look like they'd be so damn uncomfortable. The only reason I can see to wear them at all is to conform to some societal norm. If I met a straight woman who claimed to enjoy wearing neck ties I would be equally nonplussed.
  - 11y ago
sliverstorm 11y ago
I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say your parent is probably on the short side, maybe 5'5"-5'6" or so, which might be an unspoken reason. I could be wrong, but if your parent is already 6'2" the heels put him at 6'7"...

2muchcoffeeman 11y ago

When I see a woman wearing heels, I just think of the damage she is doing to her feet and how uncomfortable she must be. I am not sure why I should be appreciative of her efforts.

throwaway94105 11y ago
You actually are appreciating her efforts with your thoughts. Appreciate doesn't mean value/like necessarily, it can mean to understand the implications of in a neutral-preference manner. Regardless, there are many men who appreciate heels in the other sense (sexy, etc) who give no thought to the effort required to wear them. Wearing them myself lets me do both :)
- jacobolus 11y ago
  I mostly feel sorry for women who feel pressured to wear heels even though they might not personally want to. Likewise for makeup, jewelry, plastic surgery, black women with straightened hair, bald men with hair transplants, men in suits on hot days, people eating too little because they feel pressured to stay thin, etc. When people choose to do/wear those things because they like them, or choose to have extensive piercings or tattoos, etc., more power to them. In other words, the problem for me is with social expectations that discriminate against people who don’t put extensive money, time, discomfort, and sometimes injury on the line to look the way society expects.
  - detcader 11y ago
    Exactly. But you will be told that you are policing choices, restricting freedoms, or even oppressing people for pointing out that social expectations exist. Because of the natural process of selection, the ideology of social neoliberalism has reached its peak in the last 20 years. Choices of the individual are reflexively defended in every case, because the framing of individuality won; it was the framing most rewarded by those social groups with the most power.
    - 11y ago

mahouse 11y ago

/^throwaway/

throwaway94105 11y ago
I have no desire to publicly out myself on this. My girlfriend, mother even, and quite a few friends know. I did mention wearing them publicly at Folsom, but I expect no judgment there as there are much more interesting things going on than a man wearing black boots (plus, Folsom is an event about acceptance as much as it is about an particular fetish). If you're pointing out the zip code in the username, oh no! I mentioned SF and used an SF zip code! Someone might recognize me! why bother even trolling?
- mahouse 11y ago
  Trolling? You said that, on a man: >They look nice, I want to look nice. They feel powerful, I want to feel powerful. Who is trolling?
- throwaway94105 11y ago
  For some reason I cannot reply to your reply, so my apologies, here's a sibling. You mistake that other user for me. Check the names. He seems to mind his privacy less, and I applaud him for that. Anyway, I don't see how what he has said is a troll either. Ask s businesswoman if she feels more powerful in slacks and 4" heels (tastefully covered by said slacks because the height itself confers the power, the heels may actually serve as a distraction from that.) I'm sure some will say "no, I just wear these because firm X has a policy" but many others will feel oppositely. Edit: yet another confused poster. Why would I log out and log back in to my main account to respond? Sometimes multiple people have the same surprising preferences and choose to respond to add their own voice to a thread. Who knew? Edit2: you edited your post to call out a comment after I explicitly said that it's another poster. Had you been correct, I would have deleted said comment. As it remains, I suppose he must be just another heel wearing man. Crazy! Maybe I should email to find out his favorite brands. Edit3: the homophobia, transphobia, and inability to be comfortable with an anonymous person's personal choices is precisely why I decided to post so much on this thread today.

MostInteresting 11y ago

as a mid-20s straight man who likes wearing 5" stilettos I think it's time to revisit your assessment of yourself as it seems to me that you're half way through to jump the fence and join the other camp.

braythwayt 11y ago

> Anyway, as a mid-20s straight man It is not necessary to proclaim that you are straight to strangers, and making this kind of disclaimer before talking about clothes or hair or disco, or anything else merely serves to perpetuate stereotypes. I can tell you that I take my children to Toronto Pride every year. Is it necessary for me to get into my sexuality?

icebraining 11y ago
You don't counteract stereotypes by pretending they don't exist.
- braythwayt 11y ago
  Not perpetuating a stereotype != pretending it doesn’t exist. :-)