Food for thought: High Heels

[adrianh]

This girl rocks when it comes to footwear!

[Citizen X]

I find this very hard to believe. Men have the exact same problem with stirrups. The addition of heels to riding boots was purely to keep the boot in the stirrup and had no relation to the sex of the rider. I bet that men wore stirrup heels long before women did.

You must also consider the definition of high heels. A stirrup heel doesn't need to be higher than about 15mm which is not considered to be a high heel. High heels are anything over about 40mm which is too high for horse riding.

"Elizabeth Semmelhack, curator for the Bata Shoe Museum, traces the high heel to male horse-riding warriors in the Middle East who used high heels for functionality, because they help hold the rider's foot in stirrups. She states that the earliest high heel she has seen is depicted on a 9th-century CE ceramic bowl from Persia"[1]


Also bear in mind that in historically, we had a very sexist world i.e. 'it's a man's world,' this has changed for the better. The implication is that a man would by necessity have a proper cowboy boot, the heel of a cowboy boot was and is very manly.
Somewhere along the historical line women started to ride horses, so something had to be done with their footwear to accommodate the stirup

On the lighter side, a well dressed lady in high heels definitely has some effect on men..

---

[1] Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-heeled_footwear. Accessed 1 April 2014

[KristiKat]

dangerous fall if the heel gets stuck in the stirrup ... getting dragged behind a horse on full speed...don't think so

[adrianh]

I took a looooot of photographs at a horse riding competition that my youngest daughter took part in on Sunday.

Check these photographs out: A young lady by the name of Annette riding a horse called Blood Diamond. That horse is like a Lamborghini with its traction control turned off. Annette handles the horse like she's Mario Andretti!

[Marq]

I believe theres a correlation between the height of the women's heels and her general reliance on men or her man.
The higher the heel, the more the reliance.
Generally I have found this to be true, but other than my own observations have no other empirical evidence.
The reverse could also be true in that the man is more reliant on the women specifically for sexual reasons (observations again).
There is definitely a correlation in men's blood pressure vs height of heel and shoe colour may also affect this. Blood pressure colour is still just red.
Which of course confirms my theory that red high heel shoes are rated the best.

[Alice Rain]

High heels are very sexy on ladies, bearing in mind, this last week I can't remember where I saw it, but some crazy lady stabbed a man to death with her stilletto [excuse spelling!] heel! So they sure have more than one function besides probably messing up the back! It is very funny when the heal gets stuck somewhere and the person goes flying out of their shoe [haha] I am sure it's happened to the best of us ...

[adrianh]

I took this photograph at the Free Comic Book Cosplay event held at Cavendish today....I suuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrreeee dig high heels!

[pmbguy]

Adrian, did you speak to her?

[pmbguy]

If my wife and I happen to see a woman dressed like superwoman my wife would immediately say "no pmbguy please don't" and already start squirming with embarrassment, I would naturally choose a character and role play...

[Alice Rain]

I am happy to say I don't need to use stirrups and saddle! The horse doesn't even know that I'm on it!