Parts of this essay have been removed.

Shoes: You Are What You Wear

If your shoes could talk, they would sound a lot like you!
Their style, color, heel height, and
ornamentation all reflect your personality and lifestyle.
Think about the kind of shoes you buy.
What colors do you choose and what heel height do you select?
What are they saying to the outside world?
Do you buy shoes for fashion or comfort?

Compare the sexy, red, high-heeled, pointed-toe
slingback shoe worn by an attractive
25-year-old single woman to the dull brown "sensible"
orthopedic type oxford worn by an
elderly widow. What messages are they conveying?
The young woman is interested in
attracting the eye of men. Her shoes are
saying "look at me." The older woman is not looking
for attention. Her shoes are saying "leave me alone,
I want to be comfortable." Many women
whose feet scream out for comfortable shoes actually
won't buy them because they fear the
symbolic loss of youth, style, and fashion.

Your shoes also reflect the state of the economy
and the current socio-political climate.
Remember the shoes of the turbulent sixties and
early seventies? Shoe styles were
unconventional. Sleek classic lines were replaced by
thick and chunky platform shoes. Flower
children wore tie-dyed tennis sneakers. Unisex
styles underscored the women's liberation
movement's demand for sexual equality. Compare those
shoes to the preceding boom years
of the late fifties when pointed-toe stiletto
high heels were the rage, or to the low-heeled
pumps in the early eighties, reflecting a recessionary
economy and a return to conservative values.

One of the most controversial features of any shoe is the heel
height. This too follows a
cyclical pattern. High heels and platforms go back thousands of
years. Archaeologists opened
a tomb in Thebes and discovered platform shoes with twelve-inch
heels. Heel height actually
peaked in fifteenth century Europe. Aristocratic Italian women
wore heels with an average
length of six to eighteen inches. These shoes, known as chopines,
were sometimes as high as
stilts (thirty inches) and were considered so dangerous that a
Venice law of 1430 prohibited
their use by pregnant women. Fashion, though, was considered so
important that women still
risked the life of an unborn child to stay in style.

Women are almost always willing to suffer foot pain in the name
of fashion. A young
actress once complained to me that her feet were killing her. My
examination revealed no
structural problems -- her stylish shoes simply did not match her
feet. When I suggested that
she try a semi-fashionable Revelation, she looked horrified. "I
wouldn't be caught dead in
those." And she meant it!

Psychologists dub this phenomena algolagnia, pain with pleasure
or pleasure from pain.
This form of podo-masochism is routinely endured by millions of
women daily. It is a price
willingly paid.

Taken from 'Foot Talk' copyright 1984 and 1996 © Barry H.
Block, D.P.M., J.D.



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