Why high heels give all girls a real lift...
SPLENDID news to warm the cockles of every right‑thinking woman’s heart – high heels are good for you. Wearing stilettos gives the leg a good workout. It shapes as it tones as it maintains the elegance of the leg. Actually, any shoe lover – and show me a woman who isn’t – could have told you that, because shoes are one of life’s greatest pleasures. They are possibly the one exception to the rule that everything that’s any fun is either illegal, immoral or makes you fat.
And it is in this last that lies the great appeal of the shoe, for unlike any other high-fashion item, you do not need to be slim to wear it well. Indeed, it’s not uncommon for the larger lady to sport something very delicate indeed in the feet area, a symbol of the fact that no matter how much the rest of your body has gone pear shaped, there’s one last bit of you capable of keeping up standards.
As for everyone else, it’s not for nothing that one famous shoe designer, Emma Hope, calls her creations “regalia for the feet”. There is nothing that cheers you up like slipping on some beautiful piece of ornamentation and it’s telling that Cinderella was tracked down by her footwear rather than, say, a glove.
Men, while appreciating a woman in fine footwear, just don’t get it. For them, a couple of pairs of good shoes for work and a couple more for casual outfits will usually suffice. Women, meanwhile, who have been known to spend as much on a pair of shoes as they would on a good chair, can never have enough. We’ve all got an inner Imelda Marcos fighting, in many cases successfully, to get out.
And why not? In these troubled times there’s little enough to be cheerful about but out there on the high street there are the means to make your heart sing again. Stilettos aren’t just good for the pins, they’re balm for the soul. Walking tall in your high heels? In many more ways than one.