Caught Flat-Footed and Liking It

Ginger Rogers, Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe. Once they slithered or slinked or pirouetted in spikes and silk stockings, high heels became solidly locked in female consciousness. Sensible shoes--flats or the lace-ups favored by schoolmarms immemorial--became shoes for losers in the game of sex appeal and power.

And over the years, even as more women have wised up, giving up cigarettes and fatty foods and taking up exercise and careers, they have held onto their heels. The result: a lifetime of foot problems like bunions, hammertoes, pinched nerves.

Now comes a new survey from the American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society that finds women are finally getting smart when it comes to their feet. The percentage who reported wearing heels over two inches high has dropped from 34% nearly a decade ago to 21%. The dip mirrors a reduction in pantyhose sales a few years back in favor of more comfortable ankle-high stockings and more durable tights.

News of this move to flat or low-heel dress shoes sounds, we admit, a shade less weighty than a trade agreement with China or the Microsoft antitrust case, but it’s a big deal nonetheless. Since women have 90% of all the surgeries for foot-related problems, most often caused by high heels, these survey results are a step, as it were, in a healthier direction.

Perhaps this new sense and sensibility when it comes to feet is a barometer of women’s emergent confidence and success in the work force, a sense that they can now opt for comfort without losing power. But we who have hobbled through the workday in high, pinched heels and suffered in constricting pantyhose think there’s a simpler explanation, that perhaps women have just gotten sick and tired of being in pain and aren’t going to take it anymore.