High Heels Trip Over Good Sense
Valley stores are full of dresses that gleam and sparkle like Christmas ornaments and shoes that are either gorgeous or the work of the devil, depending on your tolerance for pain.
We’re talking here about shoes with toe cleavage and heels high and narrow enough to induce fantasies of making a full confession so you can take them off. We’re talking about the purely decorative shoes that some women collect like Beanie Babies and others have long since traded in for what one woman described as the plain, flat, black shoe that comes in all colors. We’re talking about the kind of shoes that do something to your legs that most men really, really like.
The women who would rather have gum surgery than wear four-inch heels have the medical profession on their side. According to recent studies by the American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society, or AOFAS, three-inch heels put seven times as much stress on the front of the foot as one-inch heels. Moreover, women account for the overwhelming majority--90%--of the 795,000 foot surgeries each year attributable to hurtful shoes.
But who cares? The American Podiatric Medical Assn. discovered recently that 25% of American women wear high heels, including those who know they are bad for their feet.
Since I understand the women who have traded in their stilettos for Birkenstocks, I went out recently to plumb the psyches of women who were still buying shoes that would give a foot-binder pause.
At a shoe boutique in Fashion Square Sherman Oaks, Nicole Gian of Sherman Oaks was trying on boots with four-inch heels. They looked great on her, although selling them in Minnesota in winter is probably a felony.
Gian says she wears a lower heel on most occasions, but when she goes out, she wears four-inch heels because they look good even if they are uncomfortable. Willing to teeter in the name of beauty, she also teeters for a living. As an actress, she is almost always asked to wear spike heels when she is performing. The sole exception: When the 5-foot-7-inch actress is playing opposite someone who is shorter than she.
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Parisa Moshir of Northridge likes to shop in running shoes, but she, too, slips into something less comfortable when she goes out. Her dress shoes tend to have heels “at least four inches high,” she says. But she is no masochist. Among her favorite shoes are a pair of sandals that are quite pointy and have very high heels but are comfortable, nonetheless.
“I bought them from a medical supplies store and I can wear them for hours,” says Moshir, whose miracle footwear has proven itself in such podiatric purgatories as Disneyland and Magic Mountain.
But it was when I talked to Yana Kay that I began to understand the magic of high heels. Twenty-eight-year-old Kay is a staffer for TV’s “Entertainment Tonight.” She is also the best thing to happen to the upscale shoe industry since Imelda Marcos.
Smart and articulate, Kay talks about shoes the way other aficionados talk about Renaissance art, Cuban cigars or fine wines.
At five feet tall, Kay implies that high heels even the playing field for her at parties. “I’m short,” she explains, then adds, with a sly smile, “but if I wasn’t short, I’d still wear them.”
If there were a 12-step program for women who can’t get enough high-end, high-heeled shoes, Kay would be a candidate. “Shoes are my downfall . . . My husband thinks I have a lot. I don’t think I have a lot,” says Kay, who insists she has fewer than 50 pairs, each stored in its original box.
Kay loves Jimmy Choos, the gourmet footwear that costs as much as $1,200 a pair and that appeared at the Oscars on the pedicured feet of Angelina Jolie, Hilary Swank and other celebrities. And Kay reveals: “My husband just bought me a pair of Manolos--you know, like ‘Sex and the City.’ ” Manolos, as those with external genitalia may be unaware, are the pricey, popular shoes marketed by Manolo Blahnik. Carrie, the protagonist of HBO’s hit series “Sex and the City,” was mugged in a recent episode and begged her attacker to take her money, not her Manolos.
“They’re my first Manolos and I’m excited--my first, but hopefully not my last,” Kay says.
Her friend, flight attendant Cece Katz of Studio City, smiles indulgently and reveals that Kay chooses clothes that will go with her shoes, not the other way around.
When she describes the Manolos in question, you understand this is a woman in love. They’re velvet stilettos in a natural tone with straps that tie at the ankle. It seems surprising that any man, even a fond husband, would know precisely which pair of Manolos would make a woman purr. Kay’s husband didn’t.
“He actually surprised me with another pair, which I didn’t like so I want back and exchanged them for these.”
Yes, they hurt, Kay says of her beautiful new shoes.
“That’s our dilemma: Do I want to be comfortable or do I want to look hot?”
Kay’s choice is clear. When she has been dancing for hours and the Manolos make her wince, she simply takes them off.
Kay’s theory is that women buy shoes to impress other women, not to attract men. And she thinks a woman’s shoes are a key to her character. “You can tell a woman by her shoes--her grooming, her taste, her lifestyle,” she says.
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For Kay, the Choos and the Manolos have ruined costly cookie-cutter shoes forever. She doesn’t want to go to parties where other women are wearing the same shoes she is.
Just how nifty are these shoes?
“The Manolos are like a piece of art,” she says. “If I could display them in my living room I would, but I think it would be too much.”
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Spotlight appears every Friday. Patricia Ward Biederman can be reached at valley.news@latimes.com.
