Everyone who has worn a new pair of stunning 5 inch heels knows the pain is real. As uncomfortable as stylish heels look, women are still wearing heels, and they are even bigger and better today. We all know that the pain you feel in the ball of your foot, and eventually all over and up your ankle is just a normal pain of breaking in new heels, or even wearing a pair that are almost too tall. I also think it is safe to assume that everyone realizes that the pain probably isn’t a good thing. But are heels impacting other parts of our bodies in ways just as bad?
Women’s Health Magazine says that the most pain is felt in the ball of the foot because when wearing a heel, the body’s weight is no longer spread out among the entire foot, but is all pressured on to the ball and big toe of the foot. Also, when wearing heels it forces the person to walk differently, which can cause large blisters and in grown toe nails. Furthermore the knees are taking in much more stress which can eventually lead to knee problems. In addition to the feet and knees, a persons back is also negatively impacted because it has to be upright in an unnatural position that can lead to severe lower back pain.
Also, The Washington Post posted that a human is supposed to walk heel to toe, but when a person is wearing heels they are altering the natural way they are supposed to walk, which can lead to serious foot and ankle problems. The skinnier and the higher the heels are, the more likely someone is to sprain their ankle or tear ligaments in the side of the ankle because they may roll their ankles more. Also, the achilles tendon is tightened up when wearing heels, and going from being scrunched up to stretching out after taking off a pair of heels at the end of the day can lead to problems with the achilles tendon, like achilles tendonitis. Lastly, wearing heels for too long can cause tissue on the bottom of the foot to swell, and it can get very bad to the point of needing to go through aggressive treatments, and cause severe pain.
Does this mean that we have to stop wearing our favorite type of dress shoe? Nope! Although avoiding wearing heels, and other shoes without arch support, would be the best thing for feet, there are easy ways to avoid getting problems with feet from heels. Although there is no fool proof method, it is suggested to avoid wearing heels for an extended amount of time (just on special occasions) and to wear heels with shorter and/or chunkier heels,in order to keep pressure spread out and less centralized on the big toe and ball of the foot.
This leads to further questioning of why women actually wear heels, if they are so bad and painful on their bodies. Alternet has a theory: The type of heel signifies class. The theorist says that women of a higher class have the money to spend on these high heels, and the resources as well, because they will wear them to nice dinners, where they are sitting down, a few exceptions to work (where they are probably sitting down), and valet parking is a lot less of a distance to walk in the painfully tall heels than is taking the bus to a party. Although this is only a theory, in my opinion, a good type of experiment for this could be to take a sample of women from the upper, middle, and lower classes, and split into these groups, and send all the women into a shoe store and tell them that they must buy 3 pairs of shoes. Next, after all the women are done shopping, see what type of shoes the women have bought in each of the three groups. (What type of shoe, the heel size, the expense of the shoe, ect.)
http://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/high-heels
http://www.alternet.org/high-heels-hurt-hell-do-women-wear-them-signify-class-and-status
This was a very well thought out post that I can tell you put a lot of energy and effort into. It’s true being a woman is difficult and wearing heels are one of the many hardships that come along with the title. I knew that wearing high heels enough was damaging to our legs and feet, but i never knew before reading this post how many areas it truly affected. Luckily I am not one of those people who constantly is wearing them, but for business women and such I can only imagine the impact it must have on their bodies. The conclusion of your blog was undeniably my favorite when you discussed the type of experiment that they could perform to see what class women are most likely to purchase high heels. One question I would have is whether there is a way to make walking in high heels not so painful and damaging to our legs, ankles, and feet? Also, is it inevitable that one always has bad posture while wearing them or is there a way to minimize that?
I really liked this post, I so true how the society has pushed the women to use accesories that would do harm to our body just to make us feel different, better or what you said “class”. What I have notice is that when you go out the second thing you look at a girl`s outfit is what type of shoe she is wearing. Is impressive how the society pressure has such a big role on ours basic desicion such as what type of heel to where? or the real question is how tall the heel has to be to be appropiate to the occasion.
I really like that you included information on how the hell affects our feet, but also why we were heels as a society. It was interesting to see how societal implications impact our choice in shoes. Although, not only do heels alter our feet, but so do Dr. Martens where breaking them in is a pain in the butt (or foot) because like heels you have to stretch the leather to conform to your feet.
I thought about this the other day after wearing a simple pair of heeled boots. Maybe it was because I literally had them on all day, and my foot was bruised from dance class the day before, but I still limped around for at least a day after I finally took them off at 3 in the morning… It’s hard to believe girls would deal with that pain just for a pair of nice shoes. Still, heels are far too beautiful and satisfying to give up.
Yes, I can feel the pain you said in the article. Every time I wear my high heels for the Friday party, it is beautiful but painful all night. I believe that every girl with the high heels can feel the torture and know the harm brought by the gorgeous devil under our feet, but none of them would decide to stop wearing them, because we enjoy the feeling they bring to us. Like you said, women should avoid to wear high heels frequently to protect from the pain and disease they bring to our foot. Besides that, using the hot water do really help our feet to relax after released from high heels.