Official science: High heels make you sexy However uncomfortable, overly expensive and impractical killer heels may be, think again before ditching them for your next night out: new science has proved high-heeled shoes definitely make women look sexy. In the same year CERN boffins found the Higgs Boson in a gigantic underground particle accelerator, an academic study …
... I find the entire concept disgusting.
So-called "naughty knickers" work, in context, when applied appropriately ... but heels, fagetaboutit ... too much room for error. I don't find potential permanent damage to my wife's lower extremities attractive. At all.
... seamed stockings and a bow just on the ankle line, works on me, although the last pair I had are too laddered to wear now.
The tragic types who wear high heels to conceal short legs and stalk about leaning forward, all too common where I'm from, ugh!
Crap `study' but lots of interesting comments from commentards! Not tech, but nice to see.
"What a waste of time."
Consider why it was published:
1) it was part of a study of human behaviour, these sorts of things are useful to know in evolutionary studies
2) (most likely) it's a good advertisement for Portsmouth Uni, coincidentally 2 weeks before admission deadlines close (15th Jan), particularly for the Sports & Exercise Science course starting in September.
3) (less likely, but plausible), it's not uncommon for sponsored research work. Wouldn't be at all surprised if I saw Schuh or similar quoting the results.
But of the likeliest options, I'd go with 2, with a mixture of 1.
Re: Seriously.... people get paid for this stuff?
I think you're underestimating the effort required to produce this report.
Spending 2-3 nights a week in bars watching woman in high heels and fending off bouncers is harder than it appears when you have to do it week in and week out for the duration of the study.
And the beer doesn't drink itself...
I may be wrong but I seem to recall some research a few years ago that said ladies who "seductively gyrate and swing their hips" while walking are in fact at their least fertile and therefore don't need to "look sexy".
PS Mrs Coat has some 6 inch heels that look rather pleasant.
I live in a country where flip-flops ar de rigeur, and heels are used only for special occasions, and I can assure you from years of visual research, studying legs on motorcycles, that it is the shape of the leg that matters.
A leg without a well defined ankle, even if shod in a pair of heels, looks like sh*t.
So stuff your science and study the form.
Wearing High Heels changes the shape of the Calf. The muscles become more defined and the overall proportions improve (IMHO).
As a male who sometimes wears heels (to please Mrs A/C I can assure you) I know the above from firsthand. It is not only men who appreciate the shape of womens legs & heels. Mrs A/C does as well. However there is (in our opinions) an optimum height of heel for each person. For a small person, 6in heels look silly and even cartoonish. However for a tall person (over 6ft) they don't yet there is a lot of pressure for tall women to wear flats so they don't appear taller than their partner. Well that might not be true for a certain Mr B Ecclestone (of F1). Many Men are so fickle aren't they? (Mrs A/C is taller than me in bare feet and I don't care)
The choice of heel height is probably more to do with foot size.
A lady with small delicate feet can not wear a 6" heel without a hideously thick platform sole, if they were to try they'd need to on point like a ballerina. More statuesque ladies are more likely to have longer feet, just as they are likely to have longer legs and everything else, so a greater fall can be accommodated in their foot wear.
In terms of attractiveness, then practising in one's heels is most important. If ladies wear higher heels than they can comfortably cope with then they loose all poise and end up walking like some mutant wading bird, which alas is not in the slightest bit seemly.
"torturing as 6 inch"
Depends on the wearer. I know a few who practically live in 5", but they are former ballerinas and if they walk during the summertimes in heels and skirt the risk of road accidents goes up dramatically (they're also the few that I know that can walk gracefully on 6" - don't ask me how they manage but it looks delicious).
It's a simple fact that not everyone can walk on such heels.
Agreed. As an occasional crossdresser, wearing a moderate amount of heel is an important component of misdirection (i.e. making other people not notice I'm not actually a woman). Not only is the body shape when standing altered, you have to rotate your hips and keep a better upper body balance to avoid falling over when walking. It may or may not be "sexy", but it certainly prevents the typical masculine stompiness.
But it doesn't need a published study to tell us this. Suggest it's a slow news day, so filling space with a pre-written press release/article from the University of the Bleeding Obvious.
In terms of heel "rating" the heel height is based on a standard shoe size (I think it's something 6 in the USA, so UK 4) so the shape of the foot should actually be consistent in the same model of shoe in all sizes. So, yes, I'd expect a difference with actual heel height, but not in the same make of shoe.
I think a 5" rated heel is my personal taste limit. 3 1/2" rated heel is my wife's walking limit. 2" rated heel is now my wife's limit to wear them for an extended period.
I don't know how I'd have answered the test since they didn't see the actual shoe. Chunky heels do less than nothing for me, while sculpted stiletto heels do way too much.
I just wonder how it is that the particular gait came to be seen as sexy in the first place.
It's possible that the exaggerated hip movements can be traced back to apes, but I think it's a stretch. I think modern culture has a huge amount of invented sexual signalling, depending on the movies, and stage performance before that, and a lot of it is essentially a caricature. We're being presented with a world of sexual availabilily signalled by high heels and breast implants. For the stage, at least, there was always exaggeration of body and facial language.
I believe heels became sexy round the same time London was flooding with shit and other undesirables on roads during the 1800's. They were practacle back then to keep crap from tarnishing your dress. Rich women wore them, people wanted to be rich or be with rich people.
Of course I could be completely batshit wrong about this. Here's a Wikipedia article for those interested enough to keep reading, but not interested enough to find material on the subject.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-heeled_footwear
The problem with this hypothesis is that high heels only keep the heel out of the muck. AFAIK the usual footwear for staying above wet and muck was the patten - a kind of overshoe that raises the whole foot.
I'm sure rich women didn't wear special footwear to keep their skirts clean. Part of the point of extravagant dress such as long skirts is to show that you're rich enough to have somebody else to clean your clothes and rich enough not to be very bothered about replacing them. Lord Byron apparently wore white linen trousers that he threw away after one wearing. I bet his lady friends were even more extravagant.
Some theories I've heard (not that I've researched the subject in depth, mind) are the exaggeration of curves (hip sway when walking, butt lifted up a bit, calf muscles stand out more), and the idea that whoever is wearing them is vulnerable -- less easy to get away, on less steady footing than if wearing trucker boots, et cetera. Given that once upon a time high-born gentlemen wore high heels and would certainly not have done so if they thought such shoes projected an aura of helplessness, I have questions about the second theory but given some of the batshit crazy heels I've seen some bimbos tottering around in I can't dismiss it outright.
<-- I believe some of our favorite historical pirates were not adverse to a bit of heel on their boots, yarrrr!
Men wearing higher heels in 1600s and 1700s were telling the world (1) they did not need to walk far 920 they did not need to work. Gentlemen wore heels.
Woemn wear heels partly to show they are vulnerable: being weaker is part of the concept of femininity. Most 'sexy' outfits emphasise this. One of the reasons women were hobbled for had their feet bound was to make them helpless.
Methinks more deeper investigation is called for. Any volunteers? :-) .... for Special Operations Executive HyperRadioProActive IT Missions ...... SMARTR IntelAIgent Sorties.
Which is Theresa May Killer Heels Territory doing Virtual Battle for the Home Office and MI5 in ESPecial ParaMilitary Operations with Remote Virtual Global Control Leverage, an Active Danegeld Supply Source of Flash Instant Cash Jackpot Delivery.
Governments do put themselves into a terminal tale tailspin whenever they deny enlightening information and newly phormed views with breaking grandstanding news such as is Absolutely Fabulous Fabless Help with Special Instructions from/for Drivers is CHAOS in Action and on HyperRadioProActive Service being offered freely to governments and one non state actor governments alike in the likes of these Open Registered Posts delivering Fuller Transparency and Information OverLode ..... or OverLoad, which would all depend upon one's preferred stable state of mind, methinks, as to whether one is enriched or overwhelmed by Powers with Greater Knowledge.
"We isolated the effects of heels on gait using point-light methodology. Females were recorded walking in flat shoes and high heels."
Someone in another forum suggested that the researchers should have controlled the experiment by including men wearing the same heels. The point-light method would hide the walker's other sex indicators.
If the results favoured those wearing high heels, of either sex, then it would suggest that it was a cultural artefact rather than a basic difference in male/female physiology.
... until Service Pack 1, on any mission-critical systems.
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Oops, sorry, mixing up my in-depth, detailed reports from the Department of the Bleedin' Obvious there.
Anyway, I thought that high heels gave a longer stride, not a faster pitter-patter Essex girl trot... (at least that's what I guess they're saying from the bits with pictures). For a control, they should've at least visited a range of theatres showing "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and observed all the lads from local rugby teams dressed as Frank. Again, risks a punch in the face, but that's no less than they deserve for their efforts.
《《 this would have been the Sherlock icon if the m.forums site let us pick them...
There's been quite a few studies like this over the past decade or two, usually by promovendi from the fuzzy sector, and they all come to the same conclusion: high heels make women appear to be more sexy.
Absolutely not surprising, given that high heels, as mentioned in previous posts, do indeed change the shape of the leg, making it appear longer, emphasising the calf, thigh, and buttocks, which are simple biological sexual/fitness markers.
That in itself would still not amount to much, since they are only subtle secondary markers. High heels, however, also force an upright posture with "tits and ass out" and a gait that is usually referred to as a "strut". Both posture and gait are things that women tend to do naturally by design, but especially when they are out hunting and up to mischief. Absolutely no heels needed there. Physics and evolution made them that way, and the same mechanism makes us blokes pay attention.
The sad part about the cultural aspect here is that in most cultures this quite appealing behaviour is rigorously (and sometimes violently) suppressed as "inappropriate".
Well, maybe snarking on Sports Science is probably unfair. But Evo-Psych has become a cesspit of sexism, self-reinforcement, and just-so-stories.
It may once have had some respect as a "soft-science" but it lost every last shred of that a long time ago, largely due to "research" such as this.
First off, "attractive" is subjective.
The whole package, however, is a subtle play of curves. There are good heels and bad heels - good heels take care to load the foot bone structure in a way that doesn't cause damage, and are engineered properly (there are a *lot* of mechanics involved in a decent high heel), and there is a "maximum height" above which no woman should go (easily found - if the front leg goes straight into the toes as one straight line you are really at the maximum point - go beyond that and you're looking at damage) - depends on the feet involved.
Bad heels do not distribute pressure properly and should be banned as torture devices. Platforms tend to quickly trend towards being crap because the height throws off the delicate balance required, and the designer's idea to put a heel fully at the end of a shoe is stupid as well (the heel should really be under the body's weight or they will hurt when walking as you end up creating a lever effect). There is a reason why the classic spike heeled pump has endured so well over the years as a design - from an engineering perspective it offers the best balance between support and height. However, it needs someone with trained ankles.
Price is not an *absolute* measure of quality, but if you like the elegant sight of a woman in heels and she is your partner I suggest you don't skimp on price or complain about it - it's not design you pay for, it is (in many ways) feel good factor.. With boots it gets a bit more complex because then you also have to deal with the shape of the leg - a leg with decent muscle development is easier to design for (the "modelling" leg is a tad too underdefined, but that's a personal opinion, I like people with an athletic build that at least throw a shadow).
Anon because I know far too much of this I had friends who had a shoe factory, and as an engineer it's fascinating to see how complex it actually is to create a good pair of heels or boots (it helps having a happy test recipient around :)..
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