Giving the boot to high heel history

I’m lucky enough to get to write about fashion once a week for my school’s paper. And it’s tempting each week to just pick one of my favorite things, like black ankle boots, and explain why it’s the coolest thing in clothing at the moment.

But I can’t just publish a list of my favorite things. I’m not Oprah.

Especially because there is so much more to clothes than how they look. As an amateur feminist and as someone who loves clothes, high heels are something I feel very torn about. There’s a lot of context to the high heel.

Sometimes I feel like Amanda Byne’s character in “She’s The Man.” When she’s fighting with her mom about what to wear to her debutante ball, she argues, “… No, I will not wear high heels. Because heels are a male invention designed to make women’s butts look smaller… and to make it harder for them to run away.”

Other times, high heels remind me of my grandmother. She was the strongest woman I have ever met. And she raised all six of her children while wearing high heels. High heels can symbolize grace and elegance, but don’t necessarily need to compromise utility.

Although it’s hard to pin down when the first high heel came to prominence, Bynes does have a point about high heels making it harder for women to run away and what that means on an analytical level.

Biomechanical research has shown many times that modern day high heels both shorten the stride of steps taken and increase the amount of hip tilt and rotation in each step. This alters how the wearer walks for a more feminine gait. Although a more feminine walk may be more attractive, it also makes it harder to be mobile.

If you look to the roots of high heels, they’ve been used by either gender during different time periods for different reasons. Heels have been used by men while horseback riding and by women to keep dress hems out of sewage in the streets. They’ve been used by short rulers to appear taller. In the early 1600s, men commonly wore heels with satin bows and flowers on them. Historically, high heels are not an inherently gendered product.

However, in a modern context heels are worn by very put-together and professional women. Michelle Obama often wears low heels. The Kardashians often wear very high heels. The actress Bryce Dallas Howard played a character in Jurassic World who ran a theme park full of dangerous animals while wearing heels, and then had to answer questions about them in every interview she had about the movie. High heels are often called stripper heels.

Today, what your shoes say about you really has to do with context.

I compromise with the high-heel ankle boot, and I recommend the same for any other overly-analytical casual feminist out there. It’s a current trend that will be around for the next couple of years. They have all the benefits of heels without the danger of falling out of them.

If you’re taken aback as to what to wear them with, the answer is everything. They’re just as versatile as any black boot. Wear them under skinny or boot cut jeans, or cuffed jeans, or midi dress pants. Wear them with mini, knee-length, midi, or full-length skirts and dresses; floral or not.

If you want to feel feminine without feeling like a damsel in distress, ankle boots are the answer. They’re the shoe in which you can go waltzing and go base-jumping, maybe. Maybe not, but if Kim Possible was a real person she would probably wear them, just in case you value a fictional character’s opinion over mine. I hope I’ve convinced you.