High heels

I’ve occasionally blogged about high heels before. Supposedly they improve women’s sex life because they “directly work the pleasure muscles linked to orgasm”. As I pointed out it would seem to me there are better ways to directly work those muscles without the risk of breaking an ankle, but whatever. I don’t have any real interest in them. But this article was very interesting to me (H/T Glenn Reynolds):

Scientists from the Universite de Bretagne-Sud conducted experiments that showed that men behave very differently toward high-heeled women. The results, published online in the journal “Archives of Sexual Behaviour,” may please the purveyors of Christian Louboutin or Jimmy Choo shoes — yet frustrate those who think stilettos encourage sexism.

The study found if a woman drops a glove on the street while wearing heels, she’s almost 50 percent more likely to have a man fetch it for her than if she’s wearing flats.

Another finding: A woman wearing heels is twice as likely to persuade men to stop and answer survey questions on the street. And a high-heeled woman in a bar waits half the time to get picked up by a man, compared to when her heel is nearer to the ground.

I could see myself being more likely to help them pick up something. But answering survey questions? Really? That just doesn’t resonate for me. I have never picked up a woman in a bar and only go to a bar when Barb wants to hang out with some of her friends. I therefore I have zero personal data on that point as well.

I am attracted to tall women. But what I find is that after “prying” my eyes from her face at something approaching my eye level I look at her feet. If she is wearing heels my interest is severely degraded. So, to me, high heels are negatively associated with attraction.

Barb has an interesting “relationship” with high heels too. In addition to being difficult for her to walk in them she says that when she wears them it’s as if people don’t see her. She is nearly 6’ 1” in her bare feet so with high heels she is pushing 6’ 4” and many people end up looking at something approximating her bellybutton (she has very long legs, much longer than mine). For her to make eye contact with people while wearing high heels involves hand gestures, verbal cues, and sometimes offering them a stepstool.

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12 thoughts on “High heels

  1. Joe, you are pretty much a statistical outlier in so many facets of your life that not liking high heels doesn’t surprise me. Matters of taste and preferrence are always individual. The study didn’t say that a woman in high heels would be 100% successful, only 50% more successful than a woman in flats. Since percentages are dimensionless numbers, that could be the difference between three people stopping to take the survey and two people stopping to take the survey. I would say that high heels granting man stopping super powers isn’t exactly a given if that is the case.

  2. “Scientists from the Universite de Bretagne-Sud conducted experiments that showed that men behave very differently toward high-heeled women.”

    Down anyone else believe that if a university is spending money and time doing “studies” on this sort of horseshit, they must have between one hundred and ten thousand times more money than they know what to do with? Does anyone else suspect that there is an inverse relationship between France’s economic growth and the number of studies on sexual behavior done by their universities?

  3. Of course men, and women, will behave differently toward a high-heeled woman. She’s obviously making herself more helpless on purpose. She wants to be seen as an object.

    Look at it this way; would you react differently toward a high-heeled man? Well OK then. Where’s my fucking grant money?

    • I don’t think you know that all women who wear high heels want to be seen as an object. There is a belief with significant justification that women are more attractive when wearing high heels. Just as there is similar belief about men who wear suits (or even new, well fitting, and clean clothes) and dress shoes. Do they want to be seen as an object as well?

  4. The purpose of the neck tie, way back in the day, had to do with keeping collars straight. Obviously there is no purpose for keeping a collar straight today with the way collars are made, but the neck tie remains with us as a vestigial organ of fashion. For some reason a neck tie makes a man look more successful or attractive or some other positive attribute.

    High heels have gone in and out of fashion for men as well. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were both said to have a well formed calf.

  5. I’m 5’2″. I’ve worn stilettos since forever because I think anything under a 3″ heel is a flat. (They also make dresses and skirts look better, but that’s beside the point.)

    Heels also say “I’m a grownup” which is something short women always need to stress.

      • That one component. But I also know a couple women that are really short (5′ or less). They have difficulty being taken seriously unless they make some effort to get attention. I can see ubu52 having a point here.

        • Short women often look much younger, even in the face. Not a bad thing, but can see the point.

  6. Maybe they should do a study whether men are more helpful to women with armpit and leg hair. It seems to be making a comeback these days. *shudder*

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