Killer High Heels
April 22nd, 2007 by Erich ViethToday’s topic is high heeled shoes. Why do women wear the damned things, I sometimes wonder. Those women wobble around, they take longer to get from here to there, they often trip on small sidewalk imperfections, and they regularly fall and get hurt.
I will confess: my gut reaction is that a woman’s IQ relates inversely to whether that woman tends to wear accident-inducing high heeled shoes. I think of women who flock to such shoes as women who aspire to become Barbies or Princesses. Before you write a comment to protest, I realize that my gut feeling is a gross over-simplification. I also have an analogous gut feeling with regard to men who aspire to higher forms of masculinity by rushing to engage in dangerous activities such as motocross or hang-gliding . . .
I never understood high heels. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I don’t think that women who wear high heels are “hotter” than those who don’t. To the contrary, I’m annoyed by high heels. Most woman who wear them look uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that they become objects of my pity, not lust. But many other men (and women) disagree with me. For proof, take a look at almost any advertising (and see here and here and here (for 8” heels!)).
Because I appear to be obtuse regarding this particular slice of human sexual responsiveness (and a tad bit concerned about my lack of responsiveness!), I have chosen this subject of high heels as yet another port of entry into the compelling field of evolutionary psychology (I’ve written about evolutionary psychology and consumer issues before).
I’ll start things off with the downside to dangerous and uncomfortable high heel shoes. It has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that wearing high heel shoes contribute to numerous serious injuries. Here’s a list of high heel shoe-related injuries published by the Mayo Clinic:
- Corns and calluses. Thick, hardened layers of skin develop in areas of friction between your shoe and your foot. . . .
- Toenail problems. Constant pressure on your toes and nail beds from being forced against the front of your shoe by a high heel can lead to nail fungus and ingrown toenails.
- Hammertoe. When your toes are forced against the front of your shoe, an unnatural bending of your toes results. This can lead to hammertoe . . .
- Bunions. Tight fitting shoes may worsen bunions — bony bumps that form on the joint at the base of your big toe. . . .
- Tight heel cords. If you wear high heels all the time, you risk tightening and shortening your Achilles tendon. . .
- Pump bump. Also known as Haglund’s deformity, this bony enlargement on the back of your heel can become aggravated by the rigid backs or straps of high heels. . .
- Neuromas. A growth of nerve tissue. . .A neuroma causes sharp, burning pain in the ball of your foot accompanied by stinging or numbness in your toes.
- Joint pain in the ball of the foot . . . This causes increased pressure, strain and pain in your forefoot. Shoes with tightfitting toe boxes can lead to similar discomfort.
- Stress fractures. Tiny cracks in one of the bones of your foot.
High heels have also been linked to overworked or injured leg muscles, osteoarthritis of the knee and low back pain. You also risk ankle injuries if you lose your balance and fall off your high heels. See here. High heels can even be dangerous, resulting in trips to the emergency room.
Rupert Evans, an accident and emergency doctor at University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff said injuries could lead to long-term problems. Women should stick to shoes with heels less than 4cm (1.5in) if they wanted to avoid a trip to hospital, he advised. Dr Evans said he has seen an increase in the number of women being admitted to hospital with injuries caused by the fashionable footwear. Injuries ranged from sprained ankles to broken bones and dislocations - and in some cases caused permanent damage.
What kind of permanent damage? How about chronic knee pain, sprained ankles and back problems.
My interest in high heeled shoes was re-ignited when I started reading a brand new book by Gad Saad, The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption (2007).
I’m only about 75 pages into Saad’s book, but I am impressed with his scholarship and clear writing. He has spent much of these first 75 pages making the case for the need to use the relatively new paradigm of evolutionary psychology when analyzing consumer spending issues. The status quo among most consumer and marketing researchers is to ignore evolutionary psychology, but this quite often leads to an incomplete and erroneous explanation for consumer spending issues.
I’ll get to what Saad says about high heels in a second. It is important to note that high heels are merely one of thousands of illustrations of consumer purchases that can be better understood using evolutionary psychology. Why are so many marketing researchers and psychologists ignoring evolutionary psychology? Mainly because it’s a relatively new field, and most established researchers prefer to stay within the paradigms with which they are more familiar. To ignore evolutionary psychology, though, is to have an unanchored and incomplete picture.
In many ways Saad’s book parallels arguments suggested by Geoffrey Miller (see “Shopping for Sex: wasteful consumerism and Darwin’s theory of sexual selection”).
Saad cites studies showing that 80% of shoe purchases are for sexual attraction. It has been suggested that wearing high heels creates “the visual illusion of lordosis (arching of the back when a female is in a sexually receptive position) and furthermore accentuates the body curves that are particularly appealing to men.” (Page 75). Saad cites further research showing that a 2-inch heel results in a 20 degree “lift of the buttocks:
High heels may well be the most potent aphrodisiac ever concocted. When worn by women, the high heels sensuously alters the whole anatomy-foot, leg, thigh, hips, pelvis, buttocks, breasts, etc…. men are perfectly frank in admitting that high heels stimulate their sexual appetite. They seldom fail to express their predilection for them, and women, consequently, assign to stilted shoes all the magic of a love potion.
Saad recognizes that the wearing of high heels has been well-recognized by authors and songwriters over the years. Women appearing in pornographic photos and videos and women who work as strippers often wear high heels. Saad notes that dance routines performed by women wearing high heels “could be more safely and comfortably performed with less enticing foot attire.” He cites studies showing that the economic cost incurred as a result of wearing high heels is $16 billion annually (”time taken off work to recover from foot surgeries, medical costs, etc.”). He cites further studies showing that
“for a substantial number of podiatry-related injuries or conditions, women outnumber men up to 40-to-1, with the suspected culprit in many instances being the wearing of high heels.”
Evolutionary psychology has a lot to offer anyone considering why women would insist on wearing such dangerous shoes. It offers an explanation that is systematically anchored within human biology. It offers “ultimate” explanations (why a particular behavior, cognition, emotion or morphological trait has evolved to its current form in a Darwinian adaptive sense), not only “proximate” explanations (how mechanisms operate and what factors influence the workings of such mechanisms). Nonetheless, many scholars “have abdicated our biological and Darwinian heritage” to embrace an “all-encompassing standard social science model” (SSSM) obsessed with characterizing the brain as a “general-purpose problem solver” at the disposal of homo economicus (rational “economic” man) (Page 20, 31). This is true of many scholars in the field of anthropology, sociology and psychology. These many SSSM advocates argue that
Culture cannot be broken down into smaller units of analysis. It simply exists sui generis. Second, social phenomena must be explained using units of analysis at the social level. Hence, to try to explain a social phenomenon using the minds of those individuals comprising the group can lead to the onerous accusation of being a reductionist. Third, by rejecting biology as an explicative force in shaping human behavior, SSSM effectively rejects the idea of a universal human nature. Fourth, human behavior is thought to be unconstrained in its malleability as it is assumed that humans are born with empty slate or tabula rasa minds.
What are the major differences between evolutionary psychology and SSSM?
much of this theorizing within the evolutionary psychology framework seeks to address the ultimate origins of a particular phenomenon (i.e., the adaptive roots) whereas the SSSM has almost completely focused on proximate mechanisms. Second, whereas evolutionary psychology posits that the human mind is comprised of domain-specific context-dependent modules, the SSSM argues that domain-general context-independent processes guide human behavior.
Evolutionary psychology has many successes to its credit. It is thus easy to make the case that evolutionary psychology is being unfairly dissed by the establishment. Here are some of the success stories: evolutionary psychology has offered biologically anchored explanations for morning sickness as a natural and beneficial phenomenon, a naturally-occurring distaste for potentially harmful food occurring during the embryonic period when key organs are forming. It has characterized fever as an adaptive reaction rather than something to simply bring down with aspirin (as many doctors still recommend. See Why We Get Sick (1996), by Randolph Nesse, for this point). Evolutionary psychology is completely comfortable with the findings that the demotion of one’s social status is a more dramatic punishment for men than women and that men are more driven to have multiple sexual partners than women.
Evolutionary psychologists don’t give that deer-in-the- headlights reaction to universal “cultural” findings, such as the fact that men possess a near-universal preference for women whose bodies adhere to the .70 waste-to-hip ratio. When male CEOs tend to be taller than average men (and presidents, too), evolutionary psychologists roll up their sleeves and get to work—that fact doesn’t just sit out there like an intellectual singularity. Evolutionary psychologists make good use of findings that sexual infidelity is the greatest threat to a man’s reproductive interests whereas emotional infidelity most threatens women. There are countless other illustrations that evolutionary psychology has a right to sit at the same table as those who wear the SSSM hat. My favorite example (from page 40 of Saad’s book) is the study that asked women to rate the pleasantness of the smell of T-shirts worn by men. The study found that women who were in their periods of maximum fertility could somehow detect the symmetry of those men by smell alone– fertile women judged that the T-shirts worn by symmetrical men were more pleasant than those worn by non-symmetrical men. What does SSSM do with a study like this? It tucks it away as something curious, but fails to offer any all-encompassing biologically based framework. SSSM often misses the boat where evolutionary psychology sets sail.
Evolutionary psychology thus appears to be a fruitful approach for examining the female use of high heel shoes, given that evolutionary psychology has often provided “ultimate explanations for universal, persistent, and seemingly unshakable sex differences in mating behavior.” (Page 9) Many universal “cultural” traits can be meaningfully anchored in terms of curious Darwinian “modules,” including survival, reproduction, kin selection and reciprocation. (Page 15). Despite the many successes of evolutionary psychology, most social scientists still adhere to “the foundational tenets of SSSM with its exclusive focus on culture, learning, socialization, domain-general mental mechanisms, and proximate issues.”
Why look at the decision to wear high heels shoes through the lens of evolutionary psychology? Because “a great majority of our consumption choices are manifestations of our innate human nature, which has been shaped by a long evolutionary process. Accordingly, evolutionary theory can enrich our discipline by proposing different ways for tackling existing phenomena and/or identifying novel research streams that might have been difficult to isolate without the appropriate evolutionary lens.
Saad is not arguing that evolutionary psychology should replace SSSM but, rather, evolutionary psychology can and should be consulted to complement existing research traditions. Combining these methodologies into a multi-perspectival approach gives us a better all-around explanation. (Page 17). It’s not that evolutionary psychology has all the answers. It’s getting clearer, however, that evolutionary psychology can often offer fruitful approaches to many problems to which SSSM merely shrugs. This is particularly clear in the issues raised by consumer behavior, the topic of Saad’s fine book as well as writings of Geoffrey Miller.
What would evolutionary psychology offer to the question of why women would wear dangerous shoes? The hovers about the life-and-death struggle over mate selection (whether or not a woman believes she is interested in having offspring). Just like the growth of the peacock’s tail, the choice to wear high heel shoes is a dangerous thing to do in one sense (it can lead to a broken neck at the bottom of a stairwell or a slower bird who is nabbed by a predator) whereas it is often enough an effective strategy for attracting a mate who is impressed with the display of physical prowess (whether that prowess is balancing on those little stilts or hauling around all of lots of long feathers).
It’s not that wearing high heel shoes automatically improves one’s chances for finding a high quality mate. It might do the opposite. How’s that?
The mechanics of sexual selection (Darwin’s other theory of evolution) bring us full circle to my comment at the beginning of this post; my gut reaction to the thought of women wearing high heeled shoes is that those crazy shoes cause women to look clumsy, contriving or even desperate. Perhaps I have this general reaction because so many of the women who wear high heel shoes are not sufficiently physically coordinated to take advantage of them. Wearing high heeled shoes rather than flat shoes is a lot like choosing to run a high-hurdle race instead of a race without hurdles. Wearing high heel shoes is putting on a more dicey display. It is taking a chance that one is sufficiently physically gifted (or practiced) to make the wearing of such issues look easy. Men who find high heel shoes to be sexy accept the wearing of such shoes as a filter to separate women who are physically gifted from those who aren’t. Those men are placing their bets that women who look comfortable wearing those crazy shoes will be better mates that will be more capable of producing and raising their offspring.
Many women are made to look foolish when trying to balance on those tiny heels, thereby diminishing their chances of finding a mate. They would have been better off not wearing high heels, at least leaving potential mates wondering whether they could have looked physically impressive had they worn them. It reminds me of Ben Franklin’s famous quote: It is better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”
What about those women who make it look easy to do high-heeled acrobatics? Successfully wearing such shoes can serve as a truly noteworthy display of Darwinian fitness in the eyes of most men (maybe even me). Wearing high heels is the podiatric version of the peacock’s tail. The choice to wear high heels shoes is the decision to attempt a difficult maneuver with the hope that one will stand out in a good sense (rather than draw the pity of people like me). To wear high heels shoes proficiently is to put on a display of physical fitness that is not easily matched by most other women. To wear high heels shoes well is essentially to perform the equivalent of a circus act-to walk on miniature stilts all day long at the office. To wear such strange shoes as though it’s not a big deal is to get a “leg up” on the biggest life-and-death issue that any animal ever faces: the quest to transport one’s genetic essence into the next generation.
The battle is not necessarily over for women who master high heeled shoes. Well, for some men, maybe it is over—for some men, the finessed use of high heels might serve as a token for a high level of general health.
For many of us men, however, life is not a one-sport display. It is akin to a decathlon; there are many events to consider. People like me need to see much more than the ability to balance on high heels. I, for one, am more impressed with other types of physical displays. There are many candidates, such as lack of fatigue, alert eyes, good hair texture, or the ability to participate in sports. Other men look to other types of displays for “sexiness,” such as a woman’s ability to run a company, play classical music on a cello or talk philosophy. Whatever form “sexiness” takes, however, evolutionary psychology digs deep for ultimate explanations—it seeks to anchor phenomena deeply into the only place that ever really could matter: into human biology.
April 22nd, 2007 at 11:27 am
Evolutionary psychology certainly plays a role in a woman’s choice of high heels, makeup, haircut, and the like. But it seems that social norms also perpetuate such grooming behaviors. Take your high heel example, for instance. The next time you find yourself in a shoe store, look at women’s dress shoes. They all have heels, though in varying height. Social expectations have dictated that for a woman to look “dressed up”, she must wear high heel shoes, so women don’t necessarily choose against their best interests to get their feet up on stilts.
The same thing applies for most grooming habits, like wearing makeup and shaving one’s legs. If a woman should choose not to adhere, they face social marginilization, as well as potential mates finding them less attractive. The concept of social norms and the way they become reinforced obviously gells with evolutionary psychology, even when sheer self-preservation fails to account for self-destructive behavior such as high heels or excessive tanning. Social animals such as humans need group acceptance to thrive, even at the cost of one’s ankles.
April 22nd, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Ahhh, but evolutionary psychology has everything to do with social norms. Where do you think those norms come from after all?
April 22nd, 2007 at 1:10 pm
I think your points are interesting, but ultimately they break down to “people do dumb stuff because they literally just animals.”
If you look at war, for example, it happens because we’re animals. Sex is the same way, and there’s quite a bit of stupidity that surrounds it. Gold chains, open shirts with chest hair, machismo, women feigning stupidity, etc.
Ultimately, we’re just quasi-simple organisms responding to our pre-programmed desires, and female foot health is just another casualty of this fact.
April 22nd, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Erika’s point raises an important distinction. It’s not that an evolutionary psychologist from 4,000 years ago (if there were such a thing) could have predicted that people 4,000 years later would buy lots of high heel shoes. What I am suggestion is that that ancient evolutionary psychologist could have predicted lots of things like high heel shoes—deeply embedded cultural practices that lessened a human animal’s chances of survival but were nonetheless rational choices in that they increased that human animal’s chances of successfully finding a mate that would enable her (or him) to pass on her genes.
This is classic sexual selection theory at work, putting one’s self in immediate danger for the purpose of improving one’s changes of successfully breeding. Many of our strange and wasteful consumptive practices can make sense using this paradigm (where SSSM woefully fails).
Though evolutionary psychology can’t predict the particular form that sexual displays will take, it knows that they will occur. Once a culture locks onto a good methods of displaying fitness (high heel shoes are an excellent example), path dependence keeps the thing going—successful methods that spring from deeply-felt biological needs are often culturally enforced. Regarding high heels, cultures jumped in to say “Hey! Here’s the way that we’ve decided to display fitness! Refuse to play at your own risk.”
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As to Dan’s comment, I didn’t mean to suggest that wearing high heels is senseless. It certainly endangers the individual who wears them, but it is a calculated risk (though not consciously calculated). Like so many things human animals do, the risk/benefit is not conscious. Many of the things we do that are important to survival, just “feel right.” Oftentimes, we are steered by emotions. As Robert Wright wrote in The Moral Animal, emotions are “evolution’s executioners.” But just because many of the important things we do are not carefully examined doesn’t make them stupid. The opposite of thoughtful smart is not necessarily stupid; it might be thoughtless smart. Women who persevere wearing high heels might be more successful in passing on their genes even though they trip down more stairwells in the process.
I was motivated to write this piece because wearers of high heels have become my new poster children for the strongly supported fact that humans can best be understood when they are recognized to be the evolved animals they are. http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=231 The converse is equally important: ignoring biology can lead to a meandering and frameless attempt at self-understanding.
April 22nd, 2007 at 6:19 pm
I sometimes wear high-heels, when I’m home alone. Are you saying that you can now draw conclusions about me from this one behavior of mine?
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Ben: Yes, I can draw some conclusions about you, but those conclusions have nothing to do with evolutionary psychology. Thank goodness you live in the age of Web 2.0, where you can find kindred spirits out there!
Seriously, you’ve got me wondering whether there is any high heel equivalent for men. Do guys intentionally and physically handicap themselves anything near what women do on a daily basis, in order to demonstrate their physical abilities? Men go out and do reckless things to show off periodically, but do we do anything that resembles high heels (I’m looking for something many of us do much of the time)?
A friend of mine once suggested that hard drinking and chain smoking qualified. He argued that these powerfully destructive habits gave men the opportunity to show that they could handicap themselves, yet still survive and compete for the women.
April 22nd, 2007 at 8:33 pm
“Do guys intentionally and physically handicap themselves anything near what women do on a daily basis, in order to demonstrate their physical abilities?”
What about working high-pressure jobs?
April 23rd, 2007 at 7:09 am
Men wear ties, a noose that any attacker can quickly and effectively use. The higher the rank of the man, the better the noose and more effective the knot.
Men wear slick-soled shoes, making flight more difficult. The pricier the shoe, the less practical.
Men wear fancy watches: I see adds for $3,000 to $50,000 watches that are every bit as durable and accurate as their dollar-store cousins, or even $10 look-a-likes. These are just mugger bait.
Men wear long pants in the summertime. Nothing says surplus virility more than confidence that ones overheated gonads could still function. Air conditioning that requires female coworkers to use kilowatt space heaters in August have taken the importance of this one down a peg.
If I were using this response to define men, then I must be a woman.
April 23rd, 2007 at 7:27 am
A visitor to this blog asked me to invite women who wear high heels to share their reasons for doing so. OK. Here’s my official invitation to female readers: Why do you wear high heels?
April 23rd, 2007 at 7:33 am
Dan: These are intriguing examples. I am a lawyer who often goes to court, so some of these examples are things I do (though I wear shoes that give traction and my watch cost only $20). But, yes, the tie. It’s uncomfortable, certainly in the summer. And many lawyers do wear shoes that are slippery. And the pants are too hot too often.
Perhaps these things didn’t occur to me because they are too close to home–invisible to me. These are definitely activities that fall into the handicap principle. See http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=1027 On the other hand, I think of these things as aimed at men and women equally for the purpose of increased social status rather than aimed at the opposite sex.
Then again, I’ve often heard woman tell a male wearing a suit that he looks “sharp.”
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:35 pm
I think cow-orking is considered man’s-laughter. It goes against God-sword.
I would like to stay and chat, but I have an appointment to marry Juana.
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:55 pm
I’ll bite. I don’t wear high heels much. But I do when I dress up, because when I wear comfy shoes - I have lots of them - I clomp along like a horse. I’m not much in the grace dept., and comfortable high heels (yes, there are such things) force me to walk more gracefully.
I’m sure what I consider graceful means that evolutionarily psycologically, I’m trying to look hot for the boys. I guess that’s it. More feminine is the equivalent of that, right?
But when someone feels attractive, whatever she wears to do so, is that such a bad thing? I like feeling attractive every now and again.
I totally understand your aversion to high heels, and I cannot imagine wearing them regularly - I wouldn’t, I couldn’t. But sometimes, my dear Erich, you need to relax and stop thinking so much . . . .
But I love ya!
April 24th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Walking in high heels is so incredibly unnatural that there are sites dedicated to teaching woman (and Ben!) how to walk in high heels. “How to Walk in High Heels” gives this advice:
The above site also includes “tips and warnings.” There are other high heel sites such as this one and this one, which features a how-to video.
Yet another site gives this advice: “Think “supermodel.” As you walk, hold your chin up high and swing your arms for balance.”
Here’s my own advice to aspiring wearers of high heels: “Hey y’all! You don’t need to do such things to try to impress me. Really. Instead, put on your sneakers and take regular walks, or read a good book or learn to play a musical instrument.”
April 25th, 2007 at 6:27 am
Someone ought to point out that high heels have not always been used exclusively by women, nor even for the same reason. Seventeenth and early eighteenth fashion for MEN dictated high heels (albeit not quite as ridiculously high as some stilettos) and for the same reason, since it was de rigeur for women to be covered practically neck to heel. It was the MEN who showed a “fine calf” and you can, if you dig, find references to it. It was still a fashion statement. The fact is, the high heel accentuates the lines of the calf and, on some women, has an admittedly pleasant effect. Nothing that a regimen of running and/or weight training wouldn’t accomplish over time, but then how many men will bother with exercise when a well-cut suit will hide the unpleasant lines and artificially broaded the shoulders?
April 25th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Jason - thanks for pointing that out. I do admire a well-turned male leg in silk stockings.
Up until the 19th century, wealthy men and women both adorned themselves with lace, jewels, curled wigs, colorful fabrics, and high heels. The industrial revolution ushered in drab utilitarian clothing for men, with women’s fashions the main venue for conspicuous consumption. Men were the agents of action in the sphere of work outside the home, women the passive “angels in the home” who were the objects of men’s agency. I think a woman in high heels is partly playing on that paradigm, advertising “I’ m purely decorative, collect me!”
The problem I have with a lot of the evolutionary psychology that I have read, is that many of the conclusions are several removes from any sort of hard data.
April 25th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Sexual selection, more thoroughly understood, means that behaviors which display our attractiveness or genetic fitness will be selected for. The organism — the girl looking at the fashion magazine — doesn’t need to know she’s angling to maximize her ability to get higher quality genes for her children. She doesn’t have any such awareness or intention. She just needs to enjoy those behaviors that DO display her fitness. THAT is what gets selected for: the enjoyment that drives the behavior.
So the enjoyment of the behavior doesn’t even need to be as direct as “enjoying displaying my fitness”. It’s more an immediate enjoyment of paying attention to what the social sphere is paying attention to, and gaming that attention.
As a man, I quite intensely enjoy rock climbing, on-the-edge downhill skiing, parkour, gymnastics, etc. When I started out as a child I wasn’t calculating how to maximize my reproductive attractiveness. I just liked doing crazy stuff — it is intensely and undeniably fascinating, fun, compelling.
And I’m quite with you, aesthetically. I can’t stand “for display purposes only” women. Nothing is less attractive than excessive make-up, perfume, and tottering around in impractical clothes.
But let’s get the causation right. What gets selected is an orientation to enjoy emulating what gets attention, and nothing more than this. The common wisdom of marketing: women like looking at women’s bodies, and men like looking at women’s bodies, is so relevant.
April 25th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Kirez: Right on and perfectly said. I didn’t mean to insinuate that sexual selection works through a conscious decision to display. As you succinctly stated, sexual selection is driven along by what people LIKE to do and choose to do, regardless of their conscious motivations and intentions.
April 26th, 2007 at 2:56 am
“Here’s my own advice to aspiring wearers of high heels: ‘Hey y’all! You don’t need to do such things to try to impress me. Really. Instead, put on your sneakers and take regular walks, or read a good book or learn to play a musical instrument.’”
Evolutionary psychology would probably say, feminine women (young and fertile) want masculine men (power and money). You don’t look as if power and money are such important values to you.
But Erich, before you give advice to the innocents, reconsider - maybe you’re not the target group of these women.
April 26th, 2007 at 11:07 am
Presentation, first impression, sets the script for what others expect of a person. A person in a lab coat or a suit has more authority than one in overalls, and the average person will expect different mannerisms, level of intelligence, and manner of speaking from the former than from the latter. Even those of us that seem to favor sheerly sensible attire probably have dress expectations to an extent- for example, even more comfortable than regular clothing, we could all walk around in t-shirts and sweatpants. Yet, even though that might make more objective sense, we still probably all judge people who dress in that way as sloppy or lazy. We have trouble getting around that engrained social expectation.
Women who doll-up with makeup, high heels, impractical clothing, and a fake tan (which probably outdoes heels as a poor evolutionary choice) sends the clear message: look at me, but expect nothing intellectual of me. First and foremost, see me as a trophy or a sex object. Yet moderation of all of those elements sends the message: take me as well-groomed and serious about my appearance; like me. A lot of women obviously have trouble straddling that line.
April 26th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Status symbols are funny things. Erika mentioned fake tans. Curiously, a suntan is considered a status symbol only in First World countries, where a tan is considered a sign of leisure, especially in the winter, because most people work indoors. Conversely, in Third World countries, a suntan means you are a peasant who works outdoors, and pale skin is considered a status symbol of someone who has a (relatively) high-paying office job.
So far, though, I think Vicki has provided the best one-liner: “I’ m purely decorative, collect me!” I’m still laughing about that one. It reminds me of when I used to race sailboats: some skippers would choose crew that were good, while others would choose crew that were good looking; i.e., women who looked nice in bikinis, but couldn’t necessarily sail. We referred to the latter people as “deck furniture.”
April 27th, 2007 at 6:32 am
It’s easy to poke fun at people who overdo conspicuous fashion presentation, but let’s face it–everything eventually becomes a fashion statement. A very good friend of mine–a lesbian–long ago switched from wearing flannel shirts, jeans, and brogues because it had simply become a uniform, something by which not only could the dykes be identified but also a way of parading the degree of their gender politics–so she went straight to what is known as “lipstick les” and started wearing couture dresses, spike heels, etc.
Aesthetics is an indulgence. Some people like the effect. This is no reflection on their intelligence. We go to great lengths among our liberal selves to avoid judging anyone because they don’t “appear” in the mainstream, either because they lack education, money, a certain amount of intelligence, or opportunity, but we seem willing to bash the blond who can show off by implying a different sort of lack of intelligence.
Back when there was a Playboy Club in St. Louis, I was a member. I knew some of the bunnies. One was working on her PhD, two were in Masters programs. None of them were “dumb blonds” by any stretch of the imagination, but needless to say those who disliked the idea of Playboy found all manner of reason to demean them as frivolous women who couldn’t “make it” any other way.
Uniforms are terrible things, but so is condemning the uniform uniformly.
April 27th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Erich, I still don’t think you’ve made a good case that evolutionary psychology provides a better explanation for high heels than a standard social science model. If your evolutionary psych model can’t make predictions about what forms sexual display will take in popular fashions, how is it more useful than a cultural evolution model? A cultural/historical model would predict for example, that women’s legs will be prominently displayed in historical periods when traditional social mores are being cast off - the Romantic era of the early 1800’s (sheer muslin dresses with unstiffened petticoats), the 1920’s, and the 1960’s, The hourglass shape with full skirt is more popular in times when cultural conservatism holds sway - Victorian era, 1950’s, etc.
Of course, fashion trends today are all over the place - there are lots of subculture fashions. The dominant trend today is for adults to dress in play clothes, according to one analysis I read a few years ago - adults in romper suits typifying the infantilization of the modern consumer.
April 29th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Vicki: I didn’t argue that one can achieve a full understanding of consumer choices by considering only evolutionary psychology. A full understanding requires both proximate and ultimate explanations; a full understanding thus requires many of the things considered by the SSSM model. Both biology and culture evolve, though cultural evolution (through memes) is proceeding at a dizzying pace. On the other hand, cultural evolution is itself is necessarily and forever anchored to biological evolution. That is the reason that any allegedly comprehensive explanation of consumer behavior that lacks reference to biology is suspect.
What evolutionary psychology adds to the conversation is not that particular expressions of consumer conduct are predictable (biology didn’t predict and can’t predict such things as the current popularity of “adults in romper suits”). Rather, evolutionary psychology serves to remind us of the function that these behaviors serve is predictable, as well as drawing connections between particular choices and deeply rooted biological needs.
I don’t deny that useful and entertaining explanations regarding much particular consumer behavior are path dependent on prior consumer behavior. For those seeking full explanations, there is most definitely an interplay between culture and biology. Saad argues (p. 94) that biology should be seen as the foundation on which particular consumer choices make any overall sense:
To oversimplify, isn’t it a more satisfying answer to inject the stabilizing theories of Darwin and Zahavi into the equation rather than to simply trace the history of consumer spending from trend to trend?
May 28th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
I wear heels every day, and have no problems. I like how they look. The author of this article has his opinion, but the other 97% of the male population like how heels look.
Everyone is over-complicating this. It’s quite simple– they look good to a majority of people. No need to go into the psychological breakdown of societal norms of working women, consumer behavior, evolution, or any other nonsense. Really.
If you’re simpleton enough to believe that women who dress up, wear “impractical” clothing, are any less intelligent that those who dress frumpy, you’re greatly mistaken. On the contrary, an intelligent women will make use of all her resources. Why not?
May 28th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Jessica: I know that many women (including you) “like to wear high heels.” What I am attempting is the discern why people like to wear them, given the many documented drawbacks. Similarly, many men might say “I just prefer women to wear them.” I’m exploring why men might have this preference.
You’ve suggested that my questions are not legitimate. I disagree. Your “answer” amounts to “just because.” In my opinion, the Darwinian approach is richly explanatory.
May 28th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
But intentionally or not, Jessica brings up another point (which Jason Rayl also mentioned): despite their harm, many intelligent, typically very thoughtful people opt to wear high heels (or get fake tans, or wear impractical suits, or whatever). When this occurs, do these otherwise very bright people fail to see the social and evolutionary factors at work and think they’ve chosen heels “just because” they like them? I think many people consciously choose otherwise senseless ascetics because they know it reflects well on them in everyone else’s mind. I know of plenty of women that wear high heels in a professional/formal setting only because they think people would see them as sloppy (or “frumpy” as Jessica puts it) otherwise. But this factor just amounts to the majority enforcing an expected social norm (by, say, gossiping about or ridiculing the “frumpy” woman who wears flats).
May 28th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Oh, and another tidbit that just occured to me: sexual selection cannot account for the popularity of Ugg boots or galoshes, both of which have become recently popular trends. Despite their popularity, the things look clunky and far from graceful, and certainly do not make a woman more sexually attractive. But in terms of dealing with snow and rain, they seem pretty practical. So what makes them so popular- the sheer substance of them as practical footwear, or the socially-promoted “trendiness” of them? Do women wear them because they keep their feet toasty and dry, or because many celebrities wear them?
May 29th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Around here, Uggs are a surfer thing. That water’s cold, so you need warm fuzzy footgear when you get out. Surfers are cool, so wear Uggs to be like a surfer?
I wonder how EP explains why Chinese men found bound feet incredibly sexy for 1,000 years?
May 29th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Vicki: EP would suggest that bound feet increase paternity certainty. The deformity keeps women from straying much beyond the family home. I never really thought of it being sexy, even from the perspective of a Chinese man whose wife’s feet were bound. I looked this up on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding) which suggests that the deformed feet themselves were not generally seen to be erotic.
May 30th, 2007 at 7:11 am
The wikipedia article is sort of equivocal on whether bound feet themselves were seen as erotic or not. My info came from an NPR report:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8966942
Do you know of a good summary of the actual research (like experiments with data) that’s been done from an EP perspective, as opposed to just working backwards from observed modern phenomena and speculating on their evolutionary origins?
May 31st, 2007 at 2:28 pm
you got t be crazy Eric.. women in high heels are just so incredible good looking. Looking at the amercain pin ups, and high heels are so great.
Some in bare foot or flat shoes are good looking as well, but there a lot that are not (short legs, etc.)..I aggree with Jessica where she says we like it, let’s leave like that and not to find the reason or diminish women who wear high heels. Even though I don’t think that is that much non sense to find out why we like women in high heels. But I just love it, and want to stay there…and ‘m starting to like women in flat shoes or bare foot as well…
Nelson
June 1st, 2007 at 6:59 pm
I guess it depends on the individual, as always. There are people (majority, probably) who seem to have no sense of individuality. These people will wear what ever is “in”, and don’t appear to have any opinion on whether it looks good or not. I find people who blindly follow “fashion” or “trends” enigmatic; I honestly can’t understand what would compel someone to strive to look like everyone else.
I’ve developed my own sense of style over the years, despite what the ‘fashion experts’ decide what everyone likes. The 80s meant a lot to me, the 90s were the ultimate fashion depression, and the 2000s are finally recovering from the 90s. But that’s just my opinion.
So, the majority (described above) probably lend themselves to Erich’s theory; they’re not aware of what they like or dislike, and rely on everyone else to decide.
It’s depressing, yes.
June 10th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
High heels make legs shapely, so every man love women in high heels. There are men who love to wear high heels.
Lolla
July 14th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Mid-way down the thread there was a quick discussion about behaviors men do to handicap themselves and still succeed, equivalent to women. Men don’t have the extremes that women do because it’s not what is being desired by their opposite sex. Research has found men rate “attractiveness” as the most important factor in determining the appeal of the opposite gender, while women rated “commitment” as the most important factor. Think about it, men have millions of sperm, women have a limited number of eggs. Pregnancy and child rearing is long and arduous, so women base more on longevity and security.
This leads women to seek other things from a mate than their hair color and proportions. Women are looking for food, safety and protection. In Western culture having a nice car, expensive cuff links, etc is now a signal of security for women. Therefore, men don’t have as many seemingly ridiculous ways to make themselves more physically attractive, they need to find ways to seem more secure and stable.
July 14th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Erin, the women in my life have just wanted my body, not the one I have now but, the one I had then.
July 14th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Then why do women RARELY pick the nice/smart guy? Instead they go for the loud annoying belligerent guy.
This question has confused and annoyed nice guys for years…
July 14th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Joseph: Loud and belligerent guys are displaying traits that could have made them successful in less civilized times. It’s not like women who pick louts are being totally irrational. Loud and belligerent guys are sometimes pack leaders who control resouces. In many modern settings, though, they get left behind by others who are more social and intelligent.
July 15th, 2007 at 8:41 am
Oh, interesting point! Back in tribal times there was a lot more on the line. Approaching other tribes could have been a death wish. The one who hangs back may survive, but rarely gets the resources. A man who can successfully navigate another tribe and threatening situations must have been quite the survivor - and provider. Possibly the best way to survive such situations was to be so over-the-top that the other tribe doesn’t want to mess with you.
July 15th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Off-topic, (though the topic IS interesting) but this tweaks my hackles:
“they often trip on small sidewalk imperfections, and they regularly fall and get hurt”
I suspect you mean “frequently” rather than “regularly”.
If you DO mean “frequently”, do they fall every 27 minutes, or every Wednesday afternoon, or what?
July 20th, 2007 at 5:55 am
Guys who don’t like heels on women must mix in different circles to me, but then I don’t generally sit in front of a computer screen answering blogs.
When I and my work colleagues (I’m a University Senior Lecturer in Business Studies in the UK) are engaged in conversation, the conversation starts to falter at the approaching sound of high-heels and all the guys who are not talking start to look around whilst the one talking starts losing the thread and repeating himself!
Men of my acquaintance notice heels; we can’t help it, -the noise making devices demand attention with their “hey guys, -get a load of me” message of the wearer.
I don’t buy the idea that the majority of guys like women vulnerable and hobbled and in pain idea either, - real men don’t need a woman to be helpless in order to bolster their masculine ego! When I was working in the City (London’s Wall Street) we didn’t call the successful “get ahead at any price” women “Spike Heeled Power Bitches” because they were vulnerable! It was out of RESPECT. Men respect power not weakness! The stiletto heel in particular may have been originally designed to look “dainty” and therefore suggest that the woman was light and fragile too, but it soon proved itself a destroyer of man made objects such as lawns, parquet floors, linoleum, tarmac pavements, ship decks, and even 50’s aluminium aeroplane floors; not so dainty then!
It’s like the whole platform sole thing, these shoes with a decent height heel can raise a woman by 6 or 7 inches to tower over many men. They also almost seem to be designed to kick people and in the late 90’s were reportedly used in muggings for pocket money as well as groin kicking for ‘fun’ of boys by girl gangs in some British schools.
Stiletto heel shoes or boots teamed with long sharp pointed toes appear to make a woman more dangerous not more vulnerable, - its the male gonads that are vulnerable! All this adds sexual spice as the woman appears predatory and looks like she can give as good as she gets. This for me is far more appealing, who wants to make it with a pushover and a shrinking violet?
Apart from the posture, gait and silhouette altering effect of high-heels, because of association with the sort of women who wear them, they have become sexual metaphors in their own right; the heel and the arch are even symbolic of both genders’ sexual organs.
For me the more dangerous a woman’s shoes look, the better I like them.
My wife who is also lecturer in IT and has an MSc and an IQ of 145, has worn heels all of her life and does so every day. Also, the female academics at my university who rise up the management tree, deans, assistant deans and pro-vice chancellors, also wear heels. All this seems to make a mockery of your assertion that the height of the heel is inversely proportional to the IQ of the wearer. I suggest that you do some further research into the psycho-sexual significance of high-heels before writing on this subject instead of using an emotionally centred personal opinion informed by a narrow circle of friends and acquaintances. You could start with perhaps the most powerful woman in the World, - Dr. Condoleeza Rice!
July 20th, 2007 at 7:09 am
Mike: You’ve missed the entire point of the post. It’s not that women wear high heels because they are vulnerable or weak or stupid. The challenge of walking in high heels well is an opportunity for women to display their exceptional physical abilities. It is that display (only when they walk smoothly and with confidence in those high heels) that compels men’s attention and sexual interest.
My post never suggested that women who wear high heels are actually less intelligent. That has been my “gut feeling” based on many of the media presentations of the types of women who wear heels. I’d be interested in seeing research on that issue, however. It might show no correlation at all. Your anecdotal stories about your wife and some women in academia are counter-balanced by other anecdotes regarding the types of women who enter beauty pageants.
Condoleeza Rice?? Are you trying to prove that woman who wear heels are obsequious, disingenuous, and amoral?
July 20th, 2007 at 7:37 am
Doctrinaire sexual politics aside, this isa really an aesthetic issue, and as such falls in the category of “different strokes for different folks.” Aesthetic pose and response stems from many different sources, but in the end, once established, it becomes almost entirely a question of taste and beyond logical analysis….or dispute, for that matter.
July 20th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Mike makes some very good points - dominatrixes usually wear high heels for instance.
I guess long nails have a similar function - they can look threatening, but are actually incapacitating for most activities.
July 21st, 2007 at 11:22 pm
Spices are a good phenomenon to examine from both the proximate and ultimate perspectives. Why do people use spices? It depends on what you want to know. Paul Sherman, a professor of neurobiology and behavior, has studied spices from an ultimate perspective. Here is an excerpt from an article discussing his findings:
July 22nd, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Erich,
I was discussing POWER not ETHICS.
Not that it matters when discussing “power”, but from your political standpoint it may be that you perceive Ms. Rice is those things, I on the other hand do not and have much respect for the lady, - as I did for Margaret Thatcher (although I did not always agree with her politics). However, I am forever a Utilitarian whilst you I suspect are of a rather stricter Kantian ethical persuasion. As an American (USA) you are also more likely to be influenced by your particular American ‘brands’ of the many factions of the Christian Religion. Whilst for me as a ‘Brit’, coming from a country that is shockingly secular and godless by your US standards, religion is a quaint archaic custom with a few interesting philosophical truths (do unto others etc.) that are good general maxims to try to live by but is generally anachronistic where issues such as gender and sex are concerned.
This may very well account for a difference in perception on the original subject of this ‘blog’ on our separate sides of ‘the pond’. Certainly on trips to the ‘States’ over the years, I have noticed that in the Midwest of the USA in particular, women who wear clothing and shoes that are sexually attractive are more likely to be spoken of as a “slut” or “hooker” than is the case on either the Eastern or Western seaboards of your nation and certainly more so than in Europe or the UK, where such attire is quite the norm rather than the exception.
Your still predominant Anglo-Saxon-Celtic culture and language may have originated in these small islands, but we have, albeit only slightly, developed differently over the years.
August 7th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
“The media tells girls that math/science lovers are nerdy white males with pocket protectors, etc, and that girls ought to focus on looking like the women they see in magazines.”
“What I’m tired of is having people being so down on things like “accessorizing/cheerleading/having the lead in the school musical,” as if these are inherently bad things, or done by people who are too intellectually incompetent to be pursuing loftier hobbies.”
“Sure, some girls may turn away from math because it’s not “feminine” or because they’ll feel they need to “dumb themselves down” to get a boyfriend (topics Danica addresses in the book). But what about the step before that–*why* should girls care about being “feminine” or getting a boyfriend anyway? Obviously, the book doesn’t even try to tackle any of that, and some commenters have suggested that (as I asked Danica), she’s simply reinforcing stereotypes rather than empowering girls.”
http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2007/07/followup_on_math_doesnt_suck_d.php#more
http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2007/07/interview_with_math_whiz_autho.php
August 9th, 2007 at 11:08 am
“The media tells girls that math/science lovers are nerdy white males with pocket protectors, etc,”
Let’s be honest, it’s not exactly a lie either… coming from a girl who once asked the supervisor of her biotechnology class out.
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:00 pm
An illustration of the danger of wearing high heels. Click here.
September 23rd, 2007 at 9:38 am
I may not be able to express this very well, so I hope you will bear with me and not claim to have scored petty points if I need to re-phrase my question.
Erin said: Therefore, men don’t have as many seemingly ridiculous ways to make themselves more physically attractive, they need to find ways to seem more secure and stable.
This was Erin explaining why men don’t have such outlandish behaviours as wearing high heels. She is saying that guys are trying to send a different kind of message.
This prompted Joseph to ask: Then why do women RARELY pick the nice/smart guy? Instead they go for the loud annoying belligerent guy.
It is the two answers that Joseph got to this question that interest me.
Erich said: Loud and belligerent guys are displaying traits that could have made them successful in less civilized times.
Which is a reference to the fact that 10,000 years ago “loud and belligerent” would have been seen as a sucessful social strategy. But then Erich points out that: In many modern settings, though, they get left behind by others who are more social and intelligent.
The conclusion is that this is no longer a successful social strategy. Which I would think is a good thing.
The other answer Joseph got was from Erin, who said: In tribal times … a man who can successfully navigate another tribe and threatening situations must have been quite the survivor - and provider.
Which is simply her own take on Erich’s “loud and belligerent” response when she is clearly referring to “tribal times.”
So my question is: If this strategy was sucessful once, but is no longer, why is it offered as the answer to Joseph’s question “Why do women do this now?” Surely these are answers to the slightly different question, “Why did women used to do this?”
If being secure and stable is, as Erin suggested, a winning strategy for a modern male, then women should be selecting for that NOW. That women still go for Mr. Loud and Obnoxious, or even for Mr. Punch You strikes me as being totally bizarre. Where is the security and stability in being some one else’s punch bag?
My real point is that evolution is supposed to move inexorably on, and when a new strategy becomes sucessful is it not supposed to be selected for, so that members who employ that strategy come to predominate?
Well it seems to me that Joseph’s question implies that he is not convinced that this newly sucessful strategy of being stable and secure is being selected for. And I agree with him. And I also do not understand why an explanation of a previously sucessful strategy is supposed to answer his question.
You can either have:
1) “Secure and stable” is a sucessful strategy for the modern man, in which case “Loud and belligerent in tribal times” does not answer Joseph’s question.
OR
2) “Secure and stable” is not a sucessful strategy.
but it seems to me that you can’t both have your cake and eat it.
February 4th, 2008 at 11:51 am
A new study on high heels came out.
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/fashion/article3295325.ece
I’m kind of entertained about this article, because I know this article she’s alluding to that connects high heels with schizophrenia. Now Erich has even more reason to hate high heels.
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13-1443_1742951,00.html
I also know the journal where this article was published. Oh, the world is so small.
February 4th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Man, my comment didn’t get accepted… My second try:
So, it seems wearing high heels is not that bad for you:
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/fashion/article3295325.ece
The original article that connects high heels with schizophrenia can be found here.
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13-1443_1742951,00.html
Erich will probably like the study about high heels and schizophrenia more.
I’m also quite amused about this, because I know this journal where the second study was published. Meeting old friends gives me warm fuzzy feelings.
February 4th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
So, it seems wearing high heels is not that bad for you:
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/fashion/article3295325.ece
The original article that connects high heels with schizophrenia can be found here.
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13-1443_1742951,00.html
Erich will probably like the study about high heels and schizophrenia more.
I’m also quite amused about this, because I know this journal where the second study was published. Meeting old friends gives me warm fuzzy feelings.
June 14th, 2008 at 12:17 am
And now, high heels for babies. The article is published by CCFC.
September 7th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
I don’t understand high heels either. I agree with most of what is said about the dangers of them.
BUT…my wife has learned that certain types of high heels are an arousal tool like no other. She never wears them outside of our home…for all the reasons you note. For she and I…it substitutes for Viagra.
She sometimes seduces me by sneaking up on me with stilleto heels on…and asks me if I’d mind if she walked on me. (She points at the shoes…and smiles.)
It is so powerful. Who can understand it?
ChuckB1117@cattle-today.com