History of High Heels

In the novella, “The House on Mango Street,” by Sandra Cisneros, the symbol of shoes represents how attractive you are and how you are portrayed by society. For example, “It’s Rachel who learns to walk the best all strutted in those magic high heels. She teaches us to cross and uncross our legs, and to run like a double dutch rope, and how to walk down to the corner so that the shoes talk back to you.” (pg. 40). This quote shows how Esperanza and her friends want to act very mature and lady like, and how the shoes play a huge role in this.

Some early evidence for it comes from the tomb of Lady Huang Sheng, the wife of an imperial clansman, who died in 1243. Archaeologists discovered tiny, misshapen feet that had been wrapped in gauze and placed inside specially shaped “lotus shoes.” For one of my pieces on camera, I balanced a pair of embroidered doll shoes in the palm of my hand, as I talked about Lady Huang and the origins of foot-binding. When it was over, I turned to the museum curator who had given me the shoes and made some comment about the silliness of using toy shoes.

In the latter part of the Victorian era there were significant developments signaling the decline of the corset. The way garments were produced is perhaps the key factor in the move away from the corset. In 1839, a Frenchman by the name of Jean Werly patented a loom for the production of women 's corsets. This type of corset was popular until 1890, when machine-made corsets gained popularity. The development of the sewing machine in the early 1850’s gradually led to mass production, manufacturers could produce corsets in far greater numbers and increase the variety of designs available to women of all classes. These advances finally led the way to new designs in underwear in keeping with the changes to the fashions and silhouettes of the early Twentieth Century.

World War II started which transitioned to a short supply in raw material. By 1943 all woman were almost forced to work since their husbands were at battle. Woman wore what was already in there wardrobe because of how busy they were and how most stores were closed

Cothurnus – high thick-soled boots worn

The first few times you see shoes mentioned is irrelevant, but once you get to the chapter “The Family of Little Feet,” shoes begin to take on a meaning. A woman came up to Esperanza and her friends Rachel and Lucy, offering a bag of shoes which were said to be “one pair of lemon shoes and one red and one pair of dancing shoes that used to be white but were now pale blue” (40). The girls were excited by the shoes, made clear by the line “Hurray! Today we are Cinderella because our feet fit exactly” (40). They even go as far to describe them as “magic high heels” (40) while they were learning to walk in them. Soon, however, this innocence and joy get tainted once the girls go walking in the shoes, first having Mr. Benny, the grocer, say, “Them are dangerous. You girls too young to be wearing shoes like that” (41). But this didn’t faze the girls, and they continued walking. They enjoyed the attention they were getting, Esperanza even saying, “these are the best shoes. We will never go back to wearing the other

In the Victorian era, corsets became longer and became not only about supporting and lifting the breast, but creating a tiny hourglass waist. ‘Women were so tightly corseted that they could not bend over’ but to add to the strain ‘the corset was hung with an extraordinary amount of gear, a combined system of garters and suspenders.’

Hemlines rose from mid-calf to all the way to the knee and higher. “Hemlines went up and down like the stock market.” Suzanne Lenglenat and other celebrities wore dresses above the knees and headbands. “ Women copied this style with defiance of lawmakers’ definition of decency.

By the 1780s, a glimpse of delicate thread stockings held in place with ribbon-like garters, could be seen beneath ankle length skirts that were surprisingly entirely

With the return of Confucian ideals, and the rise of literati scholars, women began to dress differently. They would use clothing, hair and makeup to draw attention to the differences between genders, often attributed to the fact that literati scholars had a more feminine appearance. This attempt to differentiate genders was taken to the extreme with the introduction of footbinding. This practice created the idea that a woman with small feet was delicate, diminutive and beautiful, which followed the already pre-set notion that beauty was in part because of demureness and attentiveness (s.t.g. 38-41). Not only that, but by changing a woman’s foot, men were able to physically render women different than them, while also making it more difficult (painful) to leave their inner sphere within the home.

Sandals were the shoes of choice for men and women and long hair was

The original idea seems harmless, but as the tradition spread, the process became more gruesome. At the start, all they would do is wrap their feet, but not tighten them daily. Women wanted to make their feet tinier and pointier. They wanted their feet to be more curved and doll-like.

This could be catastrophic to your walking gait, as high heels reshape your feet to counteract the slope heels put your pedal on. High heels shift your center of balance forward. This means less weight is going to be put on the heel of your pedal, and more weight is going to be put on the ball and on the phalanges of your pedal. Your tarsal bones will shift and your arch will change. Consistently wearing high heels can also affect the structure of your legs and lower back. The shift of your weight to the tip of your pedal means that your center of balance shifts forward as well. This leads to numerous problems throughout the inferior portion of the body. A study conducted by Neil Cronin from Griffith University found that women who consistently walk in high heals rely on their muscles, not their tendons, to walk. This finding, coupled with the fact that “optimal muscle-tendon efficiency occurs when the muscle stays approximately the same length while the tendon lengthens”, shows that heels create a less effective walking gait that requires you to expend more energy. High heels put your feet in a constant plantar flexion which means that the Achilles Tendon is always contracted. So, when you do take off your high heels your calf will burn, your knees will ache. This is because the Achilles Tendon is attached to the calf muscle, which in turn connects to the

She is the first woman who completed the entrechat quarter, a move the place that the dancer crosses their legs over four times in mid-air. In addition, Camargo thought the women’s costumes of the time were too heavy and bulky, so she shortened her skirts to be able to move better and wore flat shoes, which also called ballet slippers, rather than heeled shoes, so she could present simple jumps. Only short enough to display her ankles in front of the audience, but the audience was shocked since ankles were considered very private back in those days. Although the audience was shocked, wearing ballet slippers and shorten skirts became the regulation length and new fashion. In the 1800s, dancers started wearing "Romantic Tutus," which is now called the “Classic Tutu.” Those tutus are long, fluffy, lightweight skirts, and they present the foremost effects of spectacles’ masks and clothing. Furthermore, Cotton, flax woven, and silk were mixed into semitransparent gauze; and splendor at court comprehensively presented those luxury ballet costumes. Later, skirts became shorter and stiffer until the skirt stuck straight

Originally, slippers were said to be from the East. Here, slippers were used for comfort and easy accessibility as they were easy to slip on and off. During this time, they would slip this on and off before stepping on expensive Persian carpets. On the other hand, in the West, the earliest date of a slipper being recorded was in the year 1478.