Friday, September 30, 2005
Stiletto heels are still hands-down favorites for many women.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
They are seldom comfortable. And they can do major damage to women's feet. Yet stiletto heels are still hands-down favorites for many women who love the idea of strutting the streets in sexy shoes.
Allure magazine's informal poll offers evidence. The numbers show 72 percent of women still wear high heels, and 80 percent of the women said their feet hurt. Believe it or not, 88 percent of women buy shoes at least a size too small (say it isn't so). And the average American woman owns 30 pairs of shoes.
That's nothing, of course, compared to the closets-full that Carrie Bradshaw of HBO's "Sex and the City" boasted. In one episode, she realizes she can't buy her apartment because she's spent $40,000 on shoes. But Allure's estimated worth of her footwear collection was $400,000. Don't ask how she was supposed to have done it. The average salary of a New York writer is estimated at $60,000.
Record number
But, of course, she was not as greedy as Marie Antoinette, who owned 500 pairs of shoes, Allure says. And we know what happened to her.
The average shoe size for women in 2004 was 8.5, up more than a tad from the '60s, when it was 6.5. And the cost of a collagen injection in the ball of one foot so a woman can continue to walk on high heels is $500.
But if you think you've got it tough when you are trying to stay upright on sexy high heels, think of Japan's Emperor Hirohito. He stood on 12-inch-high heels for his 1926 coronation.