return to Part A. Foot Training for Highheels
The highheeled woman needs to have a footwear wardrobe which properly supports her carefully trained feet. Her footwear wardrobe must be extensive enough to provide for a wide range of walking activities as well as maintain the arch in her foot. Simply having many highheeled shoes, all of which are typical "dress-up" shoes, is not adequate. The following special purpose highheels meet the requirement of functional variation as well as arch maintenance in a variety of ways. In addition, there is a discussion about highheel shoe design.
Part B. Highheel Shoe Design
1. What Makes a Good Highheeled Shoe?
2. The Arched Slipper
3. The Sandheel
4. The Arched Cowboy Boot
5. The Pseudoshoe
6. The Ultraheel
1. What Makes a Good Highheeled Shoe?
Most highheels are made by manufacturers who are selling a good looking shoe rather than a shoe that works well. For women who wear highheels most of the time this just will not do. They MUST wear shoes that actually work well. Properly built highheels which look good can be found, and sometimes minor additions or corrections can be made to an ordinary highheel to make it work much better.
The other part of the problem is that women for the most part choose shoes which just do not fit well. They tend to look at the size label on the the box more than on how well their feet fit in the shoe. Not only do they usually get shoes too short, the shoes are usually too narrow as well because they don't want to "admit" that they have "big feet". Frankly, it is nearly impossible to endure having the foot compressed and distorted for hours on end in such a shoe. Perhaps in a normal flat shoe poor sizing can be tolerated, but definitely not in a highheel! It is also ironic, but most women do not realize that the higher the heel, the less the length of the shoe matters since the foot is now more vertical and thus appears smaller.
Finally, perhaps the most common error is getting shoes which pinch the toes. Since the entire weight of the body is shifted forward, this results in a great deal of pressure there. Open-toes shoes are very desirable for highheel wear, and greater care must be taken when choosing a closed-toe shoe.
It should also be noted that for wearing highheels, arching the forefoot upward (that is, going across the foot) allows the forefoot to be narrower AND provides better pressure distribution and support. Most commercially bought shoes do not provide this, so additional cushioned arches under the ball of the foot will probably need to be added. The need for this can easily be discerned if pain is felt in the ball of the foot, or if the pressure causes the toes to bunch together painfully. If either of these is felt, then an additional padding needs to be placed under the ball of the foot. It would be good to consult with someone expert in fitting highheel shoes if there is any question concerning proper fit.
Finally, it is important to remember that the size of the foot has an important influence on the size of the shoe. This drawing from Bizarre illustrates the simple dynamics of how raising the heel shortens the base length of the foot along the ground. Notice that if the length from the ball of the foot to the heel is ONLY 6", then there is no way the heel height can approach 6" without either (a) putting a platform under the ball of the foot, or (b) making the shoe longer than 6" towards the end and putting in a "false heel" -- that is, the shoe's heel extends upward beyond the end of the foot's "true" heel in order to gain more height. Both solutions are commonly employed. The platform has the advantage that it can add many inches in height, whereas the smaller increment of the false heel can be done "invisibly".
A normal heel height of 4.75" with a 6" length from ball to heel results in shortening of that portion of the footprint to about 3.33". To raise the heel to 6" would require shortening that portion of the foot print to zero -- which is clearly impossible. Thus, these shoes with the false 6" heel hide a foot which is only raised up the same amount as the shorter heel. The shaded portions of the final shoe indicate "vacant" areas inside the shoe which the foot does not occupy.
From this discussion it is clear that the actual design of the shoe as well as the size of the foot are critical to the final effect of the highheel shoe. For the desired effect it is necessary to select the proper combination of shoe design elements along with the foot's ability to adapt to and wear a high heel.
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2. The Training Slipper
(This is actually another name for a pretty foot trainer which is suitable for lounging or bedwear). The Training Slipper is designed to be worn to bed for the purpose of maintaining the foot's arch during sleep. Maintaining the arch in the foot is analogus to setting deciduous fruit: a certain number of hours below a certain temperature are need for the fruit to set. For a highheeled woman, it is keeping her foot arched for a long enough period every day to maintain her arch. This shoe can be used to hold the foot to a higher arch than is normally worn during the day so that the foot can more easily wear ultraheels.
In design, this is a heelless shoe which has a firm arch and metal stiffeners which hold it to the leg, but otherwise the body is soft. (A heel would catch in the sheets, and its soft body allows it to slide smoothly among sheets and blankets.) It can have ribbons attached to fasten it more tightly to the foot along the sides of the arch. The ribbons make it appear somewhat like a ballet slipper, but the arch gives it a distinct shape which ballet slippers do not have. Walking around is not possible, thus, it is also useful for bondage purposes.
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3. The Sandheel
The Sandheel is a special purpose shoe. Although it can be worn on any normal surface, it is capable of being worn on sand, and so makes it ideal for the beach. A normal highheel has a separate heel which is usually thin, so it sinks down into the sand. A normal platform shoe does not have this problem, but usually the sole is narrower at the back than under the front part of the foot, so the back tends to sink into the sand. The Sandheel solves both of these problems.
In design, the Sandheel (a) keeps the foot at a high angle, and (b) moves the center of balance of the wearer into the middle of the shoe where (c) the sole has been shortened and moved inwards to be a single flat load-bearing surface. Thus, the single sole will sink into the sand while still supporting the high angle and the arch properly.
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4. The Arched Cowboy Boot
The Arched Cowboy Boot is an unusual highheeled shoe in that it serves three distinctly different purposes. First, it serves the foot of the woman by continuing to provide the high arch her foot has been trained to have. Second, it is designed to appear from the outside as an ordinary cowboy boot, camophlaging the fact that the woman's foot is actually resting inside in a highheel position rather than flat above the sole. Third, it serves as a functional boot for walking in somewhat rough terrain which an ordinary highheel or Sandheel shoe could not because of their inappropriate bases. However, even though the Arched Cowboy Boot provides a large flat sole which serves walking in rough terrain better than the others, because of the position of the woman's foot she is not fully capable of safely covering all terrain. In particular, going downhill is more dangerous, and her balance is still somewhat more precarious. Thus, this boot only assists her in covering rough terrain; in a real walking situation she should have the arm of a man to assist in balancing and supporting her.
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5. The Pseudoshoe
The Pseudoshoe is one of the more unusual highheel designs. While the Ultraheel is designed to create the maximum amount of arch in the foot in the shoe, the Pseudoshoe is a shoe designed simply to show extreme heel length in a shoe just for artistic purposes. What this means is that the heel is exceptionally long, and extends so far below the sole that it makes it impossible to stand or walk in these shoes. I have seen pictures of shoes like this with heels of 2 feet or more.
Although the primary purpose of these shoes is artistic display, they can also have other functions as well. With a locking mechanism, these shoes make ideal bondage footwear, since they make walking impossible. They might also be perfect for wearing in suspension, since the heels could rest on the ground and take a small percentage of the weight. Note that they could also have the Ultraheel arch built into them, thus making them suitable for extreme arch training as well.
6. The Ultraheel
The Ultraheel takes the highheel to its extreme in a wearable shoe. The illustration here shows a woman who is fully trained to wear this type of shoe. This shoe is designed to function rather like a ballet toe shoe in having the foot in a nearly vertical position with an extreme arch to the foot. This gives the shoe the highest heel possible in a wearable shoe without a platform sole. Note the difference between this type of shoe and the following one which uses shoe construction tricks (as discussed in the first section above) to create a higher heel.
The Ultraheel shoe definitely takes some training time to be wearable. First, time must be spent simply getting the foot accustomed to the arch. Second, standing in them puts extra stress on parts of the foot not normally stressed, and endurance must be gained through many practice sessions of short duration. Third, because balance is indeed precarious, wearing them safely requires constant attention to balance. Below are pictures showing various ultraheel designs.
This design is slightly like a Pseudoshoe because the heel is an inch or so too long, thus requiring the girl to hang on to something while standing...
The following design is an ultraheel miniboot (which has greater ankle support)...
Here is a full length boot in an ultraheel design...
Also, since some might doubt that these shoes are actually "wearable", the last picture is of a girl in ultraheels who was photographed while walking up stairs. (And I should also add that her choice of skirt and hose is very fetching, too!)
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[Copyright © 1998 by Robert G. Benson]
