I saw this article in my local paper, so I thought I'd share it with my fellow tpfers!
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/19/LVTI14ITL5.DTL
Guide to walking in high heels without pain
Carolyne Zinko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, December 21, 2008
The difference between sultry stilettos and frumpy pumps is three-fourths of an inch, or so says Victor Chu, a former shoe designer who has developed a cottage industry for himself - and perhaps increased the libidos of thousands of men - by training women to walk properly and painlessly in high heels.
Chu says high heels and happy feet are not an oxymoron, if only women hold themselves correctly while walking. Last week, he flew in from New York, bringing his prowess to Azalea boutique on Hayes Street to give free lessons in the art of seductive walking - just in time for holiday parties, when even the most practical among us can be tempted by a sparkly sling-back or metallic mule.
"Unsexy shoes are anything under 2.75 inches," Chu said. "A 2-inch heel is a little dowdy. Too classical."
Plenty of people could benefit from lessons - everyone from the fictional Carrie Bradshaw, who took a famously embarrassing catwalk spill in TV's "Sex and the City" to the real-life runway models for Pucci,
Prada and Dolce & Gabbana who fell during Milan Fashion Week earlier this year, and even Miss U.S.A., Crystal Stewart, who took a tumble at the Miss Universe pageant in July - as did her predecessor in 2007. (The YouTube clip has been viewed nearly 3 million times.)
Despite the potential hazards, stilettos may do wonders for your love life - if you believe the Italian researcher who reported earlier this year that high heels might improve pelvic floor muscles, which are integral to sexual satisfaction. Other researchers say high heels have something to do with the evolution of primates, wiggling derrieres and signaling sexual availability. Of course, podiatrists have been known to advise patients to stay away from them altogether.
Chu may not have walked a mile in another woman's Manolos, but his experience designing sport and dress shoes as a consultant for the Tommy Hilfiger label from 2000 to 2004 gave him a different kind of perspective. He decided he had a calling to share his know-how while chatting with a colleague, Cece Chin, who has her own line called 80 20 shoes. As they sat on a park bench in New York, the conversation turned to wondering why every woman they knew had a problem walking in high heels.
"There's only so much you can do to a shoe's heel to make it comfortable, before you make it unsexy," Chu recalled saying. "Then we said, 'Wait! How do the Rockettes do it?' "
It turned out that a friend of theirs danced for the Rockettes. She told them the key to wearing high heels is in walking mechanics.
Most women incorrectly shuffle their feet, placing their weight on the ball of the foot and throwing their bodies off-balance, Chu learned.
It sounds simple, Chu says, but the three keys to wearing very high heels successfully are:
-- Standing up straight, as if you were pulling a string from the top of your head
-- Keeping your abdominal muscles taut by sucking your belly button in toward your spine, which pulls your body weight back onto your heels
-- Walking heel to toe with a slightly exaggerated hip sway, rather than mincing around on the ball of the foot.
Basically, it comes down to working your core - as Pilates, yoga and plank exercises do. To that end, Chu and Chin developed a video called "Legworks" ($14.95;
www.legworkdvd.com) a 28-minute exercise program to limber and stretch your ankles, calves and thighs, as well as strengthen your abdominal muscles to make it easier to maintain balance and posture while walking in high heels.
eels not needed at gym
That's not to say that it's a good idea to exercise in high heels. Chu recommends against it, even though there are Crunch gyms in New York that began offering "Stiletto Strength" classes in 2006, and other gyms that offer classes in jazz, burlesque and pole dancing to women wearing high heels. Stiletto sprint footraces have even occurred in Australia and New York in recent years.
The ever-increasing heel height, along with the high pitch that pushes the arch forward, is making stiletto strutting trickier than ever. This year's platform trend ameliorated some of the difficulty - a 4-inch shoe is really only a 3-inch heel on a 1-inch platform. (Thank goodness the Bay Area doesn't generally have snow and ice in winter.)
"Swaying," says Chu, "transfers energy from the heel to the hip. A lot of women think they know how to walk in high heels. But they have wobbly ankles and stiff knees from pitching forward, or they have a sort of escalator-like look from leaning backward too much, in overcompensating."
Maybe it was because San Franciscans don't tend to wear ultra-high heels like our cosmopolitan cousins in New York, or perhaps it was because fewer people are out shopping this holiday season, but attendance at the Azalea workshop was light.
Among the handful of women who showed up for a lesson was Nicole Kaufman, 27, a designer for Old Navy, a line that makes lots of fun clothing but is not known for sexy shoes.
Kaufman, who lives in San Francisco, says she has a dozen pairs of heels. She prefers shorter heels and wedges for work, but stilettos for nighttime wear. She got her first pair of high heels in high school and on her first outing, "struggled" with them. "I learned like everyone else to bear the pain and push forward," she said.
Putting on a pair of black leather gladiator pumps in size 9, she glided around the floor while Chu watched.
"She's got a natural hip movement and good posture," he said, comparing her with another attendee who was a bit more reserved and mechanical in her walk.
"Here's an issue I have," Kaufman said. "I have short toes and I feel like I don't have stability in high heels."
Chu recommended more core exercises, along with a special trick recommended in the video - sitting in a chair in bare feet and grabbing a sock or a handkerchief with your toes.
"It strengthens your arches," he said. "It should help."
In February, an Italian study of 66 women younger than 50 by Dr. Maria Cerruto showed that those who wore heels high enough to lift their feet at a 15-degree angle from the ground - at least 2 inches - had as good posture as those who wore flats. The findings suggested that the pelvic muscles were "at an optimum position, which could well improve their strength and ability to contract," according to an article in the Feb. 25 Main Report Health and Wellness Letter.
"The pelvic floor muscles are an essential component of the female body. As well as ... sexual performance and satisfaction, they provide vital support to the pelvic organs, which include the bladder, bowels and uterus."
ole of evolution
A report on "The Evolution of Sex Differences in Language, Sexuality and Visual-Spatial Skills," published in the February 2000 issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior, authored by Dr. Rahn Joseph of the Brain Research Laboratory in San Jose, suggested that as primates' brains evolved and became bigger, women's pelvises had to grow wider to accommodate the increased head size during childbirth. This, in turn, forced her upper legs wider apart and her knees closer, "thus altering her gait and balance, causing her to wiggle her derriere when walking."
"Presumably, this alteration, coupled with the evolution of new muscles to aid in the upright stance, accentuated and drew attention to the female derriere and her sexual availability: a sexual-social signal accentuated in modern women through high heels and tight clothes, in the last century via the bustle and hoop skirts, and in previous centuries via dresses designed to exaggerate grossly the width of the hips."
Is fashion really pushing us into high heels for the sake of trendiness? We might be able to blame our shoe fetishes on biology.
our step-by-step guide to stepping out in stilettos
1 Stand tall, as if pulled by a string from the top of your head
2 Tighten abs by pulling belly button in toward spine, causing weight to shift back to your heels
3 Walk heel to toe, not on ball of foot,
4 Sway hips slightly to help shift weight to heels
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