What High Heels Can Teach Us About Evolution
13 May 2013 | Blogs
Written by Helga Groll
High Heels are sexy. This might not come as surprising news to you, but
now it’s also scientifically proven. A team of researchers analysed the way
women walked in high heels and flat shoes. Men as well as women perceived women
wearing high heels as more attractive. In fact, high heels seemed to have an
even stronger impact on female judges. Participants were filmed walking on a
treadmill wearing reflective markers. The evaluators could only see a dotted
outline of a participant, but not the actual person.
Moreover, men and women (again more women than men) incorrectly
classified women as men when they were wearing flat shoes. Also, the higher the
Body Mass Index, the less attractive the walker appeared.
But what is it that makes heels sexy when you can’t even see them?
Apparently, it was the way participants walked. Wearing heels forced women to
walk with shorter and more frequent steps. Wearing heels also changed the
posture of the person. Knees and hips bend less and hips are rotated into an
angle that favours other female assets such as the buttocks and the breasts.
Dr. Paul Morris, Principal Lecturer in Psychology at the University of
Portsmouth and lead author of the study, concluded: “The evidence demonstrates
that at least one factor in making women in heels more attractive is that heels
exaggerate the femininity of the walk”. Interestingly, the heels weren’t even
that high. “We found very strong effects with relatively low heels (6 cm)”, he
adds.
The researchers suggest that heels could act as a sort of “super
releaser”. Super releasers can be found throughout the animal kingdom. They are
an enhanced version of a stimulus, following the principle “the bigger the
better”. Oystercatchers, for example, prefer an “über-sized” egg they can’t
even sit on to their own eggs. In a similar way, high heels could exaggerate
the way women walk, as well as their feminine features.
The researchers, however, stress that our responses to high heels are
not necessarily due to instinct, but rather influenced by culture and fashion.
They could simply act in the same way that we use make up to enhance facial
features, bleach our teeth to appear healthier or enlarge diverse body parts.
Fashion can be very diverse and some trends come and go. Certain trends
in fashion favouring masculinity, such as straight flapper dresses, or female
shoulder pads in the 1980s are short-lived, while other things that could
enhance attractiveness in an “evolutionary sense”, such as high heels, might
always be “en vogue”.
High heels have been around for a long time, and at times, they were
even common among men. In the past, they probably served a more practical
purpose, such as keeping dresses out of the dirt or feet in stirrups. Now, they
mainly serve to make women look and feel sexy. It just remains to be seen if
there is a limit to the length of the heel. Surely, at a certain heel length,
the “sexy sway” will be replaced by some awkward staggering and stumbling, causing
women to resemble more “little Miss Whoops” than “femme fatale”.
