What High Heels Can Teach Us About Evolution

What high heels can teach us about evolution

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”.