The Facts: Dangerous High Heels

Sometimes the facts of women’s history provoke searing debate. Did you know that wearing high heels can be dangerous to your health? According to a team of Harvard researchers, wearing high heels is linked to “knee osteoarthritis, a painful, degenerative joint disease characterized by the breakdown of the cartilage surrounding the knee.” Wide high heels are no better: “The researchers decided to look at the chunkier heels now in fashion to determine if they too are harmful to women’s knees. The latest study, which appears in the April 7, 2001, issue of The Lancet, demonstrates that wide heels increase the risk of developing osteoarthritis in the knee as much as, or more than, spindly-heeled stilettos.”
The recent vogue for incredibly high heels worn by the likes of Victoria Beckman makes us wish that she would read the radical feminist Shelia Jeffreys incredibly hard-hitting, sobering critique of dangerous trends in the beauty industry, Beauty and Misogyny Harmful Cultural Practices in the West. Jeffreys argues against the notion that Western cultural practices should be exempt from the United Nations’ condemnation of “harmful traditional practices” outside of Western Europe, America, Australia, and other so called “developed” nations. Jeffreys says that “[..] Western beauty practices from makeup to labiaplasty (and much, much more…her book is exhaustive) do fit the criteria [for harmful practices against women’s health] and should be included in UN understandings.” How can contemporary feminists who revel in practices of adornment, or who view make-up, high heels, and other practices as empowering or erotic reconcile their tastes with the studies that note how dangerous to women’s health such effects as high heels are?
Sometimes the facts of women’s history are subject to great debate and soul-searching.