
When did men stop wearing high heels? - benbreen
http://qz.com/409254/why-did-men-stop-wearing-high-heels-anyway/
======
Stratoscope
Since we're sharing our high heel stories, here's Truetone Stratoscope from
1972:

[http://www.pbase.com/geary/image/86712900](http://www.pbase.com/geary/image/86712900)

I had a whole collection of hippie outfits back in the day. My mom thought I
was gay, but I just liked colorful clothing. Back then, you were straight or
you were weird - where "straight" meant "didn't do drugs"... I was proud to be
weird!

I got my hippie nickname from the back of an old radio I saw at a garage sale:

    
    
      Equipped with Truetone Stratoscope
         Eliminates aerial and ground
    

[https://www.google.com/search?q=truetone+stratoscope&tbm=isc...](https://www.google.com/search?q=truetone+stratoscope&tbm=isch)

Here's a photo from five years later when I took my mom flying:

[http://www.pbase.com/geary/image/120224799](http://www.pbase.com/geary/image/120224799)

This was more of my disco phase, I suppose. I have _very_ fond memories of the
young lady who made the flying wings necklace for me! :-) And I still had some
kind of eye for color - I didn't notice until a couple of years ago that I'd
totally color-coordinated my clothes with the airplane!

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I don't think there's been a better fashion subculture than the hippies.

~~~
walshemj
I think the Mods and the Zoot Suiters would probably win in the fashion
stakes.

------
Tharkun
Can't say I particularly care about what people wear. But I have an interest
in footwear and how it relates to human location. In short: heels are bad. The
higher they are, the worse. You have a heel in your foot. It's more than
adequate.

Feel free to wear whatever you want, but when it comes to footwear, some
things are best avoided if you want to stay in good working order.

------
benbreen
I've always found the history of fashion to be fascinating because of the
light it throws on people's inner lives. A relevant quote from the diary of
Samuel Pepys, where he proudly notes the date when he first attached buckles
on his shoes (thereby announcing himself as a young gentleman on the rise):

"Sunday 22 January 1660 To church in the afternoon to Mr. Herring, where a
lazy poor sermon. And so home with Mrs. Turner and sitting with her a while we
went to my father’s where we supt very merry, and so home. This day I began to
put on buckles to my shoes, which I have bought yesterday of Mr. Wotton."

[http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1660/01/22/](http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1660/01/22/)

------
hellbanner
Related: How USA women smoking moved from taboo to popular through media
manipulation:

[https://vimeo.com/111346364](https://vimeo.com/111346364)

"Attractive women wearing skirts sat in a park mid-day. At precisely noon,
they all lit cigarettes. Press, who had been told by Bernays to watch for
something interesting, snapped pictures.. cigarette companies now doubled
their consumer base"

~~~
sliverstorm
I don't think they had to work that hard. Cigarettes check a lot of boxes -
oral fixation, the way the smoke moves, the whole concept of a style
accessory(1)... it has panache that alcohol certainly can't match.

(I don't know the proper name for it, but the idea of one object as part of
your person that draws attention, kind of like how a good photograph needs a
focal point that naturally draws the eyes)

~~~
hellbanner
Sure, but they were still culturally taboo _until_ Bernay's media
exploitation. I think this is kind of fascinating -- imagine one tweet
suddenly opening up a segregated demographic.

------
droidist2
Why would you turn women away for not wearing heels? I never understood the
appeal of them. I'm actually very attracted to women who wear skirts with
sneakers.

~~~
gilgoomesh
I'm 6'4" and my wife is 5'2". I really like it when she wears heels. For us,
they have a very practical appeal.

Of course, the last thing I need is to wear high heels myself.

~~~
droidist2
Ahh, I see. I'm only about average height. I might feel differently if I were
6-7 inches taller.

------
throwaway94105
It's too bad this got killed off the main page. I guess maybe it's not
relevant to HN.

Anyway, as a mid-20s straight man who likes wearing 5" stilettos, finding out
the history of when and why men did and didn't do the same is interesting to
me. As it is, the only time I feel comfortable wearing them out is during the
Folsom Street Fair (and maybe Pride too but I feel that doing so might
encourage assumptions of my being gay among viewers/my friends, which is not
necessary bad, but just not a view of myself that I particular want to
promote, as it is incorrect.)

Finally, the two men who mentioned attempting to walk in them and failing make
me somewhat disappointed; whether or not they _expect_ women to wear heels,
they probably generally enjoy it when they see a woman in heels and could get
a much better appreciation for her efforts (especially if she's still out
after an 8 hour day wearing them.)

Edit: apparently it's not nuked off page 1. Could have sworn it was.

~~~
lisper
> a mid-20s straight man who likes wearing 5" stilettos

Not to be judgmental, just out of honest intellectual curiosity, can you
explain the appeal? Because I totally don't get it.

~~~
arbitrage
They look nice, I want to look nice. They feel powerful, I want to feel
powerful. Men's shoes are boring, I don't want to be boring.

That's the appeal for me. Everyone is different, though.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
> They look nice, I want to look nice. They feel powerful, I want to feel
> powerful. Men's shoes are boring, I don't want to be boring.

I'm sorry, but that makes very little sense. If you want to look nice then you
need to go by what society judges as nice and society does not consider a man
with heels to "look nice".

~~~
tjradcliffe
> you need to go by what society judges as nice

Why?

You've been down-voted, probably because this assertion seems somewhere
between weird and offensive to most people here, but I'm genuinely curious as
to why you believe it.

This is particularly relevant to HN because most of the people here are
interested in innovation, and innovation comes from precisely deviating from
the standards of society. As Henry Ford famously remarked, "If I'd asked my
customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse."

This is the reception that innovators of all kinds get, and currently men's
dress is _incredibly_ restricted. We aren't quite stuck in Victorian days, but
the diminishment of acceptable fashion choice for men in the past 200 years
has been huge. In 1800 a man could still wear colourful clothing, jewelry, and
makeup. Fifty years later, a man could wear clothes that would shock no-one if
seen on the street today, and nothing else.

I don't quite buy "the Enlightenment" as the whole answer, or even part of the
answer, but there is no doubt that cultural shifts around that time had the
effect of putting all men in uniform clothing. Think about that for a minute:
women are allowed to wear almost anything today. Men are given a tiny number
of acceptable choices, and no one much minds. I'm considered extravagant
because I sometimes wear a bright red blazer to the theatre, which would be
permitted if I were gay, but when I show up with my girlfriend it gets me
insulted.

200 years ago men who were a hell of a lot more manly than me wore far more
extravagant clothing and no one batted an eye (except maybe a few women who
thought they were particularly attractive dressed like that.)

This is a lousy situation for straight men in the modern world: we deserve to
be more than uniformed ciphers in the public eye, and rejecting society's
judgement of what looks nice is a necessary step to take, just as rejecting
society's judgement of what suitable entertainment is was necessary to the
radio and film industry, rejecting society's judgement of what suitable travel
technology is was necessary to the automobile and aircraft industry was, and
so on. And you better believe that conservatives were frequently strongly
against those innovations as well.

Innovation is driven by people with the courage to reject society's judgement
and replace it with their own, and we should honour that courage, not
denigrate it.

~~~
Crito
> _" You've been down-voted, probably because this assertion seems somewhere
> between weird and offensive to most people here, but I'm genuinely curious
> as to why you believe it."_

I have come to believe it because I have come to realize that it is the only
notion of "nice" that has real utility.

I only wish somebody had explained that to me earlier in life. I spent too
much of my youth disadvantaging myself socially by failing to prioritize how I
present myself to others.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I have come to believe it because I have come to realize that it is the only
> notion of "nice" that has real utility.

Utility means that something produces (directly or indirectly) satisfaction
for the person making the decision. Doing what society judges as nice has
instrumental utility, in that it can help you get better responses from
society, which either can produce utility for you directly or help get others
to do things which produce utility for you.

Doing what pleases yourself -- including aesthetically as in favoring what
"looks nice" _to you_ \-- has _direct_ and _immediate_ utility, however.

Both are "real" utility. Which is _greater_ utility will vary considerably.

~~~
Crito
Put it this way, I find that what other people think about me has more impact
on my life than what sort of cloth is hanging from my body.

I think that anyone who actually stops to consider this, actually weighs how
their dress effects how the rest of society interacts with them, will arrive
on the same conclusion (unless they have some serious issues to work out). If
cloth _honestly_ has more of an effect on you how other people treat you,
you've probably got a disorder.

------
masters3d
The did not, they just call them cowboy boots.

~~~
dmckeon
Fashion and style have their own internal logic. Extreme example: "pointy
boots" in Mexico.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/03/26/395391623/...](http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/03/26/395391623/wonderful-
ridiculous-head-scratchingly-pointy-mexican-boots-are-now-a-designer-i)

~~~
Digit-Al
Goodness. Winklepickers taken to the extreme.

------
tenfingers
Fashion is weird. Throughout history and cultures, man/women clothing changed
and still changes wildly.

It's a bit sad that in western culture there's such a strong bias between
sexes in clothing, were each sex has his own set of "acceptable" uniforms.
With feminism women gained much more freedom in that regard, but men don't
have much choice.

It's not unthinkable that while men tend not to care, there are men that also
like pretty/colorful/different things, irregardless of their sexual
preferences, but simply abstain to express due to social pressure.

~~~
soup10
I don't really buy it, while men are expected to put a masculine spin on
things, they still have lots of freedom in their fashion choices, most just
choose to abstain out laziness or because they don't like drawing attention to
themselves.

~~~
tenfingers
Just to pick an obvious, big one: there is no choice besides pants. More
subtle? try lace, but without giving a sexual orientation connotation to it.
Color choices seem to be more neutral now, but only for older segment of the
population. Under 10 years of age pink is definitely not well seen for boys,
but blue is "ok" for girls to wear for an outsider.

------
afarrell
As a contra dancer, I actually find that about an inch of heel elevation in a
shoe adds about a +1 or so skill bonus.

------
ianstallings
It's strange to me, this arbitrary decision to lift yourself a few more inches
from the ground by basically wearing little stilts on your shoes.

~~~
krapp
It's no more or less arbitrary than going to work with a silk noose around
your neck.

~~~
saalweachter
Silk napkin, technically.

~~~
elektromekatron
Surely it is a lead, given it attaches round a collar.

------
copperx
My personal theory has been that, because height has so much power influence
(e.g., tall people are better paid[1], have better sexual prospects), boosting
one's potential power can be seen as dishonest.

[1]: [http://www.timothy-judge.com/Height%20paper--
JAP%20published...](http://www.timothy-judge.com/Height%20paper--
JAP%20published.pdf)

~~~
icebraining
Unless you're hiding them, I don't see how it's dishonest, particularly if not
used with that particular intention.

I'm sure clean-looking people are better regarded as well, does that make
regular bathing dishonest?

------
rodelrod
The little girl on a leach is the future Louis XV, by the way.

More information on the Wallace Collection website:
[http://www.museumnetworkuk.org/portraits/artworks/wallace/im...](http://www.museumnetworkuk.org/portraits/artworks/wallace/img5.html)

------
nailer
I went looking for heel supports for weightlifting recently. I found out there
are a lot of men who apparently wear very high heel supports to boost their
height - obviously not the same as wearing a high healed shoe from the
outside, but the same from the inside.

~~~
dylanjermiah
You should look into Olympic weightlifting shoes.

(I'm assuming you were looking for shoe add-ons)

~~~
nailer
Yeah that's what I ended up getting. Was thinking about doubling down (my
ankle flexibility sucks and I've been working on it for two years)

------
taivare
I remember pimps in 'C'town in the late 60's when they walked at night
sometimes sparks would fly off their high heels from the metal protectors..

------
Grue3
I believe Putin still wears high heels, as well as other vertically-challenged
dictators.

------
aikah
at least not until the cramps were over.

------
stefantalpalaru
Some still do: [http://image.excite.it/politica/foto/BerlusconiSarkozy-
chi-v...](http://image.excite.it/politica/foto/BerlusconiSarkozy-chi-vince-la-
lotta-al-rialzo/1-berlusconisarkozy01.jpg)

There's also the hidden inner platform for when you already maxed out the
acceptable visible heel:
[http://www.scarpeconrialzo.it/it/information/struttura-
delle...](http://www.scarpeconrialzo.it/it/information/struttura-delle-nostre-
scarpe)

