Why Wearing Heels is More Attractive

Wearing high heels are uncomfortable, but they can also have health issues related to them. The thought alone doesn’t make sense as to how this staple go-to shoes became a fashion must-have for many years. In addition to this mind-boggling thought, heels were created to make it difficult for them to run from their predators.

From an evolutionary standpoint, women that wear heels appears to be more attractive than those who wear flats. This makes women more choosy in the pool of many suitors coming their way. This fashion advantage makes women use high heels as a way of attraction.

Many fashion fads has come and gone. Trends like bell-bottom jeans from the 90’s used to be the coolest thing to have. And the shoulder pads in the 80’s were a must-have. While many has made it to the ins and outs of the fashion industry, high heels has stayed in the very top. In fact, high heels revolutionized to longer lengths in heels.

So what’s the big idea? What is it about women in high heels more attractive? The answer lies between the way they walk. When a women wears high heels, they tend to walk more feminine than wearing flats. The use of heels exaggerates the femininity of walking.

Contrary to this, males walk with longer stride and greater velocity at a slower pace. They are different in the way that they swing. They sway more on the head and upper body part whereas women sway more on the hip area.

In an article from Huffington Post, Adrian Furnham and Dr. Raj Persuad mentions:

Gait is studied using point-light displays representing the body as a series of markers placed on key landmarks on limbs. In these experiments, the perceive is presented with a pattern of dots on a screen. Because all they are seeing are dots moving, any impact on preferences or attractiveness has to be something to do with movement patterns, and not static physical appearance.

The effect seems highly consistent for each individual walker (i.e. all walkers were judged to be more attractive in the heels condition). The bio mechanical results are also consistent with the theory that wearing high heels makes women look more attractive by making them more feminine, as the effect of heels was to exaggerate some sex-specific elements of female gait including: greater pelvic rotation, increased vertical motion at the hip, shorter strides and higher number of steps per minute.

There you have it. Whether it is subconscious or conscious, the bottom line is that high heels makes women look and feel more feminine. This just makes us wonder how much more will high heels evolve?