Heels: Are They Worth It?
I went through various stages in my life where I may have worn clothes that, perhaps, dropped me under a category (though nothing like in the picture above). For instance, my mom picked out my clothes for me to wear up until 6th grade (sad, I know) - it consisted of primarily school uniform attire of the navy blue, white, red, or khaki colors. Halfway through my elementary years, I moved to Texas where uniforms aren't actually worn, but my mom still laid them out for me every morning, so I wore them. When I was finally allowed to exercise my sense of style, or lack thereof, I was at a complete loss, but I stuck with clothes that may not have been the most fashionable, but they fit, allowed me to move amongst human beings without being in the nude, and were comfortable. My mom called me a hobo. There was also a phase where I shopped at Hot Topic and even cut up a shirt and put it back together with safety pins, then commenced to wear it out in public. I still have it.
It wasn't until I moved to Korea that I started to care somewhat about how I looked. Not only was I working in a more professional arena (I previously worked for people I was comfortable with so nothing fancy was worn or in a casual setting or I had a uniform already provided), but it was Korea - where everyone cared about how they looked and the way people acted towards you does depend on it as well. Just like how when my orientation roommate's aunt found out she had a roommate, she questioned not my friendliness and how we got along, but if I looked pretty. /blink/ What's my appearance got to do with being roommates? If my face resembled that of an orc, would she have demanded that my roommate change rooms?
Anyway, I never thought I would succumb to paying attention to how I looked, but as time went on, I slowly realised that I did. By the end of my year there, half of the contents of my wardrobe was decent (in that it also grew twice its original size), I learned how to use make up, I had a hair cut three times while there and permed my hair twice, and I bought four pairs of shoes (a pair of winter boots with hidden heels, two cute sandals with kitten heels, and two more with a 4-inch heel). Yeah, I know. WHAT IN THE WORLD WAS WRONG WITH ME?
Truth was that it was normal to see Korean women strut around in heels because they practiced (as my Co had told me and I had seen my fair share of scarred feet while in Korea) and they were used to it. Plus, it makes your legs longer. As I'm at a short five feet tall, I would like to picture myself with long, slender legs (trust me, it's killing me that I'm admitting this in "public") and since I walked around Korea for a year staring at legs that look AMAZING, it was only natural that I want those heels, right??
You would think that, but I just channeled the late Severus Snape and I just scrawled a big, fat T over your answer. Hah - in your face! So why did I purchase those shoes? I suppose at one point, I did want those long, slender legs, but it's just not to be. Why, you say? Just look at Yoon Eun-hye --
There is no way in hell this universe that my legs would ever look like that. Why? Well, first, not only does my body posses curves, so do my legs, and these are not the long, luscious, gentle, and slender curves that Yoon Eun-hye's legs have. Nope, these are the curves that someone who used to chug down protein shakes before running up 4 flights of stairs in order to get to her Earth Sciences class (sort of) on time because she thinks protein shakes (especially the ones by Naked, or was it Odwalla?) are delicious. On top of those curves, it's also this fact that I've a layer of fat over my leg muscles that have appeared to have doubled in thickness since my return to the States, to my great dismay. Then, there's the most important tidbit about me: my feet are strange (I have really wide feet, with what I suspect is a bunion forming on my right foot, and they're small [size 5 to 6 American] but I need to wear up to size 7 to fit them - buying shoes is something I never enjoy doing) so I can't go walking about in heels for more than thirty minutes to an hour - maybe 1.5 hours, tops - before my feet will hurt as if I got them caught in a fur trap.
I know, because on my birthday while in Korea, my orientation roommate demanded that we do something special so she visited me for that weekend and we decided to have a Let's Be Korean day. I thought this a grand idea - sort of like Halloween but for the entire weekend - so I went with it.
It was pretty fun, other than the fact that I wore my awesome 4-inch heels for three hours straight along with my friend. We both were limping by the 2nd hour and sat down at every opportune moment until we called it quits when it was running closer to the fourth hour. We ran into a Daiso and quickly bought two pairs of cheap flip flops. I had a total of 5 blisters and scars that stayed for two months afterwards. Never. Again. In my defense, it felt fine for the first hour. T__T
Then, not too long ago, an article came out on how damaging these heels are to the female kpop celebrities that always seem to be in heels and even doing ridiculous things like dance in them. I had always wondered how they fared, but as I have faulty feet (I can never find flats that fit them), I had just thought other females just had to get over the initial breaking in of the heel... but there were pictures!
O_O Oh my gosh some of that look grotesque and rather sad.
I'm just glad my heels were only 4-inches tall. T__T Honestly, I knew heels were bad news but I suddenly got these ideas - you know, like those ideas when you're a kid and you want to play dress up? - and next thing I know, I found these shoes that made me taller and they felt comfortable when I traipsed around the store for seven minutes. I even did a couple of bunny hops, just to make sure, though I knew that shoes were tricky for me and I needed to wear them for several hours to be 100% certain. Through my morphology class, I knew that wearing heels actually deformed one's body (and posture) on purpose, not to mention how unpractical they are (though I've seen Korean women wear heels to hike in - I mean, you never know where you may pick up a guy, you know), but I gave in. It's a great shame to myself, but I'll be sure to never wear them for longer than an hour again!
I'm sure females who wear heels on a daily (or regular) basis understand the risks, so why do they do it so much? Is it worth it to appear dainty, feminine, and have mile-long legs though not as long as Zhou Mi's and he doesn't even need heels to put yourself through that much pain? And people say foot binding was horrible - this is the modern-day version of it, in my opinion.
