Watch out where you move to – A recent study out of Yale University has suggested that the height of your heels might be determined by your place of residence. The researchers studied 2007 women who made 16,236 purchases across 180 cities. Apparently we are a little sheep like when it comes to our high heel purchases…
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, University of North Carolina and Yale University have discovered that women tend to assess what other impressionable women wear when moving to a new city, and make their shoe purchases accordingly. An increase in the median income also apparently translates to the average high heel height going up.
In North America, New York hits the top of the list with women wearing an average heel height of 6cm. Philadelphian women however get away with a very relaxed 1.5cm! As we all want to fit into a new town, could it be as easy as wearing a higher heel? The thing is though, when women move to cities that have a low average heel height after living in a city that wears high heels they tend to continue wearing higher heels…
What does this say about us girls? Are we really all influenced that easily? Do we really look up to women wearing higher heels than us and think, “Now there’s a women I want know!”, or do we simply have shoe envy? Is it the woman or the shoe? Do we really continue wearing higher heeled shoes when we move to a city that perhaps is less affluent than where we were previously living because we want to appear better than other women? Or do we just love our high heels?
I would like to think that we all make our shoe choices because of what we love, not what we are conditioned to do! At The Well-Heeled we want all women to feel empowered by their shoe choices. If you want to wear high heels do so because you love them, not because the girls in the neighbourhood are. If you have an active foot condition choose shoes that are beautiful and help your foot problem! Maybe take a look at the Shoe Equation to give you some guidance.
Go forth and make fantastic considered shoe choices and enjoy being a woman. If wearing high heels rocks your boat then make it so. Remember though that there is a trade off when you wear really high heels and you may need to take stock of information on The Well-Heeled blog, which aims to decrease your risk of injury and allow you to have many more years on trend.
Until next time,
E&E x
