Creating A High Heeled Woman
Part A : A Personal Transformation
- The Aesthetics of Highheels.
- What Can Foot Training Do?
- Implementing a Basic Foot Training Program.
- Implementing an Advanced Foot Training Program.
- What Makes a Good Highheeled Shoe?
1. The Aesthetics of Highheels.
There is something special about a woman in highheels. It brings to mind the grace and charm of the deer. Remember how they walk? Each step is delicate, graceful, hesitant. You notice the slimness of the leg and the care with which they use it. It can be quite charming to watch.
A woman in very highheeled shoes does some of the same kinds of things as that deer. The highheels definitely make her legs look longer and more delicate. They definitely affect her ability to walk, in particular by shortening her stride. Of course, she is on the verge of becoming unstable at any moment, and so she must pay careful attention to her balance and the ground under her feet.
Such behavior on her part brings out another aspect of appreciation for those who enjoy the DS lifestyle, because the highheeled woman is submitting herself to a challenge and obstacle for no more than aesthetic reasons (unless, of course, she has been ordered to do so). So,the aesthetic of highheels goes beyond the visual -- it also includes an appreciation of the personality of the woman who is perched -- and at times even tottering -- on her highheels.
The aesthetic of the highheel is that the higher the heel, the more entrancing they are. This, then, defines our goal. The truly highheeled woman is capable of wearing the highest highheels available. These highheels we will call ultraheels, and a section will discuss them in more detail later. Of more importance for the sake of this "How-To" article are the practicalities of how a highheeled woman is created and how the highheel can be made to function in real, eveyday life. The key to the first part of this --creating a higheeled woman -- is through foot training.
2. What Can Foot Training Do?
Proper foot training is absolutely essential. Even though highheels are commonplace, virtually no woman is wearing them correctly. You didn't know that there was a "correct" way to wear them? Indeed, understanding this is essential for success.
The highheel is a killer shoe. Women know this, which is one reason why they are so often hated so. However, as difficult as they are, women are usually their own worst enemies in wearing them by making the situation worse. It is important to understand that the body is to some degree adaptable. Proper foot training can adapt ordinary flat-soled feet into high-arched feet which can comfortably wear high heels. This is why the highheel has the potential to be a viable type of shoe. The arch in the foot can be gradually stretched over time so that it can fit comfortably into the position required by the highheeled shoe. Once this angle is attained, then the wearer can spend hours in them without undue distress -- assuming that the design and construction of the shoe are proper.
There is a second part to the equation, however. Women typically pick out shoes they should not wear. This is due to a combination of choosing style over form, and choosing self-image over need.
Most highheels are made by manufacturers who are selling a good looking shoe rather than a shoe that works well. For women who wear highheels most of the time this will not do. They must wear shoes that actually work well. Properly built highheels can be found, and sometimes minor additions or corrections can be made to an ordinary highheel to make it work much better.
The other part of the problem is that women for the most part choose shoes which just do not fit well. They tend to look at the size label on the the box more than on how well their feet fit in the shoe. Not only do they usually get shoes too short, the shoes are usually too narrow as well. Frankly, it is nearly impossible to endure having the foot compressed and distorted for hours on end in such a shoe. Perhaps in a normal flat shoe poor sizing can be tolerated, but not in a highheel! It is also ironic, but most women do not realize that the higher the heel, the less the length of the shoe matters since the foot is now more vertical and thus appears smaller. So, the key to successfully wearing highheels is a combination of the proper foot training and finding shoes that work well on the foot. Let us begin, however, with detailing what is proper foot training.
3. Implementing a Basic Foot Training Program.
Commitment. You cannot implement a foot training program for adapting your feet for highheels without first making a sincere personal commitment. To be truly able to wear the highest highheels and be comfortable in them means adapting the arch of your foot permanently to the high arch required. Now, this is not bad, but it means that your foot will now find other activities uncomfortable. This makes sense. For instance, if you find hiking boots comfortable and highheels uncomfortable, after training your feet for highheels now they are comfortable in highheels and uncomfortable in hiking boots. Well, all life is a series of tradeoffs, and to truly take this course requires commitment.
Your Potential. Next, we must take stock of you. Foot training is most easily done when you are young, say before age 20 or so. The older you become the less easily and quickly the changes can be made to your foot. However, even into middle age adapting to highheels should be feasible. Do expect, however, that it takes more time the older you are.
Implementation - Step 1. The key idea behind foot training is remarkably simple. Hold the foot in a position which stretches the arch for a long enough period so it will gradually stretch enough to adapt to the stress of being in that position. When the foot adapts and feels comfortable in this training position, shift the training position to stretch the arch a little more. Eventually your arch will have attained enough of an arc that it is comfortable to wear even the highest heel. So, the basic idea is not the issue, but rather how best to implement it.
4. Implementing an Advanced Foot Training Program.
Purpose. The advanced foot training program differs from the basic in that it is designed to train feet for ultraheels -- that is, highheels with 6" of arch elevation.
5. What Makes a Good Highheeled Shoe?
The key idea behind foot training is remarkably simple. Hold the foot in a position which stretches the arch for a long enough period so it will gradually stretch enough to adapt to the stress of being in that position. When the foot adapts and feels comfortable in this training position, shift the training position to stretch the arch a little more. Eventually your arch will have attained enough of an arc that it is comfortahle to wear even the highest heel. So, the basic idea is not the issue, but rather how best to implement it.
Finally, it is important that the shoe does not exist in isolation. It is only part of the entire leg, and so a "goodlooking" highheel also requires the proper visual complement from the leg, as this picture shows.,/font>
As a footnote, I received this article as text, so I don't what the original picture looked like. I just picked one out that I thought was suitable...
Part B. Special Purpose Highheels
The highheeled woman needs to have a footwear wardrobe which properly supports her carefully trained feet. Her footwear wardrobe must be extensive enough to provide for a wide range of walking activities as well as maintain the arch in her foot. Simply having many highheeled shoes, all of which are typical "dress-up" shoes, is not adequate. The following special purpose highheels meet the requirement of functional variation as well as arch maintenance in a variety of ways.
1. The Arched Slipper
The Arched Slipper is designed to be worn to bed for the purpose of maintaining the foot's arch during sleep. Maintaining the arch in the foot is analogus to setting deciduous fruit: a certain number of hours below a certain temperature are need for the fruit to set. For a highheeled woman, it is keeping her foot arched for a long enough period every day to maintain her arch. This shoe can be used to hold the foot to a higher arch than is normally worn during the day so that the foot can more easily wear ultraheels.
In design, this is a heelless shoe which has a firm arch, but otherwise the body is soft. (A heel would catch in the sheets, and its soft body allows it to slide smoothly among sheets and blankets.) It can have ribbons attached to fasten it more tightly to the foot along the sides of the arch. The ribbons make it appear somewhat like a ballet slipper, but the arch gives it a distinct shape which ballet slippers do not have.
Walking out of bed may be difficult, especially if the arch is very high. Thus, it is also useful for bondage purposes.
2. The Sandheel
The Sandheel is a special purpose shoe. Although it can be worn on any normal surface, it is capable of being worn on sand, and so makes it ideal for the beach. A normal highheel has a separate heel which is usually thin, so it sinks down into the sand. A normal platform shoe does not have this problem, but usually the sole is narrower at the back than under the front part of the foot, so the back tends to sink into the sand. The Sandheel solves both of these problems.
In design, the Sandheel (a) keeps the foot at a high angle, and (b) moves the center of balance of the wearer into the middle of the shoe where (c) the sole has been shortened and moved inwards to be a single flat load-bearing surface. Thus, the single sole will sink into the sand while still supporting the high angle and the arch properly.
3. The Ultraheel
The Ultraheel takes the highheel to its extreme in a wearable shoe. This shoe is designed to function rather like a ballet toe shoe in having the foot in a nearly vertical position. This gives the shoe the highest heel possible in a wearable shoe without a platform sole.
This shoe definitely takes some training time to be wearable. First, time must be spent simply getting the foot accustomed to the arch. Second, standing in them puts extra stress on parts of the foot not normally stressed, and endurance must be gained through many practice sessions of short duration. Third, because balance in indeed precarious, wearing them safely requires constant attention to balance.
4. The Arched Cowboy Boot
The Arched Cowboy Boot is an unusual highheeled shoe in that it serves three distinctly different purposes. First, it serves the foot of the woman by continuing to provide the high arch her foot has been trained to have. Second, it is designed to appear from the outside as an ordinary cowboy boot, camophlaging the fact that the woman's foot is actually resting inside in a highheel position rather than flat above the sole. Third, it serves as a functional boot for walking in somewhat rough terrain which an ordinary highheel or Sandheel shoe could not because of their inappropriate bases. However, even though the Arched Cowboy Boot provides a large flat sole which serves walking in rough terrain better than the others, because of the position of the woman's foot she is not fully capable of safely covering all terrain. In particular, going downhill is more dangerous, and her balance is still somewhat more precarious. Thus, this boot only assists her in covering rough terrain; in a real walking situation she should have the arm of a man to assist in balancing and supporting her.
5. The Pseudoshoe
The Pseudoshoe is one of the more unusual highheel designs. While the Ultraheel is designed to create the maximum amount of heel which can be worn in a shoe without a platform, the Pseudoshoe is a shoe designed simply to show heel length in a shoe only for artistic, display purposes. What this means is that the heel is exceptionally long, and extends so far below the sole that it makes it impossible to stand or walk in these shoes.
Although the primary purpose of these shoes is artistic display, they can also have other functions as well. With a locking mechanism, these shoes make ideal bondage footwear, since they make walking impossible. They might also be perfect for wearing in suspension, since the heels could rest on the ground and take a small percentage of the weight. Note that they could also have the Ultraheel arch built into them, thus making them suitable for extreme arch training as well.
[Copyright © 1997 by Robert G. Benson]
This article was another given to me by Steve, thanks very much for that. I can't remember if he said it was printed in a national newspaper recently, or not, but I'm pretty sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong!