Fashion Victim: Walking tall could be as good as a workout

Feb 7 2008 by Emma Johnson, Liverpool Daily Post

BRILLIANT. Finally, scientists have admitted something that I have known almost since I could walk. High-heeled shoes are good for you.

Doctors, osteopaths, chiropodists and Clarks have done their very best to get women into sensible shoes over the years to no avail. Everything from the bearable – bunions, calluses, crooked toes; to the incapacitating – osteo-arthritis, misplaced knee joints; to the outrageous – fertility problems and schizophrenia, has been blamed on women’s love of a finely turned four-inch.

But now, what joy, they are admitting they are wrong.

OK, that is a slight exaggeration. All of the above is still true, if you persist in wearing stilettos, your feet will end up more knobbly than Angelina Jolie’s knees, and I think the jury is still out on the suggestion that stilettos make you mentally ill, although my husband would argue that my growing addiction to Christian Louboutin’s courts renders me certifiable. No, what the boffins have been forced to admit is that wearing a pair of moderately high heels can tone the body, condition muscles and even improve a woman’s sex life.

Anyone who has seen some of the feats of engineering (no pun intended) on offer for spring/summer 2008, will tell you four inches is moderate . . .

Shoe guru Manolo Blahnik, who became a household name thanks to Sex and the City’s Carrie refusing to tease her tootsies into any other footwear, said recently: “Until my mummy was 87, she was wearing five- inch heels and she looked wonderful. She is my living example that heels are good for you.”

While the list of ailments attributed to heels has grown almost as fast as Tamara Mellon’s footwear empire, until now the most positive physical effects of wearing stilettos have been confined to leaner-looking longer legs, added height and their ability to transform stocky calves. Then, of course, there is the increased male attention. I have yet to meet a man who doesn’t like high heels . . . a lot.

Dr Maria Cerruto, from the University of Verona – a woman who confesses to harbouring her own little high heel habit – was behind the latest research.

And now comes the complicated bit. Dr Cerruto studied 66 women under 50 and found that those who held their feet at a 15-degree angle to the ground, the equivalent of wearing a two-inch heel, showed up to 15% less electrical activity in their pelvic muscles. This means that the muscles are more relaxed when women wear higher heels, increasing their strength and ability to contract. As everyone from Dr Hillary to Dr Ruth will tell you, toned pelvic muscles are the key to a good sex life (and that is probably as far as we need to go in a family newspaper).

As I said at the beginning, I have never needed any encouragement to slip on a stiletto, but isn’t it good to know when you are cutting off your corns that men aren’t the only ones benefiting from your bunions?