Victoria Beckham "Just Can't Do Heels Anymore" and Neither Should You
More and more A-listers, whose uniform has historically demanded the masochism of 4- (or 5, or 6) inch stilettos, are saying they're done.
"I just can't do heels any more — at least not when I'm working," Victoria Beckham told the Telegraph on Wednesday. "I travel a lot. Clothes have to be simple and comfortable."
And when Posh Spice, the arbiter of all things sophisticated and stylish speaks, you listen. Also worth a listen? Podiatrists, who have been long been warning about the perils of heels.
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"High heels, especially the very pointy ones, tend to squeeze your toes into a very narrow toe box," Irene Loi, a podiatrist in the department of orthopedic surgery at New York University's Langone Medical Center, recently told Mic.
"The big toe gets pushed outward, toward the rest of the toes, while the first metatarsal bone — the bone below and behind the big toe — is pushed inward. It forces one's foot into an abnormal shape."
Then there's the issue of bunions and permanently bent joints, most commonly referred to as hammertoes.
And the way heels alter your posture can weaken your ankles, making you more prone to injury, or causing osteoarthritis in the knees, the Washington Post reports.
But any woman whose ever stuffed her poor feet into a Manolo, her feet plastered in Band-Aids and haplessly "cushioned" by insoles, hardly needs a podiatrist to tell them these things.
But Beckham is hardly the first fancy femme to take a stand against the fatal footwear.
Actress Blake Lively posted an Instagram photo Feb. 19 of her feet wrapped in toilet paper, saying she wished she'd worn "cozy" socks in lieu of heels to work.
Even Sarah Jessica Parker — whose Sex and the City character was famous for her desperate addiction to shoes — had to quit her decadelong heel binge in 2013.
"For 10 or so years, I literally ran in heels. I worked 18-hour days and never took them off," Parker told the Edit, according to the Huffington Post.
"I went to a foot doctor and he said, 'Your foot does things it shouldn't be able to do. That bone there ... you've created that bone. It doesn't belong there,'" she said.
And, as usual, no one can say it quite like Emma Thompson. The issue, for her, isn't strictly based in common sense: It's one of principle too.
"I've taken my heels off as a feminist statement really, because why do we wear them?" she asked an audience at the National Board of Review awards gala in 2014. "They're so painful. And pointless, really. You know, I really would like to urge everyone to stop it. Just stop it. Don't wear them anymore. You just can't walk in them, and I'm so comfortable now."