Men and Heels
Elizabeth Semmelhack, curator for the Bata Shoe Museum, traces the high heel to male horse-riding warriors in the Middle East who used high heels for functionality, because they help hold the rider's foot in stirrups. She states that the earliest high heel she has seen is depicted on a 9th-century CE ceramic bowl from Persia.
Since the late 18th century, men's shoes have had primarily low heels. A notable exception is cowboy boots, which continue to sport a taller riding heel. The two-inch Cuban heel features in many styles of men's boot but was popularised by Beatle boots, famously worn by the English rock group The Beatles, which saw the reintroduction of heels for men. Winklepicker boots also usually feature a Cuban heel. There was also a brief resurgence in higher-heeled shoes for men in the 1970s (in Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta's character wears a Cuban heel in the opening sequence). The singer Prince is known to wear high heels, as well as Elton John. Bands such as Mötley Crüe and Sigue Sigue Sputnik predominantly wore high heels during the 1980s. Current well-known male heel wearers include Prince, Justin Tranter, lead singer of Semi Precious Weapons, and Bill Kaulitz, the lead singer of Tokio Hotel.
Read more about this topic: High-heeled Footwear
Famous quotes containing the words men and, men and/or heels:
“I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and women, with their twitching faces, with their lying tongues, like a cork on a rough sea. Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“One would appear ridiculous who would say, that it is only probable the sun will rise to-morrow, or that all men must die; though it is plain we have no further assurance of these facts than what experience affords us.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)