When I was growing up, my grandmother warned me about women who wore high heels too often…she said they would end up with a case of what she called “Barbie foot”, where your foot is frozen (more or less) into that arched position.
Can that ACTUALLY happen? 
Yes and there is something beyond high heals, sort of a shoe where only the ball of your foot makes contact with the ground, some women apparently try to achieve this but it’s a one way trip there Ive heard.
Stuck, as in permanent, or as painful to move? The Urban Dictionary has a listing for Barbie feet. Nothing is said about it being permanent.
I can sympathize with any woman who has to wear heels for any period of time. It has to hurt.
I’d call it an urban legend
If she were still alive, I’d ask her. I think she meant ‘painful to move’ but she might have meant frozen (like impossible to move) as well.
Whatever the case, I still think it sounds painful. Ow.
I knew a girl , the daughter of a friend, who always walked on tip-toes for some reason, from the time she started walking apparently. They eventually had to have some kind of surgery to correct the problem. No high heels involved there. Don’t know if that is the same thing.
Wearing heels all the time can cause the muscles & tendons in the calf to shorten, making it difficult and painful to walk without heels.
Sometimes the problem can be fixed by physical therapy and exercise, sometimes they recommend surgery.
So yeah, more or less, it can get stuck that way.
It can happen, but not usually from wearing high heels–usually it’s a result of some other injury.
Now if you wear heels of the same height all the time, you could be less comfortable while not wearing them, but I think that problem occurs less in your foot and more in your calf muscles. But there are a lot of things that can go wrong with your feet, and bad shoes can cause them.
I used to see a woman in the gym who had reconstructive surgery after her foot was damaged in some kind of accident, and she had to pick whether she would wear heeled shoes or flat shoes for the rest of her life, and she picked heels. So she had to have gym shoes with a built-up heel. (It was just one foot injured, but if your shoes don’t match, that’s another injury there.)
I’m trying to picture a ‘gym shoe with a built up heel’ in my head and I just can’t. Or I think of those ‘novelty’ (I don’t know what else to call them) shoes I’ve seen before that look like regular athletic shoes…but with a high-heel type heel on the back end.
I always walked on my toes (though nearly as exaggerated as “Barbie foot”)…and I’m a guy. It led to no small amount of teasing when I was a kid. When I started running in my mid-40s, and started doing some serious stretching, the “toe walking” was significantly reduced.
It can happen to some degree to adults if they wear high heels all the time, but most real cases are in children who walk abnormally from a young age. I wear heels regularly as well as walking and running mostly on the front of my feet, and I don’t have this problem.
My middle sister walked on her toes as a toddler and young child, and her tendons were short to the degree that she could not comfortably stand or walk with her whole foot flat on the ground. Her doctor told my mother it was a problem, and some physical therapy exercises at home for about a year resolved it.
I can, because we’ve had to make a few at work. What a pain in the butt, although we’d never say that to the poor souls who have to cope with this problem (it’s also expensive to get it done).
It’s not just a matter of building up a shoe - a LOT of shoes these days are suitable to a lift of that sort. It’s a hassle all around for folks with that sort of problem.
This is what I’ve heard of. I know some women who claim only heels are comfortable, but it’s typically the women who have worn the taller heels over many years.
Yeah, it’s not something that happens from wearing pumps occasionally. It’s the hard-core heel-wearers that would have problems.
I’m another one that walked on my toes (barefoot) most of the time as a kid and young adult. I think the thing that saved me was wearing flip-flops if I had to wear shoes - had to walk flat-footed in those.
I’ve never had problems walking or standing flat-footed, but if you compare how far I can stretch my legs compared to most people, there’s a significant difference.
Because I’ve always been that way, it only occurred to me recently that this was probably from the toe-walking allowing my tendons/muscles to shorten. I’ve been putting an effort into stretching them out and it’s helping.
While I was reading the responses (thanks, y’all, btw!), it led me to another line of thinking.
Can you get totally flat feet from wearing only flipflops and/or going barefoot all the time? That was something else my grandmother used to say also…though I don’t know if she was saying it because it was scientific fact or if she was just annoyed with me never wanting to wear shoes (I still go barefoot at every available opportunity).
I have a friend who used to make orthotics, and he says that flat shoes are as bad for your feet as heels - it’s best to have good support for your feet all around.
My cousin and my stepfather’s brother both walked on their toes from a very young age, because it was painful for them to extend the foot all the way while walking (they could stand on two feet okay, but still tended to bounce up on their toes whenever possible). My cousin was sent to a physical therapist, who straightened it out before she was 10. My stepfather’s brother never got that correction, though, and he still walks like that as an adult.
As stated upthread, it has to do with the calf muscles and tendons being “used” to being in the pointed position, but not the flexed position. It can be overcome, but it’s not easy. So it is a “real” condition. However, I cannot speak to whether wearing high heels alone can cause this in adulthood. I would assume so, but have no proof or cites for that.
There’s no reason to think that walking around barefoot is a problem, though. There are runners who go around barefoot (or wearing Vibram Five Fingers shoes, which is very nearly barefoot) and they’re just fine. I myself spend about 22 hours a day barefoot (I kick off my shoes at the office and only wear shoes when I have to go outdoors). It’s only a problem if you walk around barefoot without using your heel in your gait.
This needs to be marked TMI.
It depends on when high heels are first used. If used by a girl who is still growing, the achilles tendon can shorten enough to cause foot drop. In adult women, it can cause tendonitis, making flat shoes very painful.
On the contrary, as far as I can tell, habitual barefootedness on varying terrain has been linked in studies to strengthening of the foot arch, at least in children.