What is the purpose of having a heel on a shoe? Not just high heels, which would appear to defy logic, but any heel of any sort?
When did we go from the flat-footed, mocassin-style footwear to something with a heel, and why was it done?
Give me immortality, or give me death!
WAG: when you’re walking on hard-surface pavement, a heel on a shoe cushions the blow somewhat, and also helps preserve the life of the shoe. If you have any kind of flat arches at all, walking in absolutely flat sandals is horrible. A heel, even only a 1/2" one, helps a lot. It changes the balance of the foot.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
My guess is that it was almost strictly to add height, because often taller people are more eye-catching (<-- generalization). Height can be taken as a sign of health, thus good genes, thus good breeding material.
Heels also reshape the way the body aligns. They helps throw out the chest and buttocks, and in the case of women, adds that length to legs men tend to look for.
Heels are also useful on riding boots and such for keeping one’s feet in the stirrups.
“It says, I choo-choo-choose you. And it’s got a picture of a train.”
– Ralph Wiggum
Back in the mid-'70s there was a brief fad for “negative heel” or “Earth Shoes”. These were shoes in which the heel was lower than the front of the shoe.
Supposedly the designer got the idea from looking at the way footprints are left in sand on the beach. The heel is usually depressed further than the toes and they drew from this the conclusion that the human body was “designed” to have the heel lower than the toes.
Unfortunately, it turned out that the design tended to cause hyperextension of the knee. I think the shoes were pretty much gone by 1980 and I’m pretty sure they aren’t around any more.
As for heels in general, I notice that when people run they tend to run on their toes more than their entire foot. I suspect the slight lean forward caused by heels makes walking slightly more comfortable. Plus, the heel probably absorbs some of the impact of the foot hitting the ground and prevents some of the shock from being passed up into the leg and on to the back. (Try this, stand up on your toes then drop suddenly onto the back of your foot. Quite a jolt, isn’t it?)
Just a WAG.
“Sometimes I think the web is just a big plot to keep people like me away from normal society.” — Dilbert
There was a good artivcle in the March issue of “Discover” Heel strike does not injure one’s legs as is commonly believed. It is the effort to stabalize the leg after it strikes the ground that causes pain and injury.
That is not to sat that heels were invented erroneously. I WAG that it was a combination of keeping boots in the stirrup (only the wealthy would have had decent shoes) and for height. Not only do heels make woemns legs look longer (and long legs indicate fertility) but they give them that sweet gait.
It’s so shoes would stay inside stirrups when someone was riding a horse. That’s it.