Young Brunette Girl With Red Heels Strips Her Pink Lingerie In The Studio

Although high heels are now almost exclusively worn by girls and women, there are shoe designs worn by both genders that have elevated heels, including cowboy boots and cuban heels. In previous ages, men also wore high heels.
History
The history of the high-heeled shoe, or a shoe whose heel is higher than the toe, is a matter of contentious and heated discussion. Shoes in general have typically served as markers of gender, class, race, and ethnicity—and both the foot and the shoe have been imbued with powerful phallic and fertility symbols as evidenced in the contemporary practice of tying shoes to a newlywed couple's car. No other shoe, however, has gestured toward leisure, sexuality, and sophistication as much as the high-heeled shoe. Fraught with contradiction, heels paradoxically inhibit movement in order to increase it, at least in appearance. Standing in heels, a woman presents herself already half-walking while at the same time reducing the length of her step, fostering the illusion of speed while suggesting an imminent fall. The higher and more unstable the heel, the more clearly these contradictions are expressed (Kunzle, 2004). Doctors and scholars alike have argued about the physical and cultural effects, both positive and negative, that heels have had not only on women, but on society as a whole.