Happy to stand small

A t A party the other night, I found myself in the usual position. At least half a foot titchier than every woman in the room. This is not because I am as small as, say, Tiny-but-Deadly, who always lives up to her name, or Ma Ramaswamy, whose diddly feet often dangle in mid-air when she is sitting down. In fact, at a small-to-medium-sized 5ft 4in I am the second tallest person in my family.

Nevertheless, I am always the shortest woman at a party. And this is because I don’t wear high heels. EVER. Not to weddings, birthdays or supermarkets. As far as I’m concerned, anything above a cowboy heel (or ‘man-heel’ if you’re going to get all stupid and ‘boyfriend jeans’ about it) is as – ahem – pointless as wearing shades in the dark.

I didn’t always occupy this lonely position. There was a time in the early 1990s when I didn’t own a single pair of flat shoes, and certainly no trainers. I wore heels to college, to the newsagent, everywhere. Then again, I also drank Hooch, danced to the Outhere Brothers without irony (I blame the alcopops), and went out in winter without a coat.

Eventually, I matured. I realised that Blur were better than Oasis. I grew a feminist consciousness and bought my first pair of Converse. It was a revelation. Suddenly I could run for a bus and make it. I could go out dancing without worrying about getting home. Life became about more than looking for the next opportunity to sit down.

Apart from the odd aberration (a back-to-the- Eighties party, a moment of madness when I wore cheap, black, patent five-inchers to the Arches in Glasgow and moaned all night) I haven’t bothered with heels since. The benefits are immense. I walk to work in trainers, sandals, flats and boots. I never have to bother about carrying a spare pair of shoes in my bag. I have no bunions, and no hammertoes. (I don’t know what these are but presume it means your big toe looks like a hammerhead shark, which sounds quite cool.) I don’t have calves like bottles of chianti. In short, like most men, my life is not ruled by my footwear.

Look up ‘high heels’ on Wikipedia (see also ‘foot fetishism’ and ‘foot binding’, the page helpfully suggests). The reasons against wearing these instruments of torture are many. They hurt, they can create deformities, they can render the wearer unable to run, they increase the likelihood of fractures, they aren’t sexy (OK, this last one is my addition). What else that we actively choose to put on our bodies has such a checklist of horrors (apart from maybe jeggings)? On the plus side, they make the wearer look taller. Result.

Still, now and again I feel a stab of shame at parties. I look around, or rather up, at the well-heeled grande dames and feel a bit like a flat-footed Hobbit in comparison. I see them strut around with their long legs and wince in my pumps. But then I notice them shifting from foot to foot. I see them seeking out seats over people’s shoulders. I watch the way they grip banisters as if they were lifelines when they descend stairs. I see their faces fall at the prospect of ‘moving on’ somewhere else. And I don’t feel so small after all. n