This post is going to attempt to weave together comments on feet, a typology of human fatness, high heels & ballroom dancing
Between the ages of about 10 & 15 I was very good at falling over. No great damage was done, though I did hurt my right arm a lot trying to break my falls
My most notorious tumble came when I was doing duty as milk monitor – all schoolchildren got a daily 1/3 pint for free in those days. Our school was pretty old & we 5th formers were ensconced up a steep winding staircase. It took 2 milk monitors to carry the milk crate up & down. On this day I was in the lead bringing it back down when I fell, amidst a cascade of fortunately empty bottles. Only my pride was damaged but the noise was spectacular
Some time not long after I was referred to some kind of consultant. I never knew exactly what for, though there was a vague idea of worry about epilepsy
At the end of the examination the very avuncular man sat me down & said there was absolutely nothing to worry about. It was just that my feet were too small
I thought that this, though true in a sense (my feet were smaller than those of many of my friends despite my vastly greater height), was meant as a joke. Possibly a face saver to explain the otherwise medically inexplicable
In those days shoes with stiletto heels & very pointed toes were the height of fashion. Young teenagers would have been thought slutty for wearing them, but when I was 16 I proudly bought myself a pair. The heels were not the highest possible, but they were a good 2” higher than anything I had worn before
I only wore them once, at least when I had any walking to do. The experience was absolutely excruciating. I tottered & clip clopped along, barely able to keep them on my feet
Il faut souffrir pour être belle? Perhaps. But vaut? Never
The experience did however imbue me with curiosity about how some women can manage to look good & to walk well in very high heels. Is it the way you put your feet down? Do you have to stand up straight, tummy & bottom tucked in as they always insisted at school, or sit a bit more comfortably in your pelvis? And so on
I do not actually subscribe to the oft repeated view that high heels make a woman look good, extending the legs & all that. On very thin or slender legs high heels can give undue prominence to the knee cap, turning it into an unsightly protuberance. For more muscly legs the effect can be to produce an unsightly bulge in the calf
One type of woman can both look sensational & walk beautifully in high heels. She is what I would probably still call plump. Fat, obese even, if you must. But what we used to call well covered, with the fat pretty evenly covering the body like a well-tailored garment. And the fat itself is neither watery & flabby nor hard & painful looking, but firm & soft like a well-plumped pillow
Such women are usually energetic, supple & even good at school sports & organised games. They are also very good dancers
As are certain fat men. In those days of ballroom dancing it was a real pleasure to be guided round in a quickstep by such a confident dancer. Light on his feet, people used to say
Whether one is light on ones feet or not has very little to do with weight. I once had a neighbour who made my life a misery by sounding like a herd of elephants as he walked around his flat, & shook the whole house when he came downstairs. He was very thin
I thought about all this again just recently when I saw these photos. The lady stands so beautifully balanced, you could drop a plumb line from her crown to her heels. But it was her calf muscle which I really noticed. Finely proportioned & unusually elongated, it seems to me. One day I may get round to Googling a site which can turn me into a bit of an expert in the anatomy of the human leg. In the meantime I shall just content myself with speculating whether there is any plausible mechanism which means there is a correlation between BMI & length of calf muscle
And rage a little more that in these days of worrying about obesity we should put more effort into understanding human plumpness & form rather than just shoehorning all into the uninformative one-size-fits all number that is BMI
I started out with the story of my own small feet because over 30 years later I was diagnosed as having pedi-something which means an unusually high & rigid arch. My foot just does not flex as much other peoples, & women with this condition most certainly can not walk in high heels, or in very flat ballet-style pumps with a low welt. Or get their feet into boots which do not have a side or front opening all the way down to the foot. We just have to settle for something that will do the flexing for us
I thought of this too yesterday when I saw another picture in The Times. It comes from a book by Nick Veasey who uses X-ray photography to reveal ‘a curious world of intricate beauty hidden beneath everyday objects'. (I did not know you could get full-colour X-rays these days).
I just look at the way the wearer of the green stilettos has her foot stretched so that her weight is all on the bone head
And wince
And wince
Late edition: Yes, my stilettos were high, but I'm a very capable heel walker - Gwyneth Paltrow
