High heel stakes: shoes reveal more than you think
Many visual crimes are committed in the name of fashion but like it or loathe it fashion plays a central social role. Whether you adopt current fashion, deliberately reject it, or mistakenly miss it you make a statement about yourself and about society by the fashion you choose. In fact, according to a new study the size of a woman’s heels says a lot about her.
The new study comes from researchers from Yale University and Carnegie Mellon University who examined five years of shoe purchases of 2007 women (that added up to 16,236 pairs of shoes). These women moved between 180 cities in the United States and the researchers chose height of heels as a way of quantifying fashion choices.
When women move to higher SES postcodes their heel choices say, "See, I really do belong here", while when they move to lower SES postcodes they are saying, "See these heels? I won't be here for long!"
The data analysis revealed that when a woman moved cities she did change the size of her heels but it wasn’t a uniform change. For instance, when women moved to higher socioeconomic status (SES) places like New York or Los Angeles the heel size they purchased closely mirrored the heel size purchased by other women already in those postcodes showing a desire for conformity. However, when women moved to lower SES postcodes their heel size tended to match the typical heel size of their last place of residence, indicating they were trying to maintain their individuality.
Put another way, when women move to higher SES postcodes their heel choices say, “See, I really do belong here”, while when they move to lower SES postcodes they are saying, “See these heels? I won’t be here for long!”
This is not new, humans have forever shown a tendency to align themselves with the powerful and distance themselves from the powerless. It does however, remind us that fashion is no random collection of fabrics and footwear; it is a powerful social tool.
