Hey ladies listen up. If you wear high heels men will be nicer to you.
That’s the conclusion of a French study titled “High heels may enhance a man’s instinct to be helpful” published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.
For some sexy examples of high-heel wearers scroll below.
Nicolas Guéguen of the Université de Bretagne-Sud conducted several experiments and found that men’s behavior toward the opposite sex changed when women were wearing spiky shoes.
In one test, Guéguen pitted women in comfortable footwear against stiletto wearers and had them drop a glove and pretend not to notice. (Does anybody do that nowadays?) Men rushed to help the sexy shoe wearers/damsels in distress much more often than they did for the frumpy shoed.
In another experiment, women in both flats and heels asked men to participate in a survey. And guess what? The high-heeled data collector got more responses than the woman with her feet planted firmly on the ground.
In case you didn’t think this was some serious science here are some of the results: “The difference between the medium heels condition and the high heels condition approached significance, χ 2(1, N = 60) = 3.07, p = .08, ф = .22.”
In other words “Our results showed, that, in general, spontaneous help was offered more easily to women as soon as the length of their shoe heels increased,” Guéguen wrote.
Heel height for women, however, made no difference in their willingness to help other women. (Because we think with our brains … but I digress.)
“Women’s shoe heel size exerts a powerful effect on men’s behavior,” said Guéguen in a summary. “The results of these studies once again reveal how men focus on women’s physical attributes when judging and interacting with members of the opposite sex.”
Guéguen speculated that because men are used to seeing sexy models in high heels they have “started to associate the wearers of high-heeled shoes with those having sexual intent.” In other words, well, you know.
I don’t know if this study will make women think burning bunions and aching arches are worth having a stranger pick up their glove, but it’s at least an excuse to go buy some new shoes.
As the great Carrie Bradshaw of “Sex and the City” said, “The fact is, sometimes it’s really hard to walk in a single woman’s shoes. That’s why we need really special ones now and then to make the walk a little more fun.”
Speaking of fun, here’s some of our local fashionistas in their own high heels.
