Harmful female footwear: A public health perspective

Footwear fashion is an instance of a socially formed attitude affecting somatic population health. High-heeled, particularly pointy-toed shoes are posed to structurally distort and overload feet leading to musculoskeletal sequelae. Here we compiled multilanguage website images presenting female footwear produced by the top manufacturers to assess the advertising effects on the prevailing height of heels worn by women. The method was based on the analysis of websites using the command “woman shoes” in scores of languages of the Internet Google browser. We then compared the results of the internet search with those of a live street surveillance of the footwear worn by 100 adult women in the downtown Warsaw metropolis in Poland. We found that stiletto heels with pointed shoe tips significantly predominated in images representing the countries belonging to the Western cultural sphere compared to less affluent world areas where low or flat heels prevailed. However, we noted a gradual departure from the fashion of high heels over the last decade, confirmed by live street surveillance, liable to reflect changes in the website presentations of top shoe manufacturers consistent with increasing awareness of potential harm by high heels. Yet the female aptitude for wearing more physiologic shoe models appears to exceed that resulting from marketing campaigns. Doing away with high-heeled pointy-toed shoes requires intensification of pro-health preventive measures in the field of public health.