Shyheels

Indeed there has been much in the way of interesting discussion going on here! And in a couple of other threads too! And as you say, no sabre rattling! I have been looking at a very nice pair of knee boots that is available in either a 100 or a 120 heel - with the heels scaled appropriately for the shoe size, so both of those heights would be higher for me given my shoe size. But that is all good. I want the full experience and perspective and challenge that a stiletto wearing woman would have with either of those heights. No cheating by having longer feet. If I am going to do this it is going to be done properly. The 100 would obviously be the more sensible height, but of the 120 has a certain cachet, glamour and elegance, not to mentioned added challenge. We’ll see. In my favour I do have strong flexible ankles and excellent balance.

Read the history of the bicycle - or any social history of the 1890s; that was where the fashion for women in trousers got its legs, so to speak. WWII was late in the game. The stage was set around the turn of the century and it was all about liberation not practicality. I realise WWII looms large in the British psyche as the great catalyst for 20th century change, but things were happening - and in a big way - long before the war. The war made woman in the workplace a far more common sight, but the groundwork for the adoption of trousers and pantaloons was already in place.

The invention of the bicycle and its massive uptake among women in particular during the 1890s was a massive catalyst for change, with many sociologists, social commentators at the time - and some of the leading suffragettes of the day - claiming that the bicycle did more to liberate women than any other single thing or event in the late 19th, early 20th century. Along with this new liberation came new ideas and new fashions - not least the need or desire to adopt pantaloons in order to ride new dangled “safety” bicycle (as opposed to the old penny farthing) Ladies bicycles with the looping frames allowed long skirts to be worn, but pantaloons and trousers were in to stay and it was thanks to the bicycle that the big social shift began. Women - liberated women of the age - totally decided it was time to change, to escape their cumbersome skirts and be mobile, free moving and daring. This was nothing thrust upon them but seized by daring women who took the imitative and weathered the inevitable censure that followed as a result Sure in WWII women worked in factories and wore trousers, but the hard yards had already been out in by the liberated women at turn of the century and their bicycles. The effect of the bicycle on society was truly profound and often overlooked or forgotten today. It is worth reading. Bicycles were the smartphones of the 1890s in their overall disruptive transformative affect - especially on women and the working class.

Back on the topic of permissiveness and the wearing of heels, I don't really see the kinds of enlightened changes in the future where doors open as if by magic and men are suddenly being allowed to wear heels - or whatever else it may be that expresses their personalities. But then I don't think society ever works that way. These kinds of rights are not given, they must be taken, assumed. And that means risk taking and the acceptance of society's slings and arrows by the vanguard. Today we take for granted the fact that women wear jeans and trousers - indeed multi-billion dollar fashion empires are built around women's jeans - but a century ago (even to an extent right up to the 1950s) the idea of women in trousers (let alone skinny spray-on jeans!) was radical and socially destabilising idea. The vanguard - the bold and daring women who wore pantaloons (the bicycle had lot to do with this) - had to put up with an awful lot, but they won through by means of perseverance and thick skins. They won. Today the idea that women in trousers and jeans was frowned upon seems laughable, almost unbelievably antiquated. The thing is women - as a group, and individually - displayed moral courage that men just do not seem to be able to muster. If women want to adopt a style or fashion, they will do it - come what may, shrug off the comments, and own the look. Men by and large don't dare, for loads of complex reasons. Sure, a few - a very, very few - will wear heels out and about, but not many - certainly not enough to form a critical mass and effect change, influence the big fashion houses, and boot and shoe companies to create mass-market lines of men's heels, and ultimately turn the whole thing around. We are a long, long way from that and I do not see men, as a group, ever managing it. Men simply do not take those kinds of risks and if they did would be far too swift to retreat at the first bump in the road - unlike women, who soldiered on. I don't see that changing.

Speed is just what you need with sabre - or indeed any of the weapons. Sabres themselves are lightweight. In term of that there is little difference between foil and sabre. Epee is a bit heavier, with the much bigger, chunkier guard. But the weight of the weapons themselves is not really a consideration. You'd be fine. Hopefully the homestead will get sorted out. In terms of investing in boots look at it this way - having spent the money you will be focussed on getting the best possible use out of your boots and find all sorts of wonderful perfectly valid reasons to make expeditions out and about in them!

No running? No ball games? And here I was planning on wearing my stilettos when I was out practicing my long-jumping....

I expect I shall be able to walk 'okay' in 100mm or 120mm given my flexibility and the size of my foot. But walking well - gliding - is another matter. I aspire to walk well in my stilettos...

I loved sabre and would have kept it up, but I moved and couldn't find a good sabre master where I moved to. I've tried foil (everybody starts with foil) and epee, but sabre was what really did it for me. Loved it. Yes, quick reflexes are key... You ought to invest in the tall boots with fitted shafts. Yes, the upfront cost would be high but wen you think of all the time and effort you have put in looking for, trying on, sending back various boots over the years, you have 'spent' far more than that just in the value of your time. And then you would have a special pair of boots that would mean something to you. It would be well worth the investment in pleasure and satisfaction. You're a long time dead...

I really think 120 is pretty much a decent outer limit as to what looks graceful and can be gracefully worn.

It is a concern, whether for high heels or any other innocent measurable freedoms we have always taken for granted. Social media is a force that allows handfuls of noisy Twitter users to exert influence over society that far exceed their actual numbers; it allows a vocal (tiny) minority to bully the population at large, with risk averse corporations (and their lawyers) only too ready to fall into line in the wake of the dreaded "Twitter storm". It takes nothing these days to start a stampede.

Indeed, I am not going to splash out hundreds on custom made boots. I am willing to spend reasonable money to get something nice. Many years of cycling, stretching, a few years of being a dedicated sabre fencer in my younger days has left me with strong and flexible ankles. That is no substitute for experience in wearing stilettos, practice alone will do that, but it ought to give me a solid base from which to start...

I have checked out Banana Shoes and am checking out various eBay sellers. I am not limiting myself to otk books but am happy to consider stiletto knee and ankle boots, as well. I have my eyes on a pair of classic looking (secondhand, nearly new) knee boots with a 4" stiletto heel. They look quite nice...

I am avoiding scales and tape measures for the time being. I suspect I may have put on a couple of pounds, but it would be no more than that. My waist size is the same. No tight jeans. I have been going, intermittently, to the gym doing the holiday period and am going to amp that up a bit. Indeed my jeans have been a bit loose lately and my new PVCs are in the next size down which should not only fit but also provide me with a warning - my canary in the coal mine - should the waist start to expand! And what a nice way to do it!

I'm not quite so sure about the 60s and 70s being a 'groper's paradise'. Harvey Weinstein actions - which amount to nothing less than rape - would hardy have been accepted let alone condoned in the 60s or 70s or any other decade. Certainly, men like him - rich, powerful, brutal - were able to get away with it then, but they were/are able to get away with it today. Weinstein's activities continued right up until last year, as did Spacey's etc. And quite rightly he/they are being pursued and will hopefully be made to pay for their assaults and intimidation. But men - even powerful men in Hollywood - were convicted of rape and assault in the 60s and 70s too. Roman Polanski was heading for prison when he fled the US. It was Hollywood that was forgiving of him, not the US Government which to this day wants him back... What I think is different these days is that all-too-common male boorishness - such as wolf whistles and drunken hands on knees at office Christmas parties - or even casual innocently-meant comments about someone being attractive etc is now being conflated with rape. I read a column the other day in the Independent (I think, or maybe the Guardian) where the author was condemning the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty because it supposedly glamorised sexual assault. How? Well, Prince Charming kisses Sleeping Beauty without her consent (since she was asleep, you see) to break the enchantment and this, according to the author, was sexual assault. Right. I suppose under those lights CPR could be considered the same thing...

One likes to think things will be less hidebound in 30 years time, but I am sceptical. Although certain things are more freely acceptable now - PVC and otk boots as you say - there is also, as a counterpoint, an erosion of freedoms of thought and speech, a rampant political correctness and political agendas being driven by Twitter storms and a collective risk averseness that is encroaching more and more on individual liberties. In many ways the 70s and 80s were a far more easy going period than now. I could, for example, easily see health and safety regulators, strident feminism, Twitter storms and fearful politicians banning high heels in the workplace - or else the lawyers fearful of lawsuits might do it on a company by company basis, with nightclubs and restaurants following suit. I am not sanguine about open societies and individual freedoms in the future...

I shall have a look. A name like that though suggests fetish and I am really looking for nice stiletto boots to wear to the office. Although I make light of my office dress code, I do want my boots to be classy and fashionable.

They are a long way from my size that's for sure. Finding nice classy stiletto boots in my size is not easy - or cheap! But will be worth it...

The hunt is always fun. Topshop seems to have pretty well sold out of PVC jeans on their website. I reckon I must have picked up the last two pair that they had. That gives me a total of four pair of PVC jeans now - probably just about enough... But then again...

I did hide my feelings from myself for a good many years - certainly as regards my fancying a pair of tall (supposedly) feminine boots. I had quite innocently and openly coveted a pair of go-go boots I'd seen worn by a girl in my class when I was about 11 or 12. She wore them nearly every day. I liked them (I liked her too) and wanted a pair of go-go boots like hers. This was '69-'70 and fashion lines were blurring considerably and - ditzy as it may seem - I really didn't understand that boots could have gender. Dresses did - I knew that, and skirts too, but boots seemed to be for everybody, at least in my imagination. Anyway I made some innocent remark one day - fortunately it was sufficiently ambiguous that I could retreat from it - and was mortified to find I had been fancying a pair of girls boots. And that they were strictly girls boots. At the same time I was also vaguely outraged by the unfairness of it. I could see no reason for them to be strictly for girls, and resented the fact that this was so. Foolishly, I regarded those precepts as 'gospel' and dispelled all thoughts of my every actual owning or wearing ostensibly feminine boots. My tastes moved on from go-go boots to other styles as I grew up, but always admired from afar, wistfully but without any hope of ever owning or wearing a pair of these curiously feminine boots. It wasn't an obsession. It was something that pretty much only came to mind during autumn when the new boot fashions are out and I would see tall elegant “women”boots on shop windows and be reminded that they were not for me, no matter how much I might have wished otherwise. I simple and slavishly obeyed social conventions as regards boots and fashion, but without ever actually believing in them. I do not and never have believed that adopting any form of footwear to be crossdressing. Any more than I would consider wearing, say, the colour pink, to be crossdressing. Shoes and boots, and colours, are worn by everybody. It comes down to styling, some styles (and colours) and considered 'feminine' and others not. But boots and shoes are all in the same broad unisex category - worn by all in one form or style or another, unlike skirts and dresses which, at least in Western culture, are strictly feminine. I might add that I have never had the least interest in cross dressing - not even out of curiosity. I've never tried on a skirt, let alone a dress, and not because I would have felt threatened by doing such a thing but because I simply had no interest or desire; I've never had a plate of liver and onions either; there is simply no appeal there. What did appeal though were tall elegant boots. Having at long last given myself permission to buy and wear OTK suede boots, it was but a simple matter to think things through and realise that if I wanted to there was nothing wrong pushing the boat out and going for heeled boots - and stilettos, at that. And why not. Heels had a certain regal elegance to boots and wearing them satisfies - or will satisfy - the age-old curiosity. What does it feel like to wear high heels? - even if it is a curiosity that has long gone unacknowledged. I find that embracing the fact that I like these supposedly strictly feminine boots, and that I fancy wearing and learning to walk well in stilettos, does not raise questions about my identity at all - instead it confirms me in my identity: I'm a regular straight guy who likes otk boots and aspires to wear stilettos well; no more no less, no confusions. It is quite clarifying.

My friend say they are 130s in a size seven although I would imagine larger or smaller sizes would have proportionally scaled heel heights. I agree about anything north of 127mm or 5 inches being pretty much fetish territory. And they look fetish at that height too - not natural, let alone elegant. Personally I don't find super high heels - those above five inches - to be very appealing in any sense. Actually I would say 120mm is my limit for visual appeal. I do like 120mm stiletto boots - it is a great height; imperious but still elegant.

The excitement of doing something forbidden - exactly!

Funnily enough none of the girls I have been romantically involved with, or my ex or my present wife have ever been ones to wear heels. None of them. I never noticed and woukdn’t even have thought if it were it not for the conversations here. I always liked tall boots but heels didn’t figure into it that much - mind you I liked boots with heels, but it was never an obsession.

Well, my holographic Topshop PVCs should arrive tomorrow and I can report. I bought a pair of the midnight blue PVCs too. A good look for the office for 2018... I could look for heels to go with them, but I tend to dress down everywhere else when I wear my PVCs - jumper, colourful converse sneakers etc.

I am an adventurer. After travelling through more than 100 countries on assignments I find that the more interesting journeys are those take inside ourselves.

I share both of the external stimuli you mention. I have long thought tall boots looked nice and begrudged/envied women the freedom they enjoyed to have such theatricality in their wardrobe. High heeled boots had the added tantalising appeal of being that bit further out of reach and therefore even more intriguing. When one adds the natural curiosity factor which I am sure is very widespread among men - who wouldn't be at least a bit curious about what it was like to wear heels - the only question then is do you indulge your sense of curiosity or do you bury it, pretend it isn't there, doesn't exist. Even more challenging is the question of what happens if you do dare to try out heels - do you open yourself to the possibility that you might like it, or do you go into it with a scoffing dismissive attitude like so many of the male journalists who write articles about their day in heels? And if you do dare to open yourself to the possibility that it might be something you like, what happens then if in fact you find you actually do like heels - love wearing them in fact. Do you admit it to yourself? Do you do it again? Make your experimental hour in heels become your experimental day in heels or your week in heels? Or do you just try to forget the whole thing? Live it down?