[ExI] how did high heels happen?

[Kellycoinguy]

Lady Gaga or some other television our societal influence? Other kids at school?

I think this must be memetic not genetic


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Subject: [ExI] how did high heels happen? 
From: spike <spike66 at att.net> 
To: 'ExI chat list' <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> 
CC:  

 

I am a long-time veteran of observing wild beasts, noting odd characteristics and behaviors, but I have observed a behavior of the most inscrutable of beasts, the wildly complicated homo sapiens, which has me stumped completely.

 

My six year old niece is visiting.  She has one sibling, an eight year old brother.  She is the exact opposite of a tomboy, a real frilly-laced girly girl.  Her mother is not that way, but the daughter sure is.  She has few external influences in that direction that we know of: Disney movies perhaps.

 

In any case, she has been wanting high heel shoes.  So for Christmas her parents gave her some toy glass slippers like Cinderella wore to the ball, which have heels, but it really wasn’t what she was shooting for.  We googled on women’s shoes, and she was wildly excited by stiletto heel pumps.  We tried to explain that little girls don’t wear such devices, but she would have none of that.  She wants these high heels, so now this presents some puzzling questions.

 

Why would a pre-adolescent child be so fervently attracted to such a garment?

 

My previous theory on high heel shoes has been destroyed.  I had assumed that women thought that men found high heel shoes sexy (we don’t) and so wearing such a contraption would attract men.  But that doesn’t apply to my first grader niece, who has shown no particular attraction for boys and as far as we know has no foggy clue of the concept of sexual attraction or copulation.  But she is attracted to those shoes like bees to honey.

 

Question: could this behavior be somehow hard wired into human brains?  Has anyone any speculations or theories that could explain why a little girl would be inclined to wear something that is uncomfortable, impractical and discouraged by her own parents?

 

spike
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