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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>>…</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Stefano Vaj<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] how did high heels happen?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal>2011/12/28 <<a href="mailto:natasha@natasha.cc">natasha@natasha.cc</a>><o:p></o:p></p><p><span style='color:#1F497D'>>></span>Looking at high heels is like looking at sculpture<span style='color:#1F497D'>…</span> Wearing high heels feels sexy. <span style='color:#1F497D'>…</span>Not all high heels are uncomfortable<span style='color:#1F497D'>…<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><br><span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span>After all, we have been standing on the balls of our feet for most of our evolutionary history... :-)<span style='color:#1F497D'> </span>--<span style='color:#1F497D'> </span>Stefano Vaj<span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Ja, almost all mammals do that. Humans and the great apes are (I think) the only beasts walking around bearing load on the heels. Anyone know a counter example? This is easily seen if you have a pet dog or cat. They are more analogous to humans than we realize, although they are proportioned a bit differently. For instance, look at their hind leg. I almost seems like their knee is backwards, but that isn’t a knee, it is an ankle. The knee is the same as ours, but it his higher up, so that the femur is shorter. Mammal skeletons are all pretty similar in structure.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Stefano’s point is well made: if you look at the balls of the feet, it is clear those things are structurally capable of bearing a load. Perhaps relevant is the fact that our toes can bend nearly perpendicular to the metatarsals but our fingers cannot bend that far off the axis of the metacarpals. The way I would interpret that is that perhaps the feet bore the load differently a few tens of millions of years ago than they do now. In the old days, humans walked similarly to the way other mammals did.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>So then, consider my observation that in some cases, pre-adolescent girls are attracted to shoes that cause that kind of walking. It appears to be completely unrelated to attracting attention (she likes the shoes even when alone), apparently unrelated to auto-eroticism (she’s six), unrelated to peer pressure (her peers do not have those), apparently unrelated to fashion (she doesn’t get the other aspects of fashion), but clearly she gets wildly excited by the shoes themselves in a most puzzling way. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Evolutionary psychology encourages me to make a big reach, loosely based on Stefano’s observation, just to see it ridiculed: the appeal of the high-fashion shoe is somehow hardwired into the structure of our brains, a faint echo from long forgotten ancestors who walked on the balls of the feet. This faint urge is immune from reason, it flatly defies analysis. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>This and the puzzling “sport” of bullfighting for instance are two examples of what I will call the Reprehensible Principle: <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Just because we understand that we human brains have a reptilian core does not cause us to cease having one.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>No, scratch, I can do better than that. Bullfighting is reptilian. Fashion shoe attraction is mammalian. Writing internet posts puzzling about it is pure higher primate.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></div></body></html>