"Never before have a few inches mattered so much." The tagline for an upcoming exhibit at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto says everything about guys in heels.
Today, of course, high-heeled shoes are synonymous with femininity. Men who want to add a bit of height have to do so with inserts on the DL, and any non-cowboys wandering around with heels visibly higher than normal might get a few judgy looks.
But for about 130 years in the 17th and 18th centuries, Western men wore heeled shoes as an expression of power.
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"We're so nervous about the idea of men in heels today," Semmelhack told The Huffington Post. "Hopefully, what this exhibition will do is highlight for people that what's really curious about the history of men in heels is our current attitude towards it."
Semmelhack theorizes that heeled shoes were borrowed from Asia, where they were used for horseback riding, in the early 1600s. Persia had been gaining political influence around that time, and exoticism in dress was a symbol of high status. It wasn't long before women began wearing heels, too. Semmelhack explained it was (somewhat unsurprisingly) trendy for women to borrow from mens' closets in the 1600s, and there they found high-heeled shoes. Never before in the history of mankind did everyone's butts look so fantastic.
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The other pictures are too big but check them out in the article. Are y'all gonna buy a pair of heels? If I were rich honestly I'd buy some!
