QotD: Stiletto heels

Someone once pointed out how brave and foolish was the first man to eat an oyster. And we celebrate the genius of Jenner for inventing vaccination, yet we never consider the idiotic heroism of the small lad who said, yes, of course you can slit my arm open with a knife and insert a cowpox scab into the gaping wound just to see what'll happen. So, we may venerate the master shoemaker Roger Vivier for the invention of the stiletto (named appropriately after the Italian knife favoured by assassins), but the first woman who slid her toes into these tortuous things is a martyr whose name is known only to God.

Setting aside the agony, which is not unlike having your toes forced into a blunt pencil sharpener, it's astonishing how difficult walking with anything close to elegance is. I caused much hilarity clopping around the kitchen like a bow-legged pantomime dame with third-degree piles. "Point your toes," the Blonde kept saying. I felt like a cross between a Tchaikovsky cygnet and a lipizzaner. What is so inexplicable about stilettos is not why women wear them, but why they ever wear them twice.

A.A. Gill, "When a man wears heels", TimesOnline, 2008-09-07