You know, the flatform? That asinine false compromise between a heel and a flat? It is, according to someone, and someone else, and more people, the ‘it shoe’ of Spring 2011. It promises the comfort of a flat with the height of a heel. Like a wedge, right? But better! No, not better. The flatform is the televised soothsaying evangelist of footwear. It will try and get you to call a ‘1-900’ number. Do not dial. They will not get you into heaven.
I am completely sympathetic to the sentiment that may lead a lady to fork over some dollars for something that looks like some shoe I saw in the Smithsonian once that, to the best of my recollection, was intended for medieval slaves. I get it – most women who get all drooly and covetous over fashion maintain that a heel knocks out a flat in any aesthetic wrestling ring. I love wearing heels. In a pair of pumps, if I happen to simultaneously scope out my own derriere and cross my eyes, my physique looks ever so closer to Gisele’s. It isn’t a height issue – it is a body tipping issue. In heels, my calves flex, my butt pops and tightens, and my boobs tilt forward to balance. This is why they are an orthopedic disaster – at the expense of your skeletal and muscular systems, they make you feel a bit more like Jessica Rabbit. The case for heels is really obvious.
As is, of course, the case against them – at their worst, heels can inflict a pain much, much worse than the thought of anything in the Tower of London. They pinch, they strain, they rub and they scratch. Breaking in a pair of cheap peep toes makes me wish I was doing anything else - say, shaving my own eyeball with a rusty shank – rather than taking one more step. I have stumbled barefoot at 3:00a.m. in four different countries, carrying one pretty shoe in each hand – simply because the very legitimate threat of tetanus or other infection was preferable to another stroke of blister-chafing misery. I have literally bled on Steve Madden ankle straps. I have at some point walked with my arm on the shoulder of every boyfriend I have ever had in a desperate attempt to lighten the burden of my own weight on a foot that had been flogged beyond the point of recognition as a human body part. And even in those moments of vain foolishness – even when I have surrendered, and am waiving a white flag at my earlier instinct to wear something so painful because it was so pretty – EVEN THEN – I do not want to wear a mother-effing flatform. I want a flat.
Flatforms do not provide the advantageous angles that heels do, and they do not afford a weary heel-victim quite the same relief as a flat. They offer height without sculpting, and really do look like these, you genius nincompoops. So, if you are in search of less comfort than a flat without the pesky smokin’ hottification of a heel, put on a damn flatform. Then sneak up on some pals, and get a load of the looks on their faces when they think they’re being trailed by a quick, sneaky elephant. Smack at every floorboard in your town and pierce the eardrum of any and all sorry locals in your path. Deem them a new classic and snatch them up in every color. Just keep the stupid things away from me. I’ll stick with heels - and don’t you dare step in front of me and obscure my own view of my behind. I want a good look, because I know my butt won’t look as good in eight hours when I take them off...but you know what? Yours never did.
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