There can't be a woman out there who hasn't suffered a broken heel while on a night out. So I viewed the story of Sophie King with interest. Sophie received more than £7000 in compensation for a broken ankle, suffered when the heel of her £35 stiletto snapped.
Of course products shouldn't be faulty, but as Ariane Sherine points out:
"wearing stilettos if, like King, you're 5'9", and expecting them not to break contravenes a basic law of physics. If you exert force over an area, that area has to be large enough to withstand the pressure, otherwise something's going to give. So it's more than possible that King's tumble wasn't a "malfunction"; it was probably just science in action"
When I look at a pair of very high stilettos in a shop, I am imminently aware of the dangers of wearing them. You don't have to snap the heel to do your ankle serious damage, all you need to do is "go over on your ankle" (i.e. an inversion injury, very familiar to anyone who has worked in A&E) or to get your heel caught in a crack in a payment.
So the question is should shoe manufacturers have to put a Government health warning on their shoes, similar to the "tobacco seriously damages your health" warnings seen on cigarette packets. While a broken ankle is not as much of a tragedy as lung cancer (and the many other diseases smoking causes) some people are clearly not aware of the danger they are putting themselves in (or at least try to absolve themselves of the responsibility when an injury occurs).
And all for what, I sometimes have to agree with Bryony Gordon when she says when wearing high heels "in reality we usually look like a limping Quasimodo on stilts".
1 comments:
Why not go coordiante prosecuting high-heel shoe manfucturers for systematically attempting perpetrating abuse on unsuspecting women? They don't abuse men in the same way, its a clear gender-discrimination issue.
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