BOOM Edition 3 Jun 2016 Issue | Page 35

WOMEN’S you want a job, because dress code is a part of it. "At a lot of work places, you are expected to dress up and you are exempt if you've medical reasons or are pregnant. The look they are trying to achieve is probably modern and elegant, which perhaps reflects their business," she says. Her reading of what happened at the London multinational is it might have been a case of miscommunication. Medical practitioners, with good reason, are waving the red card. Orthopaedic surgeon Suresh Annamalai warns that looking good comes at a price. "When you are barefoot, the body weight is equally distributed; that is the natural alignment. The dynamics change when you wear heels," he says. PRICE OF BEAUTY Dr Annamalai explains that when the heel is one inch high, there is 22% pressure on the fore foot. This increases rather dramatically to 57% with two inches and 76% with three inches. "That is a lot of pressure on the foot," he says, adding that in a study conducted in the US, 28% had never worn high heels and they had 3% problems. Of the 72% who use them, the wear and tear was up to 33%. To high heel devotees, Dr Annamalai, a consultant at Manipal Hospital, tosses a painful, unattractive list of ailments -- bunions, metatarsalgia, Hagland's deformity, tendonitis, sciatica, back pain, degenerative joint disease, and even an altered gait. He points to one of those voluminous bibles on orthopaedics, which says that high heels are 'a potential contributing factor for higher lifetime risk of osteoarthritis in women'. But Dr Annamalai says that, "If you have to wear it stretch your foot and calf muscles before and after, and limit the height to no more than two inches." Heels have a look-at-me effect that flats simply can't conjure. Fashionistas say it extends the legs and lends confidence. Simply put, it is sexy. CHOICE FACTOR Fashion guru Prasad Bidappa agrees that stilettos make for a sexy silhouette, but asks who is making all these rules? Brogues or Oxfords work well with business suits and complete the professional look. "Maybe for an evening out, but not when you have to be active for long periods of time," Bidappa says. "Some women use heels as an accessory," the style guru notes, adding that they can elevate an outfit from average to elegant, which gives them confidence for that big meeting or interview. "But what you wear has got to be a personal choice. Enforcing a dress code, where you hand out the height of a heel, is wrong." Bidappa says that Roberts’ barefoot statement is a rebellion against the Cannes festival organisers, who turned away women in flats. “When someone like Julia Roberts or Aishwarya Rai says something, people listen,” he says. In India, high heels and stilettos are not an everyday thing. But that is changing. No surprise then that Abhishek Singhania, a dancer who likes to twist and turn wearing pencil points, picked the country’s IT capital for his first workshop on walking in heels. “High heels are never comfortable,” he says. “If you love them, you find a way to go through the day.” ‘Love’, he adds, is the magic trick to wearing high heels. “Heels,” Singhania notes, “are a journey. They’re an art form.” It may be all of that, but foremost it is a choice. Formal clothes can be a requirement, but four inches of heel that could also leave you crippled by middleage can’t be. To suffer or not, should be a choice. A personal one. 35 | BOOM