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BEAUTY INSIDE AND Ou®

The Da Vinci Code

Closet your pumps and stash away your stilettos, high heels do more

damage than they’re worth

By Stephanie Trembath, Life and
Style Editor

ast Tuesday I decided to spend

the evening at the Vancouver

Art Gallery, partially because
Tuesday entrance is by donation, and
partially because it was the final week
of Leonardo da Vinci’s exhibit, The
Mechanics of Man. Whenever I go out I
enjoy the details of getting ready almost
as much as I do the event itself, and have
developed rituals and signature pieces I
never leave the house without. A tube of
red lipstick, and bobby pins must always
be in my purse, along with a wadded up
roll of bills and handfuls of change for
coffees, and I usually grab a notebook
in case I feel momentarily inspired to
jot something down. I also never go out
without a pair of heels. Pumps, cowboy
boots, stilettos, wedges; it doesn’t matter.
At 5 foot 2,1 figure I can always stand

exact descriptions and labelling of the
movements and muscles in Latin.

I know enough about human
anatomy to understand that heels will
ruin your feet and affect your posture,
but not enough to worry about what I am
doing to my body and how it will affect
me later. Standing in front of an enlarged
and English-labelled version of da
Vinci’s drawing of a foot and upper calf I
saw an exact portrait of why balancing on
the ball of your foot all day is harmful.

While wearing heels the foot
becomes plantar flexed so that your
toes face downwards, which puts an
increased amount of pressure onto
your forefoot and metatarsals (toes).

Da Vinci illustrated this by allowing

for 100 pounds of actual weight to be
redistributed onto the metatarsals, and
100 pounds of accidental weight to be
redistributed on the forefoot; thus causing
200 pounds to be carried on the balls of
the feet. When the foot is plantar flexed,

If only da Vinci could see the designer footwear women walk around in
today, and the impossible height we try to achieve while balancing on
the ball of our foot.

to be a few inches taller, so I tough it out
and after the first painful hour walking
my toes usually go numb and I become
content in my unbearable footwear.

As it goes, I wore my vintage grey
cowboy boots to the Art Gallery, which
are moderately comfortable considering
they have a wide heel, and was enjoying
myself immensely until I happened
upon one of da Vinci’s pieces from his
Anatomical Manuscript.

The Mechanics of Man exhibit
featured da Vinci’s works which
concentrated on the structures of the
human body and the movements of the
musculature. In the 1500s, da Vinci took
interested in investigating the anatomy of
the body and spent time with a scientist
from the University of Pavia where he
participated in dissecting animal and
human corpses. His observations led
him to compile anatomical drawings of
the human musculature, which are still
the greatest triumph of scientific inquiry.
Each of his drawings were done with
pen and ink on 18 sheets of paper with

the tendon in the calves become flexed as
well; which causes the tendons to shorten
and tighten. The shortening of the calf
muscle (the gastrocnemius) causes the
accidental weight to be displaced. If only
da Vinci could see the designer footwear
women walk around in today, and the
impossible height we try to achieve while
balancing on the ball of our foot.

After doing some research, I
discovered that hammertoes and
osteoarthritis are also linked to wearing
high heeled shoes. Osteoarthritis is
a degenerative joint disease which is
caused by the breakdown of cartilage
surrounding the knee. A study done at
Harvard Medical School by D. Casey
Kerrigan showed that high heels increase
pressure at the knee joints by 26 per cent.

Despite my findings I cannot
honestly say that I will never wear high
heels again. Considering that our society
today practically eats, breaths, and sleeps
with laptops and cell phones, I figure
cancer can get me while I am wearing
cute shoes.

 

lfFE ana SCYIE