Comments on: The Big Question: Like A Virgin (Hey!) Edition

By: Roberta S

Roberta S — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:19:55 +0000

I was 14 and went on vacation and bought these wonderfully high heels with an ankle strap and rounded front. Man, whenever I see some like’m I still wish for them. I will say I wore those puppies until a size 8.5 no longer worked for my size 9s. My great grandmother always insisted on the ladylike stuff…finishing lessons, heels, and garter belts…but that’s a comment for another column :-) I just tuned 40 two weeks ago but what a magical delight having pantyhose in a flat box and a pair of heels were.

By: Mrs Mathis

Mrs Mathis — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:39:06 +0000

A Sears department store in Georgia, sometime around 1978. I was in junior high school and THEY were perched on a clearance sale rack. Black 2 1/2″ heels with a perforated toe, closed back and open sides. Not quite d’orsay and not quite my size. I wore those bad boys till the “pleather” cracked to pieces and my toes were permanently pinched. Good memories…

By: Kai Jones

Kai Jones — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:32:52 +0000

I was a sophomore in high school and received my first invitation to a dance: the winter semi-formal. I was also completely out of touch with high school fashion, as I discovered when I arrived in my black pencil skirt, black satin long-sleeved blouse (with lace trim), and black pumps. All the other girls were wearing pastel floor-length dresses with lots of ecru or white lace: the prairie style that Gunne Sax made popular. It was 1977.

My reputation was made! So to speak. At least I got asked to dance *way* more than the other girls.

By: QuiteLight

QuiteLight — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 01:04:58 +0000

When I was about 13, taller than all my classmates & my teacher, and one of the tormented “geeks”, my classmates shocked my nearly unconscious by voting for me as our class rep in the school charity fashion show. Like I said, very tall & very scrawny, all I can think of. But it was the first positive social thing to come my way in 3 years, so I jumped at it. They told me I needed low heels to do this, so my equally stunned mother took me to buy white leather 2″ pumps. I wore them for that show, gr. 8 grad (like a prom for wee teens), and modelling classes for the next 2 years.

Turns out I hated having my picture taken, hated wearing heels, and hated being told when I was clinically 15 lbs. underweight (doctor was after me to eat more), that I needed to LOSE 15 pounds. But the classes did help a lot with my low self esteem because I learned to stand up straight & how to groom myself. Fortunately I was tough enough to shake off the unhealthier programming. And those heels DID pitch me off the class “runway” into the lap of the CUTEST surfer-boy!

By: Scarlett

Scarlett — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 14:16:38 +0000

Oh! High heels! Okay, so my sister and I loooooooooved high heels when we were, like, five and two. We made my mother promise that, as soon as we found heels that really FIT in a real shoe store, we could get them and wear them for real. My mother, who to this day is a ladies’ size 5 1/2, promised, figuring that she had a good long time before that happened. LITTLE DID SHE KNOW that I would have a huge growth spurt when I was seven, and get up to a ladies’ 5. I found a pair of purple 3″ pumps in a TJ Maxx shortly thereafter, and she was bound by her world. I wore them to church, and Mum says that everyone looked at her like she was crazy, allowing this little kid to wear heels, but what could she do?

My sister, who did not grow quite so precipitously as I had, also managed to get around it a few years later by finding a pair of 3 inchers in a ladies’ size three.

By: JaneC

JaneC — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 04:24:31 +0000

My first real pair of heels were the black, strappy Unlisted sandals I bought to wear to my first high school dance. I had no idea that over the course of the next year, almost every girl in my class would purchase knock-offs of that particular sandal, and I would be the only one with the original version. Mine, being of slightly better quality, outlasted everyone else’s–I wore them to every high school dance and my first college dance, and never got blisters or had to take the shoes off. The heel strap kept them on, the chunky heel was the perfect height for me and very comfortable for dancing, and they looked pretty on my feet. I had to let them go six years after buying them because they were literally falling apart, and I’ve never found any dress sandals that were as comfortable.

By: Toby Wollin

Toby Wollin — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 12:00:24 +0000

My first heels - 1964 - My mom made me a black and white houndstooth suit (a SUIT) to wear to my cousin’s bar mitzva and we went downtown and bought me a pair of black leather heels - with a little t-strap in the front down near the toe and probably a 2″ heel. The ceremony was 4 hours away; there had been a family fight between my father and my grandfather so we got stuck all the way in the nose-bleed section of the synogogue. My father gave my cousin his “fountain pen” out in the parking lot. Quelle disastre!

By: Jennie

Jennie — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 02:53:20 +0000

It was 1970. I was 14 in small town NC. The local college was having a traveling performance of LaBoheme. I had never been to an opera, my family listened either to country or rock. They thought I was so weird for wanting to go. Everything I knew about opera, I had learned from novels so I knew you were suppose to dress for the Met. I took some of my saved babysitting money (supposed to be for college), went to the local Goodwill shop and bought a very Jackiesque long column dress with beading on the bodice, long white gloves, 3″ heels, rhinestone jewelry and a ringlet fall hair piece. I felt like a Princess! I think I spent a huge $18.00 for the whole set up. I practiced walking with a book on my head for 5 days so I could glide like the girls in my books. The night of the opera, my mother dropped me off alone in front of the auditorium. Ever so slowly, skirt lifted just so, I walked up the stairs. I had so many people looking and whispering (I was the only one there in formal wear of course!) and several kind people told me how lovely I looked. It was the most enchanted evening I remember, the night I fell in love with opera and high heels.

By: Peaches

Peaches — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 02:42:53 +0000

For a seventh grade Catholic school dance, mom treated me to my first heels. Then I wasn’t allowed to wear them to the dance, who knows why. So, in my kilt, fair isle sweater and knee socks, I slipped on my smuggled-in tan three inch high plastic heeled CANDIES!!! I can only attribute the extraordinary bad taste of mom and me on her fresh divorce from dad. She improved this look with my first pair of eyeglasses: huge Diane von Furstenberg pink plastic frames with a crystal heart on the bottom right of the lens. Be kind ladies. Its still traumatic!

By: Kate

Kate — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 01:51:08 +0000

I remember my first two pairs. One was a pair of black satin 2 inch heels to go with my dress for the junior class banquet. The second was a pair of natural linen french heels, also about two inches, that matched the linen dress I had for my graduation. My high school had a tradition of having the girls wear white caps and gowns, so it was best to wear a pale dress underneath that didn’t show through.