High Heels
Presented without comment.
Gueguen’s study had 19-year-old female volunteers wearing black shoes with heels that were 0.5cm (0.2 inches) or 5cm (2 inches) or 9cm (3 1/2 inches) high. Then they asked men between the ages of 25-50 for help in various circumstances.
One situation involved a woman asking passers-by: “Excuse me, sir. We are currently conducting a survey on gender equality. Would you agree to answer our questionnaire?” Flat heels got a 46.7% answer rate, medium heels a 63% rate and the highest heels a whopping 83% success rate from the men.
The story is here.
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Hmmm so higher heels seem to be like ideology. The higher the heel the less thinking men do.
There is a bit of bias in that study since they didn’t have men in high heels asking people questions. I’m thinking about the last few guys i saw in high heels and i would have done what they told me to do since they were also rugged, tough, bearded manly man albeit in high heels and sequined ball gowns.Report
The Montana legislature has released its dress code for the 2015 session. Female members (also staff, media, interns and aides) are advised to be sensitive to skirt length and necklines. Denim is right out for everyone. No casual Fridays or Saturdays.Report
As someone who has jumped around between low level management and highly skilled labor over the years, one of my peeves has always been casual dress work days. This has always been one of the areas that causes lots of friction between labor and management.Report
@aaron-david
Why do you like casual dress work days? What sort of friction does it occur?
Law in the SF Bay Area is very interesting. One firm I worked for was business casual with jeans Friday and jeans Friday turned out to be a struggle to fight for with a severe split among the managing partners. I’ve worked for other firms that let me wear whatever I wanted as long as I wasn’t going to court or doing a depo or something like that.
Some of my friends have old-school bosses and they need to wear suit and tie (or female equivalent) 5 days a week.
From what I hear law and banking are the last firms on the West Coast especially in SF to require business attire. The rest of the country is more formal. I think needing to wear a suit or tie is actually a sign of having a bit of a low-status job much of the time on the west coast. This Oatmeal Carton sums up the coastal divide well enough:
http://theoatmeal.com/pl/minor_differences5/suitReport
Actually I don’t like casual days. If you are working in a job that has you dress one way 80% of the time for no reason, why change it for the 20%? Because its Friday? Never made sense to me.
What always got me was that as a field tech, you were expected to dress appropriate for the job, no mater where you were. When your boss takes one day a week and decides that because the weekend is tomorrow he can wear a budda t-shirt and flip-flops and not have to do any field supervising (can’t go out on location like that.) Often labor needs management of physically check on things and make decisions,casual dress takes them out of that loop. Also in general it creates massive rifts between labor and management. Often management needs to keep at least the appearance of being able to work in the field at a moments notice.Report
@aaron-david
I am not a field tech but I feel like if you are going to be crawling around on the floor or something trying to fix things, it seems silly to wear business casual or even business wear.
Maybe SF has gotten to me but I also think there is something really stodgy and old-fashioned about the hold of the business suit with tie except for court. It isn’t necessarily uncomfortable but once gets casual dress most of the time, it is a benefit that it is hard to give up. Keep in mind casual for me usually still involves button front shirts.
San Francisco tech types also have a way of stretching business casual to the absolute limit.Report
How much of this is sexism and how much of it is simply a question of height?
(Some of both, I should expect.)Report
Not stopping for women in flats is sexist?Report
Doesn’t that depend on what high heels signify to the man who doesn’t stop for flats?Report
I wouldn’t call it sexism or even misogny, but obviously some sort of bias towards attractiveness. A key question I’d have is how much of this particular attraction is nature and how much is nurture. A key takeaway is how do we encourage men who hold this bias (note: everyone holds biases of one type or another) to recognize and account for it?Report
Kazzy
Im sure some liberal congress critter would be happy to pass an anti flat shoe bias law. Heaven forbid any bias not be addressed via federal law.Report
Because that is *exactly* what I was getting at, @notme . Well done.Report
In one study, the woman was sitting.
That said, it’s Brittany. And social psychology.Report
I suspect that the glove thing, at least, doesn’t mean too much.Report
Now, I wish they’d do a similar study of men stopping woman to ask for help; no hair, some hair, and a lot of hair.
Just for shits and giggles.Report
Predictions?Report
About the same type of response rate; 47% for .02″ of hair, 63% for 2″ of hair, and 83% for Rock-star hair.Report
Honestly, I don’t know if it would map that closely to hair. But height? I’d be surprised if it didn’t. We primates defer to the tall ape.Report
Glyph,
yes, but that’s processing orders, not being asked for help.Report
The assumption of hairism doesn’t necessarily communicate what you think.
Maybe the guy with the full head of hair comes across as pleasantly dumb.Report
Or overly testosterone laden.Report
As someone with a thick head of hair that often tips over into “bushy” and “unmanageable”, I do not appreciate this reverse hairassment.Report
Yeah, but do you have a wash board or a tub?Report
We use a machine, what do you think we are, hillbillies?Report
Isn’t that what Rob Lowe does for a living now?Report
@zic
Depends on where the hair is growing right?Report
The survey question seems like a much better test than the dropped glove. I would be much more likely to stop and help someone on the street pick up a fallen object if they looked like they might need help with it; a stack of papers, for example, but not one glove. Unless, of course, the person is wearing tall shoes (or crutches or something), because that legitimately makes it more difficult to pick something up than wearing flats.Report
An even better experiment: have a woman drop something and see whether a male passerby picks it up for her, when she’s wearing pants vs. a short skirt.Report
There is that one style of mens’ dress shoes, that is specifically designed for looking up short skirts…Report
I’ve never heard of a mechanic’s dolly referred to as a “dress shoe” before.Report
df,
man, that made me laugh!Report
You likely get different data if the study repeated but used 50 year old women with all else unchanged.Report
I’ve never been a fan of high heels. They just look so uncomfortable, and I don’t respect people who go to extraordinary lengths for a certain look. Anyway, I wonder about this. Are men stopping because they find women with high heels more attractive, or because they suspect women with high heels are more available? It’s the classic gambler’s equation: probability of success times value of payoff.Report
Probably? a bit of both.
Some guys find it kind of hot to have sex with someone who wasn’t originally looking for sex that night (had better things to do). Other people like the whole “I’m available, come win my heart” vibe.Report
Heels that fit and are of good quality should not be uncomfortable. Certainly they are not for long distance walking, but that is “right tool for the job” question. You have to learn how to walk in heels, but that is a skill like any other. (Oddly, I picked it up fast cuz of my muay thai skills, which I find amusing. “How can you walk in those?” “Kickboxing.”)
Heels look good. They make you taller, which is damn sexy (I’m six-four in heels. People notice me.) They give the illusion that your legs are longer, and I have pretty decent legs for my age, so it plays to my strength. Miniskirt, stockings, and heels, great combination.Report
As I said, I have a bias against heels, but I think I’ve heard more women than men talk about how hot they are.Report
Pinky,
If men didn’t think it was hot, women would take them off in the pornos. Lord knows they take everything else off, but the high heels stay on. Must appeal to the type of men who watch pornos.Report
Men talk with their eyes.
Plus I’m a dyke, so…Report