FashBlog.com

Today as I skimmed through the online news articles as I do every morning, I came across a story about Jamie Spears being stalked by paparazzi. The accompanying picture at a gas station (a great place to catch celebs because they’re pretty much stuck there for 3 minutes) showed Ms. Spears, in all her 9 month pregnant glory, wearing bright yellow, 4 inch high heels. Am I the only one who thinks this is a bit too an unsafe (not to mention uncomfortable) attention-getting accessory when almost ready to deliver?

It’s easy for those who may have not yet been pregnant to look at this topic and wonder what the big deal is-after all, a gal has to wear shoes of some sort, and even if she’s pregnant, she still wants to look good, right? My response would be, yes, absolutely. However, shoes like that are trying for sexy, which, at nine months along, is a little late in the game. At nine months along, sexy takes a back seat to counting down the days until the feeling of being a miserable, awkward whale will cease to exist. (Granted, it will be replaced with a whole other set of discomforts, but that’s another story.)

It’s bad enough to have to balance the additional 25 pounds-mostly at your center-but to push yourself up another 4 inches to walk around literally on tippy toes, when you don’t have to, is rather dumb. Just who is anyone trying to impress doing that? Other women don’t care and most men don’t look at a gal who’s preggers the same way that they do other girls. So what’s the point? Why take the chance of falling due to the imbalance of that extra forward weight, and hurting the innocent fetus because you want to look sexy? (I guess it kind of connects with her reported smoking and drinking during pregnancy anyway, but, like before, that’s another story…)

The article generated other memories of pregnant women I’ve seen wearing outrageous shoes, and not all of them were in the public’s eye. I’ve even asked some of them how they can do it, and they’ve just shrugged and said they were used to it. One woman who wasn’t pregnant even chirped up that she wore high heels for so long, her feet hurt when she didn’t wear them, and she’d continue doing so if and when she’d become pregnant. Well, if her feet hurt without wearing high heels, it sounds like she’s already damaged not only the arch and insteps, but overall body alignment as well. She’d be smart to correct things now or otherwise she’ll face a very debilitating future. This is an addiction that isn’t just emotional or mental, it’s physical-people are not meant to totter around on little sticks; they’re meant to walk barefoot. Any study into orthopedics, podiatry or even kinetics will verify that.

Unfortunately, many decisions take place when a girl is really too young to care about future consequences, and there’s still so much they have to learn for themselves. Not only was I guilty of wearing three inch high heels every day to work, I traipsed about 8 blocks each way in them. (Then I got married and my husband and I wore our Reeboks to work, but that was in the 80’s and everyone was doing that. I realized then how I had been unnecessarily torturing myself.) Fate arranged for me to become a mother when I finally acquired more sense, not only about shoes but in many other areas of life, and I must say that I’m grateful of that.

Wearing potentially dangerous shoes due to an addicting need to look sexy isn’t the same as child abuse, but more than one pregnant woman has suffered serious complications due to a fall. In the sense that the chance of a fall can be easily avoided or at least minimized by simply wearing another style, the choice of high heels during late pregnancy can’t be considered smart by any thinking person. Even a 16 year old should know better, and a 36 year old has no excuse. Sooner or later, a woman will realize that motherhood is all about thinking of the child before herself, which is never as easy as she may have expected.