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Yves St. Laurent's 105 mm (4") stiletto pump.[/ALIGN]

Well it certainly has been a busy Fall so far here in the U.S., if not the
world. A long-overdue financial crisis hit the States, and soon trickled
over the borders. Stock prices fell the furthest since the Great Depression,
bounced back a bit, and then jumped up and down. We had a debate between
our two current presidential candidates, and another between the vice-
presidential candidates. Large sections of the U.S. were unable to get
gasoline. The Federal deficit continued to climb into nebular realms. An
unpopular war continued to tick and tick like a wind-up clock. And as of
the time of this writing it is only about 20 days until the next election,
after which our government can get to doing what it does best — running
for the next election.

But I really don't want to talk about all that. What I want to talk about
here are supermodels and high heels.

The Fall fashion shows that have taken place over the past months from
London to Paris to New York have been pretty dangerous for supermodels.
Many have fallen on the runway due to insanely designed high heels. The
style these days in heels for most designers is a kind of rounded, 1940s
style toe with a very high late-50s style stiletto heel. Most of these heels
are 4" to 5" and taper down to a very small tap area with the floor — about
1/4" in most cases.

Even a young engineering student could pretty much tell you that this is
just bad design. On heels that tall, more contact area is needed with the
floor in order to provide stability. Making it worse is the rounded toe,
which also gives less contact area than the long, pointed-toe versions of
the 1950s. But of course the bottom line is that the heels are just too
damn tall.

The reason that I take up time with such a seeming irrelevancy is simple:
I think the supermodels should go on strike.

First, I think designers need to rethink these shoes to prevent injury to
models and the women who buy the off-the-rack versions of the shoes. And
a strike by the best supermodels would give them pause.

Second, I think it would be just totally cool to see six-foot tall fashion
models with picket signs outside of Yves St. Laurent and Prada. In fact
I would pay good money to see that, assuming I had good money. But I'm
sure somebody would tape the thing and put it up on youTube, so I don't
think I would really need any good money.

Anyway, I don't think that OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health
Administration) is going to come down on these designers. OSHA usually
concentrates on guys wearing work helmets so that they won't get a
concussion and on trying to prevent workers from cutting their arms off
with huge circular saws. I don't think they are going to care about
stiletto heels.

So it looks like the girls are going to have to do this themselves.

Supermodels of the world, unite.


I would hate to see poor Valeria Mazza fall in
her heels and break her leg. Because then she'd
have to get a job making pizza. And I doubt whether
she would be able to make pizza.