About a year ago, Ethan Alvis had to rush to a meeting across Long Beach. He planned to skate there. He was also dead set on wearing a pair of black leather caged stilettos.
So he strapped on his heels and hopped on his board, surprising himself with how he was able to hack it.
“It’s definitely a challenge,” the undeclared freshmen at California State University, Long Beach said, suggesting it’s something of a circus trick. He’s mastered the technique and often skates to class in high-heels, receiving looks of awe and at times envy.
Standing at 6-foot-1 and flat-footed, lithe and long-limbed, Alvis conveys a sort of grace similar to that of a stilt walker when he slips on an altitudinous pair of spikes.
Alvis is one of a number of men bending norms of gendered fashion by wearing high-heels, a shoe style associated with femininity in many societies.
“I enjoy how they challenge gender norms,” he said. “I feel wearing heels detracts from my male privilege,” he said.
Looking back before modern trends, the origins of high-heels have little to do with butt-bolstering or pin-parading. The sole of their history is buried in masculine power.
Elizabeth Semmelhack, the senior curator at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Canada told the BBC that heels originated in 16th century Persia—what is now known as modern-day Iran—where combat was mainly carried out on horseback. Heels allowed a rider to securely latch onto the stirrups, enabling them to stand up in order to fire arrows.
Semmelhack said that Europe eventually caught on and high-heels became a symbol of aristocracy. The trend spread to the masses, and by the 17th century high-heels were common among both sexes, only to disappear from feet altogether because of their impracticality by the 1700s.
It wasn’t until the mid-19th century that heels reemerged as women’s shoes with a whole new sex appeal, showing up on pin-up girls and in pornography, according to Semmelhack.
Some feminists have taken issue with women wearing high-heels. Sheila Jeffreys, a feminist scholar and researcher, calls the footwear “torture implements” in her book “Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West.”
“Beauty practices can reasonably be understood to be for the benefit of men,” Jeffreys wrote. “Men can feel both defined in manhood and flattered by women’s exertions and, if the women are wearing high-heels for instance, pain endured for their delight.”
In more modern times high-heels have gained traction as men’s footwear, especially in drag culture.
CSULB senior communication major Malik Thompson, better known as Foxie Adjuia on stage, started wearing heels in high school before becoming a professional drag queen.
“Nobody else on campus was wearing heels,” Thompson said. “I wanted to show everyone I could do it better than girls.”
Thompson said that while some men fetishize heels, that is not the case for him. “Speaking personally, it’s not a sexual fetish or transvestitism, but it’s more of a social statement and a fashion statement.”
A lipstick-red set of pumps is senior psychology major Angel Jimenez’s pair of choice.
“It opens up your choices when it comes to fashion, instead of just wearing tennis shoes or something,” Jimenez said. “They make me feel powerful because [in high-heels] you command attention.”
From Hollywood stars to heads of state, men of power wear elevator shoes to enhance their presence, according to the Guardian. These shoes basically have a wedge heel on the insole, which discreetly gives men a few inches of lift.
One reason men go to such heights may be because stature has been correlated with higher salary and respect in the workplace, according to a 2004 University of Florida study.
Still, Jimenez said high-rise-heeled men are somewhat taboo in mainstream culture.
“You do get a little uncomfortable because maybe the wrong people are staring at you—people who might want to hurt you,” Jimenez said. “I’ve worn them at a mall before and there were people pulling their children away. I was like, ‘okay, would you be doing this if there was a girl wearing these heels?’”
The Bata Museum will be hosting an upcoming exhibit differentiating between the historical and contemporary attitudes towards high-heeled men, an issue that makes people nervous, as Semmelhack told The Huffington Post.
According to sociologists Candace West and Don Zimmerman’s theory of doing gender, we perform gender by the way we walk, talk and dress, implying that definitions of masculinity and femininity can be actively challenged by men who dress or act “unmasculine” or women who dress or act “unfeminine.”
Jimenez sees the trend of tearing down gender binaries as a positive.
“I think it started with metrosexuals; now it’s okay for straight men to dress even more feminine,” Jimenez said. “Not even just in modeling, but in everyday culture; it’s good. I’m glad it’s happening.”
Is society ready for high-heeled men?
“I think there are definitely parts that are not,” Alvis said, reminiscing about an awkward visit to Texas to see his parents.
“I went to a party wearing red pants [while] everyone else at the party was in gym shorts,” Alvis said. “If I’d had worn heels it would have been even more like, ‘What did I do to myself?’”
With a grip-taped deck in one hand, Alvis keeps his fashion on high-heels despite the gawks.
As for Thompson, he is gearing up for another thigh-high and tight-fitted night as Ms. Adjuia at the Executive Suites in Long Beach on Thursday.
“If they’re not ready,” Thompson said. “We’re going to make them ready.”