Men’s High Heels
These days, women are the practically exclusive buyers of high heels. The cultural prejudices we still hold about what constitutes menswear and womenswear may drive people to react uncomfortably if they see a man wearing heels. This is strange because males, not women, were the ones who originally designed high heels.
In Persia, heels have been worn since somewhere between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. And they weren't regarded in any way as strange or effeminate; quite the contrary. Warriors used heels because they gave them more stability and control while riding a horse in stirrups.
At the time, any man could not join the Persian military. You needed to have enough money to buy your own horse if you intended to ride one. Consequently, people who could wear heels belonged to the upper class. When the Persians undertook a thorough tour of Europe at the end of the 1500s in search of wartime allies, the heels were first worn in Europe.
The draw of something novel and distinctive couldn't be resisted by European royalty. They all desired a pair of heels because they thought they were cool and manly. As more socially inferior individuals started donning heels, aristocrats started producing taller heels. Since only the upper class could get away with wearing them and since regular people couldn't actually perform real jobs in high heels, they became impractically high, which solidified them as the shoes of the privileged.
