High Heels?

Scien­tists cal­cu­late how high heels can go

I’ve added notes to facil­i­tate cal­cu­lat­ing your own score. I’ve nev­er run across “pwhooar” before, but I’m assum­ing that’s some­thing like the prob­a­bil­i­ty that said heels will be endan­gered by a ceil­ing fan.

Pos­tu­lat­ing $80 shoes, no alco­hol con­sump­tion, and size 10 shoes (nor­mal­ly 9.5, but in my expe­ri­ence it’s best to go up a half size when wear­ing very high heels), I should the­o­ret­i­cal­ly be able to wear 11″ heels. I don’t think I’m going to try it!

h = Q•(12+3s /8)

h is the max­i­mum height of the heel (in cm) Note: One inch=2.54 centimeters
Q is a soci­o­log­i­cal fac­tor and has a val­ue between 0 and 1 (see below to work this out)
S is the shoe size (UK ladies’ sizes). This fac­tor makes sure that the base of sup­port is just good enough for an expe­ri­enced and sober, high-heel wear­er not to fall over.

Note:

(Sor­ry guys — you’ll need to look up your own size conversions.)

Q’ is defined as follows:

p•(y+9)•L
Q = ———————————-
(t+1)•(A+1)•(y+10)•(L+£20)

The vari­ables are:

p – the prob­a­bil­i­ty that wear­ing the shoes will help you ‘pull’ (in a range from 0 to 1, where 1 is pwhooar and 0 is stick to car­pet slip­pers). If the shoes are a turn-off, there’s no point wear­ing them.

y – the num­ber of years of expe­ri­ence you have in wear­ing high heels. As you become more adept, you can wear a high­er heel. Begin­ners should take it easy.

L – the cost of the shoes, in pounds. Clear­ly, if the shoe is par­tic­u­lar­ly expen­sive, you can put up with a high­er heel. Note: Accord­ing to x‑rates.com, today’s exchange rate has 1 British pound equalling $1.82700.

t – the time since the shoe was the height of fash­ion, in months (0 = it’s the ‘in thing’ right now!). One has to suf­fer for one’s art, and if the shoes are ter­ri­bly fash­ion­able, you should be pre­pared to put up with a lit­tle pain.

A – units of alco­hol con­sumed. If you’re plan­ning on drink­ing, be care­ful to give your­self a lit­tle lee­way for reduced coordination.