A Tall Tale and Spring’s Hottest Footwear Style by Harriet Posnak Lesser

There’s good news for petite women this spring, especially those of us who are petite up and down, but not sideways.

They’re flatforms, which are similar to platform shoes but instead of the platform being on the front of the shoe with a high heel, it’s on the entire bottom of the shoe.  A minor distinction, perhaps, but the end result is the same. We’re talking instant Charlize Theron here …we’re talking lithe, lissome and leggy without liposuction … a chance to add inches, all of them vertical … we’re talking about finally towering over somebody — anybody.

But you’d better hurry if you want to jump on the bandwagon. Flatforms, like platforms, make a comeback every now and then and their popularity is relataively short-lived. (Of course!) I’m old enough to remember the 1970s when platforms became a feminist fashion factor with the emergence of pants suits for women.  Elephant bells were holding sway, maxi skirts were must-haves and Randy Newman was looking high and low for short people to dis.

There was a tall price to pay for a pair of non-stop legs that began with my feet. I practiced for a week before I could balance my 5’ 2” self on three-inch platforms. I lived a lie, passing as a statuesque goddess in platform shoes that hid my feet of clay. And I thought about what might have been.

In sixth grade a sudden pre-adolescent growth spurt moved me to the back of the student “line” which was based on height.  I fell in love with the boy behind me when he asked where I’d been all his life.  I was too embarrassed to say at the front of the line with the other shorties. Our romance ended when the stature quo returned. I never saw him again.

So my advice to all height-challenged women is run, do not walk to your nearest shoe store.  Just remember there are risks involved.  Flatform shoes can be dangerous to your health.  Consider what happened to my friend Tina.  One wintry day in 1976, she was hailing a cab on Fifth Avenue and she leaned forward a little too far.  Her platformed feet slid off the pavement and her face landed in a snow bank.  She spent four weeks in the hospital.  (Health care was different in those days.)

I had lunch with Tina last week and asked if she’s going to trade in her shoes for flatforms this spring.  She said that in spite of her terrible experience, she would — with all her heart and sole.  She explained that while she was in the hospital those many years ago, recovering from two broken ankles and frostbite of the left cheek, she was sustained by one memory:

“Whenever the pain got bad, I’d think about being loaded into the ambulance and how my platform shoes hung over the edge of the stretcher.”

©2016 HARRIET POSNAK LESSER

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Harriet Posnak Lesser is an award-winning journalist and social satirist whose articles have appeared in Long Island’s The South Shore Record and Nassau Herald, The New York Times, Cracked Magazine and others.