How I learnt to walk tall at 5ft 5inBy John BamberLike Tom Cruise (5ft 7in), our correspondent (5ft 5in) spent years looking up to women. Then he discovered status shoesFor the past year or so I have been living a secret life. There is something that only I know as I flirt at parties, look my bank manager in the eye or effortlessly catch the attention of the barman at my local pub. If you and I were to meet, you wouldn’t be able to tell what it is. You’d register a fairly average-looking thirtysomething male, certainly not bad-looking. But not, I confess, particularly remarkable.
Were I to slip off my shoes, however, you might well look again — suddenly I would appear four inches shorter than before. This is because I wear what are rather coyly called “status shoes”. Less euphemistically, they could be described as hidden high heels for the shorter man.
It took me a long time to discover status shoes. It took me nearly as long to work out that being a little shorter than most — around 5ft 5in (1.65m) — has affected my personality.
I began to suspect that I was destined to look up to my peers when I was still in my adolescence. Some of my classmates, seemingly overnight, towered over our teachers, and I never caught up with them. Whether this is why I became increasingly shy, nervous and withdrawn I’m not sure, but perhaps introversion is inevitable when most people can’t hear a word you say.
It was not until I reached my thirties that I consciously identified the link between height and attraction. I had often wondered why women rarely gave me the eye or approached me at parties, but blamed it on a lack of social skill or charisma.
My eureka moment came when I read a book called Irresistible Attraction: Secrets of Personal Magnetism by Kevin Hogan and Mary Lee Labay. It says that while most women claim that personality is far more important when assessing a potential partner, evolutionary psychology suggests that the human brain is hardwired to find certain physical traits — including height — attractive.
A new study from the University of Essex analysed speed-dating sessions, and found that every extra inch of height a man has over his fellow Romeos correlates to an increase in the number of women who want to be introduced to him of 5 per cent.
Furthermore, statistics show that tall men earn far more than their shorter comrades and are more likely to be offered promotion. I was, I realised, being discriminated against because of my height.
Whenever a female scanned the room for potential boyfriend material, I would be filtered out, or dumped in the friends-only (maybe) category, along with the fat bloke who eats with his mouth open.
I had to take action, I had to rise above this prejudice. I had to grow. Apart from restyling myself as a goth, a cowboy or a glam-rocker — and embracing the high-heeled footwear they can get away with — at first there seemed no obvious way of discreetly gaining those few vital inches of height. Thank God for the internet. A cursory search led me to products I had never heard of. Easiest to use, and cheapest, are the “height-increase insoles” or “lifts” that you insert into your existing shoes. More expensive are the ready-made or bespoke “status shoes” which have their lifts built in.
Status shoes force you to walk on tiptoe; the height increase is therefore limited by the size and shape of the foot. One US website featured a pair of boots with a height increase of four inches (10cm). These boots were far too ugly to wear with a suit, but the thought of increasing my height by so much was incredibly seductive.
I found one English shop selling status shoes whose website featured a pair of elegant boots with a height increase of 2½ inches. If I could wear these boots with a 1½in lift I would reach my target height of 5ft 9in, the average height of a man in the UK. I bought a pair of 1½in lifts by mail order and took them to the shop, and bought my boots.
As I paced up and down, the sales assistant warned me that a height increase of four inches could eventually damage my feet, so I decided to carry the lifts in my pocket and insert them whenever I approached a social gathering.
Walking out of that shop wearing my new boots was exhilarating. For less than £200 I had increased my height by four inches. My trousers no longer fitted, but a new tall me deserved a whole new wardrobe. I could loftily look down on shorter men and glance in the eyes of tall, leggy women without craning my neck. When I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a shop window, my legs looked gloriously, elegantly long.
Over the next few months, my self-confidence soared. With my status shoes and a whole new wardrobe to compliment them, I learnt to stand tall and walk with my shoulders back, my head held high.
I found I could now approach girls in bars or at parties and talk to them without somehow feeling apologetic about it. For the first time in my life, women looked at me — looked UP at me — and smiled. Of course this sudden success was not down to the status shoes alone: the self-confidence their extra four inches give me is far more attractive than my old, cowering self.
To avoid being ungentlemanly I will say only that I have had a modicum of romantic success over the past few months. One thing has led to another with quite a few wonderful (and sometimes less-than-wonderful) women.
That, inevitably, has led to what I call the “pumpkin moment”. The first time, taking my boots off mid-seduction, it was a terrifying prospect. What, I fretted as we kissed in a taxi on the way back to my flat, would happen when she clocked that I wasn’t all the man I appeared to be? In practice, this has not proved to be a problem. I might kick my boots off while we are entwined on the couch, or else disguise my lack of height by leaping straight into bed after taking the boots off.
I recently bumped into an ex-girlfriend at a party. The last time we met, she was taller than me. Did she notice that she now looked up into my eyes rather than down? Apparently not. My mother, however, noticed immediately — but said only: “Oh, you’ve grown.” Even when I’m not wearing my shoes, my current girlfriend is two inches shorter than me: she’s just 5ft 3in and to kiss her, I have to bend down. But when we go out, it’s different. She loves wearing heels, so even she would have been taller than me if I hadn’t been in my status shoes when we met.
When I confessed my shoe sin, she laughed, but not unkindly. Once a girl is attracted to you, gets to know you and likes you the height thing doesn’t matter at all.
But without the status shoes I’m not sure that we would ever have got together in the first place.
SHORT LIST
Danny DeVito - 5ft
Paul Simon - 5ft 2in
Martin Scorcese - 5ft 3in
Michael J Fox - 5ft 5in
Bob Dylan - 5ft 6in
Napoleon - 5ft 6in
Gael Garcia Bernal - 5ft 6.5in
Tom Cruise - 5ft 7in
THINKING BIG
The family of Peter Schweiger has owned James Taylor & Sons, a shoemaker that offers clients status shoes, since the 1950s. These are factory-made and offer lifts of 4cm. Styles included wing-tip brogues (£105), chukka boots (£99) and inside zip boots (£129).
“Status shoes are built for self-esteem, not comfort,” Schweiger says. “Most men who buy them have girlfriends who are the same height or taller,” he says. “Women want to wear high heels, often at weddings or parties, so the men want to look taller too.
“I recall an occasion when a very short man and a very tall woman came in. He tried on his shoes and he was still knee high to a grasshopper standing there next to her. But he didn’t think so: he put them on and said: ‘Now nobody will notice.’ In his mind he felt like he was catching up with her.
“The shoes are made with higher backs than regular shoes and the cork raises are sloped under the heel. The shoes look normal, especially from the front, the part of the shoe that people see.
“We receive about ten orders a week for status shoes, mostly British but a few from abroad. We don’t make them here in our workshop, they are ready-made factory shoes.
“We also have clients who want to wear them to job interviews. Surveys have found that taller men earn more, although history tells us that there have been some very successful shorter men too, like Napoleon. Although I think Wellington was quite tall.”
James Taylor & Son, 4 Paddington Street, London, W1; 020-7935 4149;
www.taylormadeshoes.co.uk
