chris100575

Pumpedup: Don't kid yourself, she didn't "accidentally" ask if you wanted to try them on. What she was doing was letting you know that if they were for you, and you did want to try them on, she was OK with it. Even when I've not tried heels on in the shop I'm sure 99% of the time the staff have known I was buying for myself, and anyone on here who's met me can testify that I am in no way feminine.

Chris

pumpedup

Interesting post, Chris. I wouldn't think the staff would have any idea that you were buying those heels for yourself. How many guys buy women's shoes for themselves? There's not many of us out in the world that do. This website is quite a rare one, i'm sure. Like i said in my original post, you could be buying those shoes as a gift for a lady. If you're a big man, and you ask for a particular shoe in a big size, then that may be a dead giveaway, too. I'm somewhat of a small guy, but i have what i would assume to be big feet, so without ever checking my own shoe size in a woman's pump, I have always bought size 10. They fit well, but after a while of buying about 10 pair over a period of time, i noticed they looked a bit too large and bulky for me, plus there was a tiny bit of play. I wanted to try a size 9 1/2. So i tried a 9 1/2 one day, and found that they fit better. So i started buying pumps in size 9 1/2. I never even thought of going lower in size, but i could have! It was a year after trying out that size 9 1/2. I found some pumps that were 8 1/2 in a thrift store, and they were a must-have pair. I bought them, and got them home, and tried them on, and surprisingly, they were a little tight, but they fit! After wearing them a lot, they loosened up. So now, it's 8 1/2 for me. I tried an 8, but it was a painful struggle getting my feet in them, so i couldn't go any lower. As i said in another post, it seems that a smaller shoe looks more feminine. The larger shoe looks masculine. That's why it seems that CD shoes are of a large size. I'm straight, but I guess i like a feminine look, as far as wearing pumps.

dr1819

While this website is rare, it's not that rare. I've more than 35,000 URLs about men wearing heels, although less than 50 point to full-blown websites like this. Most are discussions of men's fashion trends and variations on other websites.

As for "not many," are you kidding? Payless currently reports between 20% and 50% of the buyers of heels in sizes 11 and up are male. Nordstroms reports that a "sizeable number" of those who purchase their larger sizes are male. Several other non-fetish shoe stores openly cater to male clients.

What's rare are open heel-meets, such as the ones we conduct through our website.

What's rare is the courage to heel in broad daylight.

What's far more rare are the reactions that anybody really cares how you, as a man, dress, provided you're not walking across bridges at 6am wearing 6" pumps, hot pink dresses, and showing your genitals.

That's rare, and the reaction is expected, as it falls too far outside the bounds of common decency to be tolerated in modern society.

But a man wearing heels?

In literally more than a year's worth of wearing heels in public (365 in all situations, broad daylight, through airports, etc.), to date, only one woman has verbally acosted me, and she turned out to be a loony. The other, perhaps 300,000 folk I've come across have been, at the very least, politely disagreeable. But that's just the 1% of them.

The other 99% just don't care.

Meanwhile, modern psychology reports that men wearing heels is on the rise, both in private (mostly) and to a much lesser extent in public. In fact, the ratio is around 1000 to 1 (1000 private wears to 1 public wear). The most amazing thing is that nearly 40% of men under 50 throughout the western world have worn heels on more than one occasion, and 15% have done so on a "frequent basis" (whatever that was).

We're just not wearing them outside, and do you know why?

Because men have been scared into be conformists over the last 200 years. Those who weren't, died!

However, the sociel pressures behind the deaths no longer exist, not with respect to fashion in the Western world, so there's no longer any disincentive to wear flats.

There's only the fear of being different (without any of the repurcussions, as society as a whole is also in fear of being discovered that they're non-tolerant on some issue).

Thus, there's no better time to take a break, and take a walk around the block in your finest pair.

Or perhaps a hardy pair if it's raining...

Tech

Well... where are all these websites? Why not get them into the website links and share them for all to see?

Its not just a discussion forum here...

__________________
Heels 4 Men - Guys in heels, as guys!

chris100575

Hi Pumpedup.

Another question might be how many guys go out shopping alone for shoes for their partner? Whenever I've been either in the ladies section of a shoe shop, or somewhere like Faith which only sells ladies' shoes the only other guys I've seen have been with their girlfriend / wife / whoever. From speaking to the assistants, guys buying for themselves is more common than you might think, especially in places that carry the larger sizes. Other than the fact that it's easy for someone who works in a shoe shop to make an educated guess that you're looking at your own size, most guys are pretty indifferent to ladies' shoes and therefore don't know much about them.

So, looking at shoes that look like they'd fit, shopping for them by yourself and not asking anything along the lines of "can I return these if she doesn't like them?" make it a fairly safe assumption that they're for you.

I stopped pretending to be shopping for shoes as a gift quite a while ago, but the more important point isn't "do the staff know they're for you?" it's "do they have a problem with it?" in my experience I've had better service and more enjoyable shopping when I've been honest.

Chris

Chris

admirer5577

Your posts are very often full of statistics, where do you get all this figures from? It would be interesting to know how you/they come up with these figures. What surprises me is that Payless has such a variation; 20-50%. It sounds to me like they have absolutely no figures to back it up with, otherwise they for sure would be able to come up with more precise figures.

Danielinheels

He's probably heard different numbers from different stores. Payless is super-ubiquitous and of course the numbers in free-thinking downtown New Orleans will be diff. from those in a more rural area.

__________________
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. - Oscar Wilde

dr1819

It's funny you should mention New Orleans - the first time I ever saw a man in heels, real heels, not the 1970's men's heels, was in 1976, in New Orleans. He was walking down Chartres (in the French Quarter), around 10 am, smoking a pipe.

pumpedup

wow! 35,000 URL's? Can you post some of them? I've done some yahoo searches but never gotten too many pages of pump-wearing guys.

Of course, Nordstrom has a far more quality selection of heels than Payless. Here in Las Vegas, there is supposedly a Nordstrom-related shoe store called "The Rack" or something. I am trying to find a particular pair of pumps that i fell in love with while doing a search on one of the shoe websites, either Shoemall.com or Shoes.com. They are made by a company called Madeline shoes. I hope i find them.

I am not that daring to wear pumps in public. One day, maybe, but not at this time. It's my own personal private fetish, my own secret, strange thing to do. I will post pics and videos on the net, though, parading around in some Jessica Simpson's.

Danielinheels

I mentioned New Orleans... for 2 reasons

1) home
2) it's where I got my start (alt, see #1)

__________________
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. - Oscar Wilde