Function or Fashion? A bunion pain sufferer’s dilemma.
Even aside from bunion struggles, women often deal with the unpleasantness of either chronic or sporadic foot pain. Sound familiar? Wondering why guys don’t have to deal with the same issues? Well, ladies, it seems we have both our footwear choices and societal pressures to blame. Women are more likely to wear distressing shoes, so we get stuck with all that lovely foot pain.
It all starts higher up on the leg with knee pain, since our knees take on an astonishing 25-percent increase in joint pressure inside the knee while we’re wearing high heels. Then the pain makes its way down. It manifests itself in the form of tight calves due to the actual shortening and tightening of the muscles, built up from years of tight-rope-like walking in stilettos. And don’t even get me started with ankles. We’ve all gone and twisted those joints up pretty good badly over the years while coming off a curb or two. Fortunately, heels do allow room for the swelling that often occurs after straining an ankle, so I’d be hard-pressed to say that a slightly sprained ankle ever stopped me on a Saturday night in my 20s.
Moving along, some of us are unfortunate enough to experience Morton’s Neuroma. This occurs when the tissue thickens between the third and fourth toes, which eventually results in pain and typically some amount of numbness. Now if you have inherited the foot bone structure that Aunt Milly passed along, all that numbness might come in handy once you’ve developed bunions the size of Boston on both feet. Better yet, you might find yourself with hammertoes that start to resemble claws more than they do actual toes. That’s when things really get interesting, because now we’re dealing with conditions of the feet that are no longer easy to treat or to reverse.
Overall, let’s not forget about the “perfect” posture and confidence that we think we’re exuding in 3-inch heels. In reality, however, we’re just arching our spine in three or four unnatural places, forcing our butts out and, for some amateurs, appearing as a drunken giraffe. You also have the overall daunting and dramatic pressure increase (up to 76 percent with three-inch heels) that drills your entire body weight down onto the ball of your foot. Ouch!
Now ladies, I ask you one more time: Is it any wonder that our feet hurt so badly? 
Great image from DailyMail