Pump Up to Wear Your Pumps

How do you wear your high heels? Are you the type that either never wears them, or do you kick them off and hit the dance floor in stockinged feet? Have you ever wondered how the supermodels do it, or the women you see downtown who appear so comfortable? Maybe they took an exercise class. Crunch Fitness Gyms in the U.S. is now offering "Stiletto Strength." Women can pay their hard-earned dollars to work out their legs and "prep" them to wear high heels. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't high heels been around for a very long time? I remember learning to wear high heels when I was thirteen years old. While my mother was at work, I dug through the collection in her closet, selected my favorite pair - four inches high, white with a little black ribbon that went all the way around the opening of the shoe - and I taught myself to walk in them. True, my first attempts were more clomps than delicate steps, but I kept at it. Every Saturday that my mother was away, I was developing my calves, thighs, ankles, knees and feet, on my own! I didn't pay anyone. True, I did manage to give myself a lovely life-time scar from prancing about in dangerous areas, such as near heating vents on the floor easily flipped up by the toes of pointy shoes; however, my scar was borne of where I chose to practice, not the practicing in and of itself. I am one of those women who wears high heels with relative comfort. I don't take them off in public, even if they're killing me - and who are we kidding? Wearing high heels hurts. Even the gym where these amazing classes can be had makes no promise that your feet won't still hurt. They do state what most high-heel-wearing women already know: it hurts less the more used to them that you are, but they are never without pain. My method of endurance came from a positive affirmation gleaned from Donna Karan's advice in a Dry Idea deodorant commercial: "Never let them see you sweat." I applied that advice to the endurance needed for wearing high heels. It worked for me for then, and it's still working now. But a class? Unbelievable. Had I but known what a great money-making plan this would be, I could have been charging whole classrooms full of my junior and senior high peers! Classes for wearing high heels. What else can we take classes on? How to put on a pair of pantyhose? How to sit in a chair or how to hold a pencil? Oh wait - those last two have been done. We called those specialized classes, Kindergarten. I guess I'm just being nostalgic, remembering the days when we learned standard lessons in standard ways. But if people want to part with their hard-earned money, I'm thinking I might hold classes on how to watch T.V.