Recently, I attended my daughter’s Scholastic awards ceremony, and had what can only be described as a generational epiphany. The auditorium was packed with Massachusetts’ brightest young minds — the teenagers who will invent medical cures, untangle global warming, and, of course, decide what the rest of us are allowed to wear.
It was a fancy affair, the kind where in my day you’d hear the click-clack of stilettos punctuating every trip across the stage. But as each young woman (and man) bounded up the stairs to collect their medal, all I heard was the quiet scuff of sneakers and the polite hush of flats.
No one wore heels. Not a single one.
That’s when it hit me: if this is the generation that will solve the world’s problems, it’s also the one that has officially executed the high heel.
Back in the car, I turned to my daughter and asked the obvious. “Why no heels?”
She gave me the look — every parent of a teenager knows it — the look that says do I really have to explain this to you?
“Heels are uncomfortable,” she said, deadpan.
Excuse me…Comfort? How dare she and her skinny jean-killing brethren want comfort?
I tried to make my case. “But the heel is the epitome of glamour. Nothing raises your confidence, your height, and the heart rate of everyone watching. Name me another invention — one — that can do that.”
Her rebuttal was simple: “Why would I suffer just to get from point A to point B when I could wear flats or sneakers?” She said it with the serene finality of someone who knew she was right. The argument was over. Or so she thought.
The Shoe-Off
There was only one way to convince her: challenge her to a shoe-off. She could pick her favorite flats. I’d pick my favorite heels. And then we would see who would suffer.
Of course, I planned to cheat.
I chose Sneex. For my non-heel wearers, Sneex are the mutant offspring of a stiletto and a trainer. Imagine if Nike and Jimmy Choo had a wild one-night stand in Vegas and produced a love child. A bastard shoe, yes, but one that let me keep the glamour of a heel with the bounce of a sneaker.
To make my point, we set up an obstacle course in my driveway: cones, garden hoses, and the neighbor’s dog, who doubled as a moving hazard. My daughter chose red sneakers from Allbirds — understated and flat.
I tore after her, my Sneex springing like a gymnast’s vault, clearing every turn with the triumph of a woman who had hacked the system. And was three inches taller. Dare I say, my daughter was a tiny bit impressed.
But being able to sprint around cones while outpacing a golden retriever wasn’t our only test. The real question remained: Are they cute enough to replace sneakers?
So we polled about fifty of our friends. My peers — forty to fifty-somethings — gasped like they’d just witnessed an engineering marvel. “What are you wearing!” they chorused, already Googling where to buy a pair. But my daughter’s friends groaned as if I’d just shown up in acid-wash mom jeans.
Gen Z’s resistance to hybrid fashions is well-known. These ladies prefer minimalism, irony, and coherence. One of her friends exclaimed, “It’s best to just commit to it if you’re going to wear sneakers or heels.” In other words, Frankensteining a heel and a sneaker fell into the uncanny valley.
It’s not hard to understand why. Gen Z grew up in the sleek world of iPhones and Muji stationery. Their design language doesn’t have room for hybrids that can’t decide what they are. A heel promises glamour and drama. A sneaker promises comfort and ease. Smash them together, and you get mixed messaging: I want to run, but also suffer beautifully. They’ll happily wear thrift-store kitten heels that wink at irony, but a useful hybrid like Sneex? They see right through the gimmick.
There’s just no convincing them. Gen Z is determined to murder heels. Of course, every fashion dynasty dies, but few have toppled as dramatically as the high heel. It began its reign as the ultimate symbol of power and sex appeal, strapping women into an ideology as much as a shoe. For decades, we endured the pinched toes and ankle-rolling pratfalls because that’s what adulthood, femininity, and — let’s be honest — glamour supposedly demanded. Pain was proof you were doing it right.
For Boomers, heels were aspirational. They were the ticket out of sensible housewife shoes and into the world of offices, cocktail parties, and a jet-set life promised by glossy magazines. Their mothers had worn pumps to church; they wore stilettos to showrooms and discos. Heels weren’t accessories; they were emancipation on a thin metal stem. Never mind the bunions. Freedom was worth the limp.
Gen X inherited that fantasy. We strutted into boardrooms in mile-high pumps while clutching Nokia phones the size of bricks. At late nights, we hobbled home barefoot, stilettos dangling from our fingers like war trophies. Sure, we knew how absurd the whole performance was. But we leaned in anyway, because heels were our weapon and our wink: yes, I know this hurts, but watch me conquer this office like it’s a catwalk. Pain was part of the punchline. We weren’t duped into believing stilettos were practical. We knew they were ridiculous. That was the fun.
Then came the Millennials. At first, they played along, tottering through Sex and the City-era nightlife in heels so high they required prayer beads. But somewhere around the late 2010s, a quiet mutiny brewed. Sneakers were suddenly chic, loafers respectable, flats ironically edgy. The rise of streetwear and tech-bro casual Fridays bled into every part of life, and Millennials realized they didn’t have to suffer to look stylish. They started phasing heels out, not dramatically, but passively — like leaving a bad boyfriend’s toothbrush behind after a breakup. They didn’t kill the heel outright; they just stopped returning its texts.
Which brings us to Gen Z, the generation that delivered the fatal blow. Somewhere along the line, Gen Z rebranded heels as the desperate pick-me girl accessory of MILFs and Real Housewives. Apparently, these kids never signed the blood pact of “beauty is pain.” For them, suffering isn’t chic, it’s stupid. Their closets are full of sneakers that can carry them from class to a protest to a dance floor without a blister. They don’t see the heel as a badge of womanhood or a passport to power — it’s just an outdated prop, like a rotary phone or a fax machine. They’ll wear a platform boot if the vibe calls for it, but stilettos? Those belong in history museums, preferably next to the corset and the caged crinoline.
But here’s the thing my daughter doesn’t yet understand: women didn’t wear heels to appease the “male gaze” or because we were trapped in some patriarchal norms. We wore them for ourselves. For the way they turned a hallway into a runway, for the way they made us feel like exclamation points instead of parenthetical statements.
To be fair, Gen Z deserves credit. They’ve built a world where comfort is cool, where the clothing doesn’t wear you, you wear it. They’re right to question why anyone would willingly cripple themselves to get from point A to point B. And I admire their refusal to inherit a bad deal.
But I’d argue they’re missing out on the mischief. Heels are ridiculous, yes. They’re impractical. They’re even masochistic. But they’re also pure fun. They’re glamour distilled into three extra inches of audacity. Sneakers will carry you into the future, sure — but only heels can make that future arrive with a wink.
So consider this my final plea to Gen Z — Don’t kill heels. Let me sprint through holiday parties in my bastard Sneex. Let me cling to the absurd theater of glamour, even if my arches ache the next day. Because fashion, at its best, isn’t about necessity. It’s about choice.
All illustrations courtesy Carlyn Beccia | www.CarlynBeccia.com
