High Heel Hurt

Feet bear the brunt of daily life, and for many workers prolonged standing, badly fitted footwear, and in particular high heels can be a hazard. Around two million days a year are lost through sickness as a result of lower limb disorders.

— 2009 motion from the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists to the Trade Union Congress

What's not to love about high heels? They're stylish, they make you taller, they shape the legs, and produce a unique stride.

Well, as far as she's concerned? Lots.

This character will see them as a tremendous pain in the ass. It's easy to stumble, the heel snaps like a twig, they make your back, legs, and feet sore, and good luck dancing or walking for long periods of time in them.

This trope is when high heels are treated as cumbersome or unpleasant and more trouble than they're worth. This can be either through the characters openly complaining about wearing heels or by showing characters being obviously encumbered by them. It is often Played for Laughs.

Any show about men dressing up in drag for the first time is guaranteed to bring up this trope in An Aesop about walking a mile in a woman's shoes.^note That being said, it doesn't help that when a man invokes this trope, the heels are often brand new and naturally more uncomfortable than if he wore them on a regular basis and broke them in. This trope can also show up as part of a tomboy's Femininity Failure. Subtrope of Fashion Hurts and Agony of the Feet, and sister trope to Of Corset Hurts. Varying Truth in Television.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Kate Spade New York has produced a series of online video ads called Miss Adventures. In the episode "The Joy Ride," Anna Kendrick and Zosia Mamet meet for the first time when Zosia invites Anna to share a cab with her. But when politeness delays their destination decision, the driver (Joshua Safdie) leaves to use the bathroom. Over Kate Spade accessories, they bond during the endless wait for him to get back.
  Zosia: This is like Waiting for Godot.
  Anna: In heels. Ow!

Anime & Manga

• In The Eminence in Shadow, Gamma wears high heels as befits an elegant, wealthy lady. The issue is that Gamma is also terribly clumsy and constantly trips as a result of this, especially on stairs, resulting in many a comical Face Plant and ruining her image of class and elegance something fierce.
• HuGtto! Pretty Cure pulls this off twice within the same episode, when Pappuru twists her ankle during a friendly sprint competition, and again when the Monster of the Week attacks. What brings this into Amusing Injuries territory is the Comedic Sociopathy involved when no one bothers to help her as she gets more comically frustrated.
• Mako Sato in Initial D usually prefers to wear sneakers for walking (and driving), but when she dresses up for her date with Iketani, she puts on some high-heel sandals to go with the dress she picked. Unfortunately, when he ends up no-showing (he was having doubts about actually dating her, and when he finally decided to go, she'd already left), she takes off the heels after waiting for him for too long and decides she's never going to wear them again.
• In Princess Jellyfish, none of the Amars women are capable of walking around in the high heels Kuranosuke gives them as part of their makeovers. Mayaya freaks out when she learns that he's also taking them out to a fancy restaurant, but twists her ankle and falls when she tries to run away, blaming it on the shoes.
• In an early episode of Sailor Moon, Usagi uses the disguise pen to sneak into a radio station, donning business attire and high heels. Usagi's barely able to walk two feet before she falls on her face.

Comic Books

• Excalibur: When Meggan and Phoenix have a "Freaky Friday" Flip, the usually barefoot Meggan immediately complains about how Rachel's Combat Stilettos hurt.
• Wonder Woman (2006): Diana complains to Black Canary about the platform heels Canary included in her disguise after spending the night fighting in an underground illegal fighting ring. She wasn't excited about the shoes when she first saw them and declared that wearing them was messing with her back.

Fan Works

• In the Discworld, Assassin Johanna Smith-Rhodes does not normally "wear girly" and prefers the hardwearing and no-nonsense Adventurer Outfit. Very unwillingly, she has to wear conventional female attire for a mission and gets a fast crash course in how to wear dresses and high heels. This is not something she has a great deal of experience in. Her more conventional friends - and an Assassins' School pupil - who are delivering the training are treated to frustrated exasperation and comments about the high heels such as:
  How's a woman expected to move in these bloody things?
• In Manehattan's Lone Guardian, Leviathan trips and falls several times down the Pyre's narrow stairway. Her patron is quick to cast the blame on the high-heeled boots she insists on wearing. Leviathan defends herself by stating her preference for water over land. Later, though not explicitly mentioned, she faces this problem again when a fancy sidestep to dodge an attack results in her faceplanting.
• The Victors Project: Cora mourns having to wear five-inch, or even eight-inch, Capitol heels.
• Pear Shaped: Implied when Kanril Eleya mentions having to wiggle her feet out of the five-centimeter heels of her dress uniform and giving them a surreptitious rub.

Film — Animation

• In Frozen II, after a long day out, Anna takes her heels off and walks barefoot. The movie doesn't overtly emphasize this, and she doesn't complain about them, just casually takes them off as she nears home, hugging them to her chest as she smiles fondly at her family.
• In Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, Murray complains about his human woman disguise, especially the heels.
  Murray: Man, I hate wearing disguises. These heels are killing me!

Film — Live-Action

• In 40 Carats, Mrs. Margolin pressures Ann to wear high heels more often, even though they hurt her feet. When most of the main characters go out dancing together, Ann's heels cause her to quickly become exhausted, while her mother Maud, who is wearing comfortable shoes, continues dancing energetically.
• Barbie (2023): The Barbies naturally stand on tiptoes, making it easy for them to wear heels. Stereotypical Barbie's feet flatten as part of her humanization, and she complains that she would never wear heels if her feet were always flat due to how cumbersome they are.
• The film adaptations of Carrie:
  • The 1976 version has a lighthearted example. During the prom, Miss Collins tells Carrie the story of her own embarrassing prom, where she wore three-inch spike heels so that her kiss with her basketball player boyfriend wouldn't be so awkward. This became a problem when his truck broke down on the way to the prom. She had to walk half a mile in those heels to get to the dance, by which point she was too tired, and her feet too covered in blisters, for her to do anything except sit and talk with her boyfriend.
  • A very dark example happens in the 2013 version. The mean twins Nicki and Lizzy are singled out during Carrie's rampage, where she telekinetically holds them down onto the gym floor to be Trampled Underfoot by the horde of people trying to escape. This is a high school prom, with lots of girls wearing high heels — and you see visible stab wounds from the heels on the twins' backs. Elsewhere in the same sequence, some girls are seen tripping up in the rampage, presumably thanks to the heels they wore that night.
• Downplayed in Cloverfield. Lily gets stuck in heels due to the monster arriving in the middle of a surprise party. Although she doesn't complain, as the film goes on and she has to do things like walk several blocks and run through a subway tunnel in them, she begins to limp visibly, and finally gives up and just takes her shoes off.
• Dick Tracy: After spending several hours rehearsing a dance number in high heels, one of Breathless's backup singers is seen rubbing one of her feet in the background.
• In & Out: After the aborted wedding, one of Howard's relatives rests her feet on a chair and rubs them after taking off her high-heeled shoes.
• Infamously averted in Jurassic World, where Claire manages to hike through brush and outrun a T. rex in high heels without ever complaining about them or having attention drawn to them. In fact, this was done on Bryce Dallas Howard's own insistence, since the original plan was for her to run through the jungle barefoot.
• Love at First Sight (2023): After wandering around London for too long, Hadley eventually swaps her clunky red heels for sneakers (not trainers, as she tells her transplanted father).
• In Mrs. Doubtfire, Daniel complains about the high heels he's wearing while walking home from his first day as Mrs Doubtfire.
  Mrs Doubtfire: If I find the misogynistic bastard that invented heels, I'll kill him.
• Romancing the Stone: Joan is trying to hike through the jungle in high heels and keeps falling. Jack grabs them and chops the heels off using a machete. She says "Those were Italian". He says "Well, now they're practical".
• In She's the Man, Viola tells her mom, over the phone, that she is definitely not wearing high heels at her debutant event because they are "a devious plot to make a woman's butt look smaller. And make it harder to get away". Incidentally, she does this while walking past the principal, who overhears and then tells a second bystander that it is indeed very hard to run in high heels.
• In Some Like It Hot Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis have to disguise as members of an all-female band; Jack Lemmon, dressed as a woman and running to catch a train, plaintively asks how women can walk in high heels.
• The Wedding Year: When Violet runs out of her wedding, Mara chases after her and yells for Violet not to make her run in high heels. A little bit later Mara has to take her shoes off, and walks with a limp for the rest of the scene.
• White Blessing: Davaa's night out clubbing winds up with her dragging her drunk-ass judo coach home, while she's wearing high heels. She goes out walking with Garid afterwards but complains about her feet in said heels. She winds up putting on his shoes while he walks the streets of Ulaanbaatar in his socks. (This is their romantic Meet Cute.)
• In xXx Xander Cage is drugged by government agents and wakes up in a diner that is about to be robbed. He quickly realizes that the scenario is a test because too many things about the diner did not add up. The clincher was that the waitress was wearing high heels. No waitress would wear high heels to work since she would be crippled in a few days.

Literature

• Adrian Mole: In Cappuccino Years, Adrian's mother tries to sue Shoe Mania!, after a stiletto heel breaks off when she is meeting Sir Anthony Hopkins on a mountain. When asked in court why she was wearing heels, she says that she only wore them in the final stages, as she did not want Sir Anthony to see her in hired climbing boots. She is successful in suing Shoe Mania!, as the shoes did not bear a health warning, and it is ruled that the name Shoe Mania! encouraged women to make unsuitable purchases.
• In Cheaper by the Dozen, Mother Gilbreth protests her daughters' decision to wear high heels in high school using the family obsession with efficiency. She tells her oldest, Anne, that it's absurd for her and her sisters to go around in obviously tiring shoes while their father lectures around the United States on removing wasted effort.
• Discworld: In Witches Abroad, when Magrat is hypnotised into being confident, the stiletto glass slippers give her High-Heel Power. As soon as this wears off (When the Clock Strikes Twelve, naturally) she stumbles and demands to know how anyone is expected to walk in these things.
• In "Bombshells", a short story within The Dresden Files, Molly Carpenter suffers through wearing a pair of very high heels to infiltrate a fancy party. Andi the werewolf, wearing a similar costume with similar shoes, hints that she's in pain too — but says it's just a matter of getting used to it. Molly doesn't seem convinced.
• The Estuary: Hillary mentally bemoans having to walk in the high-heeled boots she uses to attract johns.
• Fun Jungle: A fleeing culprit in Whale Done, is slowed down a lot by her spiky high heels.
• Hardy Boys: In "Trouble in Warp Space", actress Jerri Bell asks the director if there's a way to re-write a scene so that she doesn't have to run down a hill in heels.
• In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Hermione comments on her high heels hurting her feet at the wedding. She then has to make her escape in them, but that goes without comment.
• During the first book of the Journey to Chaos series, Princess Kasile compliments Tiza's shoes as being practical and suited for the professional mercenary: easy to walk in and great for kicking people. She compares these shoes to the "high-heeled monstrosities" that she has to wear, being a princess and all. This was said to pacify Tiza and for "practice" in pacifying hostile people, so how much she truly believes this is not made clear in the scene.
• Rats, Bats and Vats: After Fitzhugh strands a General Failure and his mistress/secretary at a vacation home by tampering with the car, the mistress doesn't take long to complain about how walking home in her heels hurts her feet.
• Secret Santa (2007): Shawna notes that while high-heeled boots "made her legs look great," they "weren't made for walking for hours."
• The book Unuseless Japanese Inventions contains training wheels for high heels: small wheels added to the heel, to aid a young woman's transition to walking in heels.

Live-Action TV

• Air City: Do-kyung is the uptight, driven, Type A new head of operations at Incheon Airport. She is apparently bothered by her high heels as she's going to work, so she takes them off and starts walking across the airport concourse in her stocking feet. Ji-sung catches her, and it's a humanizing moment for her.
• In an episode of Boston Legal (Still Crazy After All These Years), Lori Colson is attending a formal holiday party in her high heels, but her feet are hurting so badly that she sneaks into a side room to find some privacy to give her aching feet a massage. However, Alan Shore finds her and she laments her choice of footwear. Alan, without provocation, takes Lori's foot and begins massaging it for her. She resists initially but sighs and moans in relief moments after.
• In an episode of The Big Bang Theory (The Wildebeest Implementation), Amy buys high heels but feels sore when walking in them.
• Inverted in an episode of Cybill, where Cybill takes her friend Marianne camping. Marianne has only ever worn heels, and so has trouble keeping her balance in flats.
• CSI: NY: Zig-zagged in "Right Next Door," which opens with a young woman leaving work for a date, changing her hairstyle and swapping her flats for high-heeled shoes she had in her oversized bag as she hurries down the sidewalk. A few steps after she gets them on, one heel catches in a subway grate, inertia propels her forward, she loses her balance and crashes through the display window of an art gallery, and a very large painting lands on her, knocking her out. She dies when a sharp piece of glass falls, severing an artery.
• Doctor Who has many examples. One of the more notable ones in Classic Who is Romana I, who discovered that the warnings from the Doctor to wear sensible shoes were not unfounded. She ends up taking off her heels and continuing barefoot.
• Dollhouse features an example in which Echo (as Roma Klar) mentions that her feet hurt badly after a day in stilettos. Considering how experienced she is at wearing them by this point, it's significant that she's never become accustomed to the pain.
• The Falcon and the Winter Soldier features Sam Wilson dressing up as a proper Fashion-Victim Villain nicknamed "Smiling Tiger" when he, Bucky and Zemo infiltrate Madripoor. As the ensuing shootout and foot chase reveals....it's really, really, really hard for a seasoned soldier to run in heels.
• Forever: In "Fountain of Youth" Henry points out a woman dressed very expensively wearing spike heels, commenting that a woman in heels that high doesn't do a lot of walking, she gets driven places.
• Friends episode The One With Monica's Boots focuses on, well, a pair of high-heeled knee boots owned by Monica. Even putting them on causes her to yell in pain; standing and walking is obviously torture. This leads to all kinds of problems.
• Frontier Circus: In "Stopover in Paradise", Ben romances the tomboyish owner of a local ranch. She attempts to become more feminine for him, but has trouble, especially with her high-heeled shoes. Ben eventually tells her to take them off so he can teach her to dance properly.
• Gilligan's Island: In "Gilligan the Goddess'', Gilligan is Disguised in Drag by Ginger and Mary Ann. He complains that high-heeled shoes are pinching his feet, and asks them how they deal with it. They tell him to concentrate on how much the earrings are pinching his ears.
• Miami Vice: In one episode, Gina wears high heels that cause her so much pain, she can barely stand. Trudy has to support her as she walks.
• The Muppet Show: In Carol Channing's episode, Miss Piggy has a new pair of shoes that are too small for her feet. She plans to take them back until Kermit compliments them. Desperate to hear more praise from her beloved frog, Piggy spends the rest of the episode limping around the theatre in the shoes.
• RuPaul's Drag Race: Comes up all the time, as many of the queens wear outlandish heels during the runway portion and will quickly ditch them in favor of slippers while sitting backstage during deliberation. Also, whenever the Once a Season makeover challenge involves men, they almost always struggle with the heels.
• Saved by the Bell introduces a Tomboy called Tori, who tries to doll up for a dance later in the episode. She repeatedly trips over her heels, clearly not used to walking in them.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: In part one of book 8 (The Hostile Hospital), Esme Squalor chases the main characters through the Library of Records. She repeatedly trips due to her bladed stiletto heels and ends up using them as throwing knives against the Baudelaires.
• In an episode of Smallville, Lois tries to become a superhero of her own: "Stiletto". Her signature piece of costuming is, of course, a pair of killer heels — and she spends much of her time complaining about how hard they are to walk in, how much they hurt her feet, or both.
• In the fourth episode of Wednesday, the title character hobbles out of a High-School Dance and declares that whoever invented high heels "clearly had a side hustle as a torturer". Given that she's also alluded to having actually been tortured, she must have been having a difficult night. (It doesn't stop her from running through the woods later.)
• WWE Tough Enough's fifth season premiere featured the contestants working backstage at a WWE event. Ariane laughed "I'm doing this in heels" while working as a janitor.
• On You're the Worst, Gretchen wears her wedding high heels to a day spent on her feet at work; at the end of the episode, there's a closeup of her bloody feet as she takes them off.

Puppet Shows

• In the Carol Channing episode of The Muppet Show, Miss Piggy buys some stylish but excruciating shoes that are really too small for her. She considers taking them back... until Kermit admires them.

Tabletop Games

• GURPS rules that one must have a special Perk to avoid penalties for high heels.

Video Games

• Invoked in Destroy All Humans! when reading the minds of certain women.
  Woman: I'd like to meet the man who invented heels... And kill 'em.
• Gaia in Final Fantasy XIV wears high-heeled boots, to which she complains about her feet killing her after she and the rest of the party do some running around in the desert. Thancred points out that Gaia should have worn more practical footwear if she was going to walk through a desert.
• Galaxy Angel: This happens to Ranpha on her route. When she and Tact go shopping for the Fargo ball, she finds a pair of high-heeled shoes used by the protagonist of her favorite romance movie, and Tact ends up buying them for her as a present. Later at the ball, he finds her alone at the balcony, and reveals she had to take them off because they were hurting her feet (as they weren't her size).
• During the credits of Wild Guns, Annie takes off her heels while resting. While it's never explicitly stated that they hurt her feet, it could easily be implied, since she wears them throughout the entire game.

Web Animation

• JaidenAnimations: The narrator, Jaiden, dislikes wearing heels, though not because they hurt, rather because she's clumsy when wearing them.
• In RWBY, during a Ballroom Blitz, Ruby finds herself at a disadvantage in a fight against Cinder because of the high heels she'd been wearing (as she favors boots, compared to her partner Weiss' Combat Stilettos), even calling them "stupid lady stilts".
  Ruby: Can we have a serious discussion about how Weiss fights in these?

Web Comics

• In Magical Boy, protagonist Max is a trans boy who has inherited the responsibilities and powers of his former Magical Girl Warrior mother. Unfortunately for him, this includes a very frilly feminine outfit which includes heels that he cannot walk in. (He promptly throws them at an enemy.) As the comic progresses and Max starts to gain better control of his powers, his outfit slowly starts shifting towards a more masculine form, and the heels are actually the first thing to be replaced — becoming baseball shoes.
• Moon Sticks is a gag-per-day Sailor Moon parody comic, it pokes fun at this about Sailor Mars' heels in a strip showing her having to hang back at the start of fights to apply blister plasters to her feet.
• In Sarah's Scribbles, Sarah Andersen is happy to share the joyful experience of wearing high heels for more attractivenes. It's very relatable.

Web Videos

• Something of a Running Gag for Geek Remix whenever a character is wearing heels while doing a lot of running is mentioning how painful it must be. Most notably the main character of The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories, whom Stacy compared to the one girl who's decided she's committed to a pair of heels on a night out and refuses to take them off.
• Examined in The Try Guys' video where the four of them attempt to wear high heels in various styles and heights while out on the town, and seeing how long they can go without "flatting out" and trading the heels for flats when the pain is too much. The shoes range from Zach's sensible three-inch heel ankle boots to Eugene's ridiculous six-inch stilettos (which put a hole in his laminate floor). While they love how the shoes look, all four of them admit that their feet hurt terribly once they walked in them for any length of time and they're difficult to move and keep their balance in. Ned even accidentally faceplants when his heels get stuck on the rung of a barstool. By the end of the evening, all four of them opt to flat-out; even the ones who forgot to bring backup shoes just went barefoot rather than struggling in the heels.

Western Animation

• In the Futurama episode, "Yo Leela, Leela", as Leela is approaching the stage after winning a Slurmie at the Young People's Choice Awards, an announcer says, "This is Turanga Leela's first nomination and second time in high heels", which is immediately followed by her briefly stumbling.
• Hailey's On It!: One of the items on Hailey's list is "learn to walk in heels", which she gets an opportunity to do for Kristine's quinceañera in "Kristine-ceañera". She spends most of the episode clumsily stumbling around, until finally mastering them at the end... after which she happily kicks them off and vows never to wear high heels again.
• Justice League Unlimited: Subverted in the episode The Once and Future Thing: Weird Western Tales, after time-travelling Leaguers end up wearing the clothes of Old West bandits as disguises, Wonder Woman complains the cowboy boots she's wearing are killing her. Batman points out, "You fight crime in high heels" to which Wonder Woman replies, "High heels that fit!".
• The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder: The first episode has Penny wearing her mom's heel pumps, imagining herself strutting down a stairway to the song "Do It" by Chloe x Halle, and she finds herself constantly tripping, and having a harder time walking uphill.
• Recess: Spinelli is entered in a Beauty Contest and so must learn to walk in heels. Vince of all people has to teach her how. Her first attempt even prompts ominous music as her legs wobble.
• Scooby-Doo:
  • The Scooby-Doo Project: While solving a mystery in the woods, Daphne complains that her feet hurt.
    Velma: Well, is it our fault you wore high heels on a hiking trip?
    Daphne: At least I try to look feminine!
    Velma: [stunned silence]
  • Another Scooby-Doo example appears in one of the "behind the scenes featurettes" from Scooby-Doo's Greatest Mysteries. Daphne complains about not being seen as smart compared to Velma, citing her straight-A average. Then Velma points out that Daphne goes around wearing pumps even when the current case puts them in the middle of a wetland.
• The Simpsons: In "Lisa the Beauty Queen", Homer enters Lisa into a beauty contest and Bart helps teach her how to walk in heels after she stumbles on her first attempt.
• In the Star Trek: Prodigy "Freaky Friday" Flip episode "Mindwalk" Dal ends up in the body of Vice Admiral Kathryn Janeway and finds he cannot even manage the comparatively small heels on her standard-issue Starfleet shoes.
• Wakfu: In "Miss Ugly", as part of an "ugly princess" disguise, Evangelyne has to wear high-heeled sandals. As she's totally unaccustomed to them, this results in several embarrassing slips and falls for her, including one down a full flight of stairs.

Real Life

• It's because of this trope that many brides opt to wear flats or even sneakers, if anything on their feet at all, under their Fairy Tale Wedding Dress, since they'll be standing for most of the day but no one will see their feet, so there's no sense in doing it all in heels. In fact, it's a running joke at bridal shops to have that one punk grrl who proclaims that she'll be wearing Chuck Taylors with her wedding dress instead of high heels, since that's far more common than she realizes.

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