The torments women will endure in the name of glamour! Never mind the fact that when you’re wearing high heels, you actually have to realign your spine so you don’t fall over. Or the fact that a research team at Harvard University found a link between high heels and knee osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease. Or the fact that they can shorten your Achilles tendon and cause something called metatarsalgia-chronic pain in the ball of the foot. Let’s just focus on those toes for a moment. Do you want a bunion (a painful inflammation of bone and tissue on the side of your big or little toe)? Wear heels. How do hammertoes sound? Hammertoes is a permanent foot deformity. When you crunch and crowd those poor toes of your into a narrow shoe and clench them to grasp the shoe, over time the tendons in your toes will curl up and stiffen into a clawlike shape or a… hammer. Who needs Home Depot, when you can transform your own appendages into tools?

Granted, there’s a mutual fantasy in the world of high heels. Wearing heels makes women feel sexier, and men love leering at hotties navigating the city in their stilettos. And for every Manoloshod woman who dreams of being Carrie Bradshaw, there’s some haggard straphanger out there whose inner Mr. Big is just waiting to emerge. But until men trade their flats for 4-inch spiked heels, it’s women, and women alone, who’ll bear the brunt of the pain.