What a spot of shoe-gazing reveals about us all ...

Justin Thomas examines why women like shoes, and why men like women in high heels.

What is it about shoes that invokes such powerful feelings in us? Photo: AFP

The French shoe designer Christian Louboutin recently set up shop in Abu Dhabi. His shoes are different. They have red soles. And his new shop is also different. It sells red-soled shoes, not to women but to men. And why is this news? Primarily because Mr Louboutin has become the latest poster-boy for one of contemporary society’s most bizarre relationships, namely our obsession with footwear.

Why has the shoe been elevated to such dizzying heights of sartorial superstardom? It is the only item of clothing routinely coming into contact with unclean surfaces and most of us wouldn’t dream of squishing a bug with our sleeve.

Traditionally, it’s women who’ve amassed large logic-defying shoe collections. Former Philippines first lady Imelda Marcos, for example, reportedly abandoned around 3,000 pairs of shoes when the Marcos family was forced into exile. I wonder how many pairs she actually escaped with?

Consumer research in the US suggests that American women, on average, own 19 pairs of shoes at any one time, with 15 per cent of women owning upwards of 30 pairs. A similar survey in the UK, suggested that the average British woman would own 469 pairs of shoes during her lifetime, with a price tag of around Dh90,000. I wonder what the stats for the UAE would be?

In his book, The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption, Dr Gad Saad, an associate professor of Marketing at Concordia University in Canada, suggests that 90 per cent of compulsive shoppers are women, and that shoes top the list of compulsively purchased items. What is at the heart of this female fascination with footwear?

Perhaps it is the historic symbolism of shoes. For example, the shoe once played a central role in Anglo-Saxon wedding ceremonies. This would involve the father of the bride handing over his daughter’s shoes to the groom, which the groom would then use to hit the bride on the head, signifying a transfer of authority from father to husband. Similarly, in the Arabic tradition of dream interpretation, I am told that dreaming of shoes is often interpreted along marital lines.

Within the Freudian tradition, there have been suggestions that the female shoe symbolises male power. Other psychologists, however, have turned away from the symbolic and speculative, looking instead to empirical research for answers.

Cross-cultural exploration has established certain “universals” in terms of what is considered physically attractive in females. One of these universals is a male preference for females with higher leg-to-body ratios (longer legs). Furthermore, higher female leg-to-body ratios are often associated with better physical health, reduced risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and lower blood pressure. High-heeled shoes artificially increase leg-to-body ratios, providing a false impression of health and fitness. In evolutionary terms the shoe confers “survival value”.

In the US this survival value translates into upwards of $17 billion a year – the amount US women spend on shoes according to a recent report by the retail and consumer-information firm NPD Group.

Can Mr Louboutin create as much of a buzz for his men’s footwear collection as he has for his women’s range? I very much doubt it. For most men, shoes are just shoes, for women they are often so much more.

Justin Thomas is an associate professor of psychology at Zayed University and author of Psychological Well-Being in the Gulf States

On Twitter: @DrJustinThomas