I know what you were thinking, when you read last week’s post on my problem with kitten heels: you were thinking “hold on a second! Wasn’t she a model? Wasn’t it her literal job to be able to walk in heels?”
If I can please refer you to my book – the instant Sunday Times bestseller, How Not to be a Supermodel – which is almost entirely an ode to ways in which I failed miserably at my job and demonstrates how being crap at walking in heels wasn’t even my greatest modelling weakness. (I also hated standing around and being cold, which made up at least 30% of my professional duties, and I wasn’t that great at being tall and thin either.) I do urge you to get hold of a copy – whether that’s buying it, borrowing it or downloading the audiobook version on a free Audible trial (top tip) – because it does explain a lot about why I am like I am…
…as in dependable, resilient and thick-skinned, obviously. Anyway, when it came to wearing high heels for modelling jobs, I could manage a maximum walking distance of around ten metres at full stride and that was only by propelling myself forward at such pace that it left no actual time to fall over. Oh and in the very highest shoes, the almost vertical ones, it was all I could do just to stand upright. I couldn’t understand how anyone could even move in them, such was the gradient of the footbed. It was like being a ballerina en pointe but without the benefit of a) a ballerina’s vital training and b) a ballerina’s leg and foot strength. Also, no white tulle dress. And nobody clapping you for being so talented as to be able to walk on the tips of your toes and gushing ooooh, isn’t it beautiful and amazing: just a load of fashion people smoking fags and eyeing up your torso as you stagger up and down the middle of an empty warehouse that was previously used for illegal raves and/or ketamine deals.
