WHENEVER my family members see a pair of five-inch (12.7cm) heels outside the front door, they’d say “Oh, Vivy’s home!”. I think my mum’s labour must have very painful because I’m pretty sure I was born in heels!

There’s something about the sexy stilettos that appeal to billions of women around the world. It could be the elegant arch that remind’s one of a woman’s soft and supple back, or the dangerous stiletto heel that resembles a woman’s powerful art of seduction.

* For the brave ones *

Could it also be the sound that stilettos make which kind of announces that the woman in charge has arrived?

How corny.

Really, though, most of us wear heels because we’re short. Oh, and because they make our legs look slightly longer. It’s all about vanity – it’s as simple as that.

I started wearing heels at the age of 12. When my mum was not looking, I snuck out of the house with the highest pair of platform shoes I could find. At the time, the ones in trend were the chunky platforms with same-height soles. Thanks to the Spice Girls, teenage girls looked like they were dragging bricks everywhere they went. But we thought we were the coolest kids ever then!

* The Spice Girls and their platform shoes *

Are those sky-high stilettos good for us? Of course not. But do we still wear them?

Of course we do.

We girls are complicated and stubborn beings, aren’t we?

It’s difficult to ignore heels when everytime you pass by a shoe store, the heels call out your name the loudest. They’re attention seekers, really.

While most people think that four-inch heels are normal (for some, five-inch heels have become their regular footwear) lately, things have become a little wild in the shoe department.

* Antonio Berardi's heel-less shoes *

Shoes without any arch support, for example, have emerged. What about those “ballet flats” that are permanently on tiptoe mode? Ouch!

The worst of all for me is the heels without the er, actual heel. I showed a picture of these kinds of shoes to my grandmother and she just scratched her head, before telling me about what the world has become today.

The heel fetish has spread so widely that they even named it – “altocalciphilia”. Altocalciphilia is a sexual fetish for high heels, and is not limited to just women. Minus the sexual part, my loved ones would say I’m borderline altocalciphilic. People have started to show me stories with headlines like “The danger of high heels” and “Bad for the back.”

I wouldn’t have dismissed those articles if I knew that years after my first pair of heels, I’d be seeing a chiropractor for the back pain I’ve been silently enduring. He pointed at my shoes and said, “I don’t even have to touch you, I know your pain is because of those.”

So quick to judge, these chiropractors!

Deep down, I knew that these back pains are not something to laugh about. They are serious and can have a negative effect on so many areas in our lives. Pregnancy might be complicated, work might be interrupted, slipped discs might occur. As a young and active person, I have got a long journey ahead of me and it would be really silly if I had to slow down because of my choice of footwear.

I went to do an MRI scan recently and let me tell you, it was not fun. You have to stay still for half an hour in a coffin-like space with a roof that is just a few centimetres above your nose.

Thank God my results were fine, but the doctor did say that I should think of slowing down my frowned-upon relationship with high heels. Since then, I have been wearing flats to work and it has actually introduced me to a whole new world of footwear. I am in a better mood because I don’t have a cluster of blisters on my feet, I walk faster and I have even caught myself smiling to strangers!

The bad news is that I’m still short. So I always have a pair of heels in the office for emergency cases (like when there is a fashion event to attend), or when overseas clients come in for a meeting and they happen to be Michael Jordan’s cousins.

The reality is that women and heels will always be frenemies when vanity is involved, but the key is in this single word – moderation.

If we can all understand that, the world would be filled with happier women. Short, yes, but happy nonetheless!

Vivy blogs at www.proudduck.com. You can also find her on twitter at @vivyyusof.