High heels are fashionable, but uncomfortable, and can even lead to chronic foot damage. It doesn't make sense to favor footwear which harm and hurt feet, plus render it difficult to run from ancient and modern predators. But if wearing high heels makes women more attractive, allowing them to be more choosy over a larger number of higher quality males competing for their attention, this could explain the evolutionary advantages of this fashion statement.

To ensure the women were rated on how attractive they were purely based on their high heels researchers used a technique called point-light display which highlights points of the body with lit markers. Women in high heels walked in a fashion more characteristic of female gait. The results are consistent with the idea that wearing high heels makes women look more attractive, and added: Fashions by their very nature are ephemeral, but fashions that endure, such as high heels, may emphasize sex-specific aspects of the body.

Researchers note that attractiveness is dependent on cultural standards. They write that they believe that the reason that women look more feminine and attractive in heels is that they took smaller, more frequent steps. Heels also exaggerate the difference between male and female gaits, which the researchers called a supernormal stimulus. That difference increased sexual arousal in men and causes more attentiveness in women searching for potential mates.