I went out on the town on Saturday night and somehow ended counting the number of women on stilts. Probably one in five, among the partying crowd. This wouldn't matter if the stilts were truly high ones, because then the stilt-user could cross above people in a crowd and move really fast. But the stilts are not like that. They are around six inches. Even with those you need to practice, a lot, before you go out in them. But according to the websites I found, you should wear them only a few hours now and then, to avoid medical problems with your back and feet. That doesn't give much time for practicing.
I tried to find something comparable in Google images of high-heeled shoes. But, believe it or not, most of the ones they show are too low-heeled to give you an idea of the average heel height I saw last Saturday.
Shoes with six-inch heels are bad for you. Not only in terms of what they do to the bones of your feet or your back. They are bad for you, because I did not see one single woman who could walk in them without tottering and teetering. There's no way you can run in them, and unless you have thought this out very carefully beforehand by thinking how you are going to use the heels as a weapon if you get attacked, the shoes also turn you into a pretty helpless victim for predators.
Why not carry them with you if you want them for a party? You could wear sneakers outside and then change when you get to the party.
I blame the popular media. Watch television and you see the majority of the women in the talk shows wearing stilts, especially on Fox News. That they are sitting down means the awkwardness of the shoes is not made clear. And yes, high heeled shoes make your legs look longer, leaner and more muscular, the latter because you are standing on your tiptoes all the time. They also make your butt stick out more.
But they are not functional footwear. A fashion system which wants women to wear non-functional footwear is very wrong. A fashion system which admits that this non-functional footwear is bad for you but still necessary for proper female sexiness is simply evil.