Veronica's doctor, in an old Archie cartoon, prescribes her a pair of clunky, brown, flat orthopedic shoes, because those pumps she always wears are killing her feet. "Ronnie" wears them all week, until Betty catches her dancing in red heels at Pop's Chock'lit Shoppe. "My feet feel awful, but the rest of me feels great!" Veronica tells her.

Women.

No matter how physically dreadful stilettos, kittens, and wedges are, women just won't stop wearing them. It's almost 10 years since Harvard scientists linked the wearing of high-heeled shoes–whether wide or stiletto–to degenerative knee osteoarthritis. And it's been two years since the B.C. Association of Podiatrists took the stretching and strengthening exercise system called Yamuna to task for promising to make heel-wearing healthier.

"While podiatrists have long supported the practice of exercising and strengthening one's feet," read the BCAP's 2005 response, "they cannot support the end goal of keeping women in unsafe shoes."

As much as the BCAP counsels against frequently wearing heels, the trend continues through this year's holiday season. Jody Kirk, the manager of the Gravity Pope shoe store, reported to the Georgia Straight that wedges and platforms are back again this season. So there's no escaping.

Even Julie Yee, a sensible downtown Vancouver podiatrist, plans to strap on some height for her holiday parties this year.

"Women love the way their legs look in heels," she told the Straight in a phone interview. "Suddenly you have a larger calf muscle, your leg looks longer and thinner, and your butt sticks out. It's a vanity thing. And it's instantaneous! You don't have to work for it."

That said, Yee gave up her daily heels three years ago, when she finished her residency at UBC. Her feet ached, and she saw the outcome of her patients' lives in heels: neuromas (benign nerve tumours), metatarsalgia (pain in the ball of the foot), bunions, hammertoe. In the office, she advises women to make heels an occasional treat. However, she is realistic.

"I refer to my own shoes all the time, which have a rocker sole for comfort.…Then I hear, 'The shoes you're wearing, doctor, are ugly, and I don't see myself wearing them.'"

You can't blame women for wear?ing heels, says a Sauder School of Business assistant professor. Juliet Zhu noted that, psychologically, women's shoe aspirations are reasonable.

"People equate height with power and success," she told the Straight. "It's researched and proven. When I teach or do seminars, I wear heels. They elevate your body and spirit."

Zhu noted that the desire to be taller extends beyond women. Short men can buy lifts for inside their shoes. She also talked about a drug for children with growth-hormone deficiency. (Humatrope earned Eli Lilly $415 million in 2006, according to the company's annual report.) There's also a leg-lengthening surgery in which doctors break the tibia and fibula and crank the leg longer over a period of months.

As an example of why height is important, Zhu related that recently, a colleague commented to her that one of her students is "only five feet tall but she is super smart". And there's an ethnic element to it. Asian women, Zhu said, tend to be small. As the North American Asian population grows taller over generations, she said, people tend to think that's a good thing. Because being taller, she said, is associated with confidence.

"Only when you're in that short category do you realize what it costs you."

At 5-2, Vancouver Yamuna instructor Micheline Gauthier calculated that cost long ago. In the 1980s, she was one of the few women in the financial industry.

"I used to walk into conferences where there's 150 men and no other women," she told the Straight. "I felt it was to my advantage to look as tall as possible." Now she teaches other women how to roll their feet to accommodate heels in relative comfort.

Adventure-travel specialist Randi Winter is one of her more extreme students. When she downsized to a condo, she donated more than 70 pairs of heels to the local Dress for Success chapter. She claims that Yamuna helped her give up weekly massage sessions because the program was so successful at minimizing heel-induced pain.

"I'm from the generation that dances hard," Winter told the Straight. "When you go to weddings or bar mitzvahs, they're [Yamuna's Foot Wakers, half spheres that look like prickly dryer balls] the only way you survive."

On the phone from New York, Yamuna Zake herself told the Straight that most podiatrists are not realistic about women's lives.

"If someone walks into an office and says, 'My feet are in pain,' the doctor is going to say, 'Don't wear them,'" she said. "They don't think about giving women solutions."

So Veronica's heels are a relatively easy and safe way to appear tall, professional, and sexy. If only there were such an easy answer for Betty.