Finding size 44 stilettos is much easier than you think. There’s a large and podologically compulsive sisterhood of trannies who are more into stilettos than their natural-born sisters. (What is the point, after all, of Henry becoming Henrietta to wear trainers and flip-flops? Boys become girls to get into heels. And possibly other boys.)

The first thing that struck me as I opened the box was how excited — despite myself — I was to have got them, my first pair of patent red stilettos. I say excited not in the tumescent, opening-dark-closets way, but in the birthday-present, new-kit sense. The second thing I thought was, Christ, these are difficult to get on. You can’t just plunge your feet into them. You have to be sitting down. And then you have to be sort of erected, like . . . like . . . an erectable erection thingy. And third and finally, I thought, aaaaaaahhhh f***! The agony. The AGONY! According to internet facts, the pressure on the heel of a stiletto is greater than that of an elephant standing on one foot. How this was verified is unknown — who lay under the elephant, and then their mother’s heels, and screamed: “This one’s much worse”?

Someone once pointed out how brave and foolish was the first man to eat an oyster. And we celebrate the genius of Jenner for inventing vaccination, yet we never consider the idiotic heroism of the small lad who said, yes, of course you can slit my arm open with a knife and insert a cowpox scab into the gaping wound just to see what’ll happen. So, we may venerate the master shoemaker Roger Vivier for the invention of the stiletto (named appropriately after the Italian knife favoured by assassins), but the first woman who slid her toes into these tortuous things is a martyr whose name is known only to God.

Setting aside the agony, which is not unlike having your toes forced into a blunt pencil sharpener, it’s astonishing how difficult walking with anything close to elegance is. I caused much hilarity clopping around the kitchen like a bow-legged pantomime dame with third-degree piles. “Point your toes,” the Blonde kept saying. I felt like a cross between a Tchaikovsky cygnet and a lipizzaner. What is so inexplicable about stilettos is not why women wear them, but why they ever wear them twice.

It was in the 1960s that stilettos replaced clogs as symbols of post-war young working-class girls. In beehives and conical bras they tottered along, eating chips, giggling, aggressively emancipated, loud and lippy, out for it and up for it. Stilettos were their pedestal.

Stilettos changed everything that matters. They elevated and articulated arses, did away with the need for corsets and bustles and whalebone. They sculpted calves and thighs and, most of all, made a silhouette that was completely new. Unseen before in history, this look has been worn solely in one generation. The cult of shoes is a particularly late-20th-century obsession for women, and stilettos hold a place of prime adoration and longing.

They are, though, like women themselves, a contradiction. On one foot, they’re symbols of authority, intimidation, emancipation and sexual domination. They give height and form and a skilful dexterity. On the other foot, they’re a self-inflicted western version of Chinese foot binding, a painful mutilation. They hobble women, making running impossible. The position of the foot tilts the pelvis, accentuates the buttocks, raises the organs of sex to the height of a male groin. They make women available objects. Just as instantly as the stiletto became a fashion classic, it also became a pornographic one, dribbled over and fetishised. Like pornography, the stiletto can boast being one of the few symbols of both feminist equality and sexual exploitation.

The revelation, though, came when I wore my stilettos outside. Standing at a bus stop on the Embankment, I was assaulted by every white van that went past, honked and hollered at with expletives, obscene instructions and sweaty good wishes. I’m a middle-aged bloke, you pervy halfwit, I yelled back. Yes, but you’ve got a great arse! A backpack family of German tourists gave me a wide berth. I was somehow what they’d expected to see. The father lingered, and winked. I felt like a naked Dorothy in my red shoes. Without them, I’d have been, as ever, utterly invisible, unsexual, but with stilettos, cyclists wobbled, busloads of shoppers smirked and blew kisses, and finally a police car drew up, not to move me on, just to watch and see if I was propositioning for trade.

It was all a bit of a learner. And the first thing I learnt is that size matters. A couple of extra inches is a lot. Four is masses. I liked towering. And not for the first time I marvelled at how much work and technique goes into being a woman. As opposed to just being a man, which means getting up and getting your zip on the right way round. There is so much more to master in being a mistress — all adolescent boys should be made to wear stilettos for a day, to teach them respect.

Finally, why isn’t there a statue to Vivier and the unknown stiletto test pilot? How much greater to have invented this, to have caused a whole new silhouette, and so many positions, than to have made a bridge or a jet engine or a computer. And my bum did look very good.

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