If you've got the body and the chutzpah, a pencil skirt is so sexy on older women. Look for ones that fall just below the knee. Think 1940s, cinched-in jackets - imagine you are Lauren Bacall on a date with Humphrey Bogart and you just absolutely have to wear very high heels.

High heels weren't always a girl thing. In the fifteen-hundreds, the riding shoes of French noblemen were fitted with raised heels so that their feet stayed put in the stirrups. Over the next few decades, heels inched higher on dress shoes, particularly among men of privilege.

My women students openly admit that they dress for interviews like dates, hoping to look their best: makeup, high heels, a well-fitting suit that shows off their figure. And I always tell them to make sure to wear a shirt under the suit jacket. Form fitting, yes. Cleavage, no.

I live in Paris, a city where you have a lot of stylish women, so I learned a lot by observing the women in the street. But my mother was always a big influence as well; she is always very feminine in high heels and perfectly cut dresses, with perfect makeup but never too much.

I have to be honest, I don't pay as much attention to women's fashion, but being a sneaker head, I do like it when a girl can rock a nice pair of sneakers. Not every girl can do it. Every girl looks good in heels - that's a given - but not every girl can look good in fresh kicks.

I just want to say, that if Jesus were alive, what would he be doing? Well, he would probably be accepting and loving people how they're made. And I always say this and it's really the truth. If being 4'11 was a sin, what would I do? Well, I could wear heels and I could add a wig.

Once upon a time, I was morbidly sensitive about the impertinence born of sociology. Taxi drivers would not stop for me after dark; white girls jogged to keep ahead of my shadow thrown at their heels by the amber street lamps. Part of me didn't blame them, but most of me was hurt.

And knife making is as much art as science, as far as I'm concerned: Forging metals from an old farm tool into a blade thin enough to effortlessly cut a tomato yet strong enough to mince ginger, all while looking beautiful, is comparable to Ginger Rogers dancing backwards in heels.

I'm one of those girls that, day-to-day, I'm in trainers or Converse. I have about 50 pairs of trainers, so when I get the chance to dress up, I will definitely be in heels. 100 percent. I might take some battered Converse in my bag to wear at the after-party when my feet are tired.

If you are a nurturing mother, and a good one, you can go to play groups, sit on the floor and play all the games, and have tea with the other mothers, but wouldn't you like to think that's not all there is? That you haven't hung up your high heels without knowing how to walk in them?

One hot summer night in San Francisco, roughly 10 years ago, I was sitting in a crowded Pacific Heights restaurant when Alice Adams walked in with a man. She was about 60 at the time, and she was wearing a skirt that fell an inch or so above her knees and flat heels without stockings.

I plan my golf outfits for the tournaments, I recycle some for the practice rounds, but I always have new ideas for my golf attire, and I like to dress nice after the rounds, so I have to bring all my heels. It's terrible. The worst part about being on tour is living out of a suitcase.

I'll never forget the dance number that I shot with Anushka. The choreography involved a lot of intricate dance moves. I'm at least 7 inches shorter than Anushka, so I had to wear the highest heels I've ever worn in my life; throughout the song, I even injured my knee a couple of times.

The fact is that Sarah Palin positively emanates strength. She gives off the aura of being a strong woman who doesn't back down, and she does it sporting heels and wearing her family like a badge of honour. I am sure there are a million other women out there who are doing the same thing.

By five or six, when the heels start to hurt, I kick off my shoes and walk bare feet. But that's not a big deal. Nobody else is at the office at that time, and as for singing loudly, I don't sing loudly. I might hum a tune at times when I am thinking about something, but that's all fine.

I have high heels in my bags if I need them for a shoot. But I like sneakers. I like being comfortable. I like to sit on the floor with my team and work. I don't like to sit in fancy chairs. It's really important to the culture of my company that people understand who they're working for.

People say I am the king of painful shoes. I don't want to create painful shoes, but it is not my job to create something comfortable. I try to make high heels as comfortable as they can be, but my priority is design, beauty and sexiness. I'm not against them, but comfort is not my focus.

Bill Clinton sitting on Air Force One getting his hair cut while people around the country cooled their heels and waited for him, became a metaphor for a populist president who had gotten drunk with the perks of his own power and was sort of, you know, not sensitive to what people wanted.

Already 2008 has proved a tumultuous year in terms of global perceptions of China, and there are still 59 days to go until the Beijing Olympics. The tragedy of the Sichuan earthquake followed hard on the heels of the riots in Tibet and the demonstrations surrounding the Olympic torch relay.

Eight years ago, you may remember Hillary and I were rivals for the Democratic nomination. We battled for a year and a half. Let me tell you, it was tough, because Hillary was tough. I was worn out. She was doing everything I was doing, but just like Ginger Rogers, it was backwards in heels.

I got scouted for modeling, and it was really scary - I was walking my dog wearing heels for the first time ever because I had a party to go to the day after, and I wanted to practice, and this black car kind of started following me, so I, being dramatic, picked up the dog and started to run.

I haven't grown since I was 13, and every girl cast opposite me isn't allowed to wear heels on camera, for fear that I would look minuscule. In all of the casting calls for my best friends on every project, it says in big, bold, red letters: 'Please no high heels.' It's a little embarrassing.

I love heels, and as a size 36, I've accumulated a wall of amazing high heels from catwalk shows over the years where designers had to make especially small shoes. Tom Ford's golden versions are my favourite. I do, however, also live in my flat Saint Laurent Chelsea boots or Givenchy sneakers.

I think it's important for kids to express themselves with bad fashion. I struggle a little bit now because I have a daughter and I feel with fashion, like they're sexualizing the kids so young. Little kids in high heels and that kind of thing is really difficult for me to wrap my head around.

I hate the idea of natural. For example, I prefer gardens to wild nature. I like to see the human touch. High heels are a complete invention - an extravagance. They're far from natural, but it's the impracticality that I adore. I prefer the useless to the useful, the sophisticated to the natural.

The truth is that for a Democrat to triumph in a presidential election, it needs to come on the heels of 'the dark times' of an unpopular Republican administration. Carter followed the Nixon era, Clinton succeeded after 12 years of Reagan/Bush, and Obama was a direct result of eight years of Bush/Cheney.

When you're performing, you just have to keep pushing through. You're human, and you're going to make mistakes. I think even Beyonce has tripped on stage, and she's Beyonce! We're all human beings, and sometimes we trip in our high heels! I barely perform in high heels. I don't know how those girls do it.

Once, I was going to a film event, and someone told me not to wear high heels to it. They said that it might intimidate the men. For some reason, I was ready to take their cue, but about an hour later, something in my head started ringing, and I thought, 'That is the worst advice anybody's ever given me.'

For a long time, because I'm pretty tall, I was scared to wear heels, but now I wear them all the time. I feel like I'm still discovering my stage style, but I love - well, I'm not a huge color person onstage, but I am in real life. I like short stuff, big heels, fringe, lots of fringe, sometimes sparkle, yeah!

Part of what made 'The Bling Ring' such a fun, freeing experience was that we got to wear these really over-the-top clothes we'd never pick in real life - like for the nightclub scenes, we'd have on these really short, really tight dresses. But you know what - I actually learned how to walk in heels on that set!

Sometimes there are paparazzi that take photos and you don't know they're there. So you're laughing, kicking up your heels and doing silly things. You don't even realize it. And then there's other times where they're two feet away from your face and it's invasive and it feels threatening, so you don't want to be smiling.

That would be a huge honor, if I ever were to become the No. 1 American. It's something that I've always wanted to, you know, achieve that. For me, if were to happen, it'd be great. I'd try to hold onto that spot as long as possible, but I know there'd be a lot of people nipping at my heels to try to get to that No. 1 spot.

A lot of female comedians will go up there in a sweatshirt and Converses, trying to dress themselves down, because it is sort of a boy's club. I'll go up in my heels. I like that people don't think I'll be funny. I'll take that on. I don't do standup comedy - I do standup and I do comedy, but I don't go up there and do jokes.

After considering the ways that I might be able to help young college students, I decided to continue my support of the Light on the Hill scholarship. I would like to endorse this particular fund and encourage other former UNC students who have found success to reach back and assist the efforts of current and future Tar Heels.

I wish I were shyly, quietly intriguing, like Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, like someone French and fashionable who knows how to twirl her ladylike locks just so and walk adroitly on kitten heels, who is all gesture and whisper - but I am unfortunately forward and forthright: When I am interested in a man, he absolutely knows it.

It's better not to wear too much jewellery - just a couple of nice things, nothing too rattly - and stick to kitten heels or flats. Women let themselves down with tall heels. I think they're kind of vulgar. I see women sinking into grass at outdoor parties or tiptoeing over gravel at weddings. It's silly. You need to be practical.

It is quite widely known that I like shoes. This is not something that defines me as either a woman or a politician, but it has come to define me in the eyes of the newspapers. I wore a pair of leopard-print kitten heels to a Conservative Party Conference a few years ago and the papers have continued to focus on my feet ever since.

When I think about fashion and elegance, I imagine a woman from the 1950s, on an airplane, with seamed stockings and a garment belt underneath, a skirt, high heels, and her hair that she's done the night before, perfectly done eyeliner, lipstick, gloves, perhaps, and all this just to sit on an airplane for a transcontinental flight.

Everyone likes a pair of comfy shoes. But is this an automatic right? Comfy shoes are clearly not allowed at the Oscars, for example. Why should criminals enjoy a treat that is denied to our favourite actresses? All prisoners, male and female, should be obliged to wear high heels. This would also make them easier to catch during riots.

My mother took my brother and I to a production of 'The Tempest', and it was in this very small - it could have been the basement of a church or a black box. The space was vast, but there were maybe 15 seats in the middle. Ariel came out wearing a nude sparkly thong and spike heels, and the muses had these gossamer see-through gowns on.

Usually, like, on 'Mean Girls,' the task that Tina Fey and I set for ourselves was we wanted to maintain a comic intensity throughout the movie, where people just don't really get a break from laughing. And if they do, it's for a brief emotional scene, and then we're going to once again try to knock them on their heels again with comedy.

Instead of inventing imaginary friends, I invented whole imaginary worlds. They were elaborate scenarios about spies and adventurers and top secret missions. I crawled along my swing set, searching for escape routes from my maximum-security prison; I biked through the neighborhood, the wind in my hair and a fleet of evildoers on my heels.

My mom let me play in her clothes, wear makeup, and I had high heels from a thrift store. My mom tells me that the only reason she let me dress in her clothes is because she couldn't afford any toys, and it seemed entertaining enough and kept her from having to buy me anything, 'cause everything I wanted was in her makeup box or wardrobe.

Bono told me how to dance in high heels and he also told me about U2's Glastonbury performance and how everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong, including him ripping his trousers on stage. I think he was lunging and his trousers ripped! He was telling me how he had to find a new way of performing that didn't involve moving.

Cole Haan is like high fashion Nike, so you feel like you're wearing Nike shoes, but you're wearing heels. Every time I'm on a red carpet, I always either wear Cole Haan or Stuart Weitzman. You end up having to walk around all night in these heels and you want to be comfortable and not look like you're in pain. It definitely shows in pictures.

People say that Rooney could have been like Lionel Messi, a more prolific goalscorer who dribbles past opponents more. But they are different characters. You will never see Messi snapping around the heels of an opponent to win the ball back deep in his own half. Wayne does that all the time, and sometimes that enthusiasm will count against him.

I can't understand it myself - how nervous I was when I took the floor for 'Strictly Come Dancing.' I walk out with 50,000 people gathered in the Millennium Stadium to fight Mikkel Kessler in the unification fight for the super middleweight division in 2007, and I feel great... and here I am, wearing tight pants and Cuban heels, and freaking out.

Femininity in general is seen as frivolous. People often say feminine people are doing 'the most,' meaning that to don a dress, heels, lipstick and big hair is artifice, fake, and a distraction. But I knew even as a teenager that my femininity was more than just adornments: they were extensions of me, enabling me to express myself and my identity.

Prince was outside his dressing room, shaking one of those little Easter egg maracas. His hair was straightened to a soft wave; his eyelashes were unfairly lovely. He smelled like the most expensive shelf in the Sephora perfume aisle. This man wearing eyeliner, heels and ladies' perfume somehow managed to be more masculine than the burly bodyguard.

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