HIGH HEELS

The best way a woman can capture a man's attention -- so much so that she actually has a bit of power over him -- is to wear stilettos. And while women have known this instinctively for hundreds of years, a scientific study in France has proven it. The study led by Nicolas Gueguen, a behavioral science researcher from the Universite de Bretagne-Sud in Lorient, France, the team asked a group of 19-year-old women to wear black heels that were one of three heights: 0.2 inches, 2 inches and 3.5 inches. The women walked on public streets and asked men between the ages of 25 to 50 for help in various circumstances. The results:

• When a woman dropped her glove on the street while wearing heels, she was almost 50 percent more likely to have a man retrieve it for her than if she wore flats.
• A woman who wore high heels was twice as likely to persuade men to stop and answer survey questions than when she wore flats, specifically a 47 percent vs. 83 percent success rate.
• A high-heeled woman in a bar waited half the time to get picked up by a man, compared to a woman with lower heels or flats.

"Women's shoe heel size exerts a powerful effect on men's behavior," study leader Gueguen said. "Simply put, they make women more beautiful." Why to high heels make a woman more beautiful? "Men are very attracted by a woman in heels as she looks taller, more sexually confident, sure of herself, with a lengthened silhouette and sensual jutting buttocks," French sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann said.