It doesn’t matter how much you care about fashion and looking good: short of some safeword-included-S&M, serious pain should not be part of daily life. And for all those people pretending their 6″ Louboutins are comfortable and totally not vain, science can now say: uh, no. New 3D scans show just how many disturbing ways high heels hurt your feet.

Most of us were treated to a few lovely diagrams of the ways late-19th century corsets warped women’s bones and internal organs at some point in high school, and immediately thought, oh, thank God no one cares if I throw on a huge sweater when I eat too much instead of squishing my insides unto death.

At least our lungs aren’t in our feet?

We’re apparently still not free of body disfigurement– eating disordered models aside– because the fashion-forward heels that so many force themselves to wear (or are forced into by an outdated or sexist dress code at work) causes numerous deformities in addition to serious pain.

When you wear heels, the entire weight of your body is carried by the front of your feet, which can cause clawed toes and arthritis. Bones under the big toe called sesamoids get dislodged, and the foot can form bunions in addition to the wildly attractive clawed effect, while various joints become hyper-extended– and all of these only lead to more pain.

This is not to say that throwing on a pair of Manolo’s for a few hours at a party will result in waking up and looking like the Hulk gave you a foot massage. Occasionally slipping into some Jimmy Choos (and maybe popping a few aspirin) is not a big deal. But seriously: pain and deformed feet, which only lead to more pain (and maybe surgery): so not worth it.

(via News.com, images via Youtube, Wikimedia)

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