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They're impractical and often painful but despite hundreds of years of horror stories women continue to wear high-heeled shoes.

Experts agree the fear of blisters, corns and calluses can't compete with the sexy status of high heels and fashion designers keep taking the shoe to ever more dizzying heights.

"They make our legs look long and beautiful," explained Faye Markowitz, the women's buyer at Davids Footwear in Toronto. "They make us look thinner and women will do anything to look thinner and taller, sexier."

The phenomenon isn't new.

The Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto displays hundreds of shoes worn by women around the world through the ages in the quest for height, status and beauty.

There are foot-high sandals worn by women of the Ottoman Empire to keep their feet dry in bathhouses and chopine platforms first worn by Venetian prostitutes and then adopted by European aristocrats starting as early as the 1400s.

Museum director Emanuele Lepri said the elaborately decorated platforms offered both status and height to the wearer.

"If you are taller, of course your figure shows better especially if you have long dresses and ... you could show the opulence of your dresses," he said.

The highly decorated velvet shoes are prominently on display at the museum's Chronicles of Riches exhibition, along with a pair of golden, jewel-encrusted slippers that were stolen from the museum two years ago only to be returned, unharmed, a month later.

Many shoes in the museum had a useful purpose, such as the chestnut crushers - aptly named for their function - which are a vicious-looking marriage between a pair of golf shoes and razor wire.

The purpose of others on display is less than practical.

Modern women might be able to sympathize with the gurus in ancient India, who teetered around on padukas, a shoe similar to today's flip-flop sandals but with heavy platforms made of metal or wood and a single post with a bump on the end to fit between the toes.

"We'll you had to develop your toe muscles," laughed Lepri as he explained how gurus wore the sandals for ceremonies.

"They convey some sort of sacrifice that you are making while you are walking. So it's the idea of selflessness."

The sacrifice may be similar to women who teeter atop of the latest strappy stiletto in the name of fashion.