A-Rod and daughter Tasha Rodriguez at a Gotham Magazine party in New York on May 15. (Charles Eshelman/WireImage.com)
Forget getting your ears pierced. The latest rite of passage for little girls is getting that first pair of pumps.
When Alex Rodriguez escorted 5-year-old daughter Natasha onto the red carpet at Highbar in Midtown on Saturday night, he said he was “extremely nervous” — because it was her first time wearing heels.
N-Rod, who sported 2-inch strappy sandals by Amiana, is following in the footsteps of another famous daughter: Suri Cruise. The 4-year-old offspring of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes has been wearing heels for the past year and has popularized a trend that is now dividing parents across New York City.
“High heels are for dress-up,” insists Samantha Yanks, editor-in-chief of Gotham and Hamptons magazines and mother of a 3-year-old. “They’re cute for playtime, and that’s where it ends. My daughter loves putting on my Louboutins and marching around the house, but not outside. Wearing heels, like makeup, is like a rite of passage — it’s not meant to happen when you’re 3.”
Despite parental concerns, retailers such as Nordstrom, Piperlime and Zappos are all pumping out shoes for girls ages 4 to 8, with heels up to 2 inches high. Nina Kids produces the unfortunately named “Hotsy” style, which boasts heels 1 1/2 inches high.
Jessica Simpson — famed for wearing sexy platforms — makes a range of kiddie heels for girls ages 4 and up. Designer Kenneth Cole sells platform metallic wedges, so your toddler can look like a Miami beach babe. And Amiana — the most “fashion forward” in kiddie shoes — makes faux snakeskin sandals and shimmery peep-toes worthy of a starlet.
Shoe manufacturers say that heels for tots are not completely new (Amiana has been in business since 1985) but the styles today are more sophisticated, mimicking adult silhouettes, as heels inch skyward.
“Heels are getting higher because little girls simply want to look like big girls,” says Alan Paulenoff, executive vice president of Nina Kids. “The trend toward higher heels has also evolved as little girls are exposed to so many fashion images from the media. But we don’t make the heels too high, and we always try to square off the heel for stability. And because not all moms approve of this trend, we offer several heel heights in our dress shoes.”
But doctors are worried that hot-to-trot tots will fall over and sprain an ankle. “It can be dangerous,” warns Dr. Rock Positano, director of nonsurgical foot and ankle service at the Hospital of Special Surgery on the Upper East Side. “The 2-inch range is where we run into problems. It’s a foot that is in development, and they don’t have the strength or stability [for heels].”
Parents, as a result, are putting their foot down. “This is a very hot topic for our audience,” says Ysolt Usigan, senior editor of iVillage’s Beauty and Style blog. “As soon as we saw Suri wearing kitten heels, we did a blog post to see [the] reaction. Some readers thought it was cute, but everyone was concerned that she was growing up too fast. Of course she was probably playing dress-up . . . [but] it is a trend, now more than before.”
Diane Debrovner, deputy editor of Parents magazine, says her 5-year-old daughter’s friends don’t just play dress-up in heels — they wear them casually on the weekend like sneakers.
“There are definitely some preschool-age girls walking around in heels of 1 to 2 inches,” Debrovner says. “Some people see it as part of the sexualization of young girls.”
But preschool heel hysteria hasn’t reached epidemic levels just yet.
“I’ve never seen them,” said the receptionist who answered the phone at the Little Red School House in Greenwich Village. “The kids here wear jeans and sneakers.”