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Intern Challenge 1: Test Your Shoe Smarts

Test your shoe smarts with our heel trivia quiz!

By Diana Vilibert

Jan 26, 2009

woman in bed with a black heel on the floor

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Test your shoe smarts with our heel trivia quiz!

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What's Your Shoe IQ?

1. True or False: Wearing high heels can be good for your sex life.

woman in short dress tights and high heels with man in a suit crouching behind her

Valentin Casarsa

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Karin Catt

What's Your Shoe IQ?

2.The average American woman owns how many pairs of shoes?
A. 7
B. 19
C. 26
D. 32

Ruven Afanador

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Cosmo-hued heels.

woman putting on a pair of black booties

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What's Your Shoe IQ?

3. True or False: Almost all women routinely wear shoes that are one to two sizes too small.

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What's Your Shoe IQ?

CORRECT ANSWER: True--88% of women are wearing shoes that are too small for their feet. The majority of women haven't been measured for the correct shoe size in the past five years, and since shoe size often increases with weight gain and age, many women stick with a size they've outgrown.

Perry Hagopian

What's Your Shoe IQ?

4. What shoe size does the average American woman wear?
A. 9
B. 8
C. 7
D. 6

Devonyu/iStock

What's Your Shoe IQ?

CORRECT ANSWER: The average woman is a size 8 wide shoe. According to The Professional Shoe Fitting Manual, At the beginning of the 20th century, the average American woman wore a 3.5 or a 4, climbed to a 5.5 or 6 by the 1960s, and reached an 8 in the 1980s.

choja/iStock

What's Your Shoe IQ?

5. Who invented the contemporary stiletto?
A. Salvatore Ferragamo
B. Christian Dior
C. Coco Chanel
D. Cristóbal Balenciaga

Ben Goldstein/Studio D

What's Your Shoe IQ?

CORRECT ANSWER: A. The contemporary stiletto was invented in the 1950s by Italian shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo, who made his first pair for Marilyn Monroe in alligator skin. The models back then were tame by today's standards, with heels no higher than about 3 inches.

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What's Your Shoe IQ?

6. True or False: Almost 50 percent of women say they've been injured by wearing a pair of too-small heels.

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What's Your Shoe IQ?

CORRECT ANSWER: True. 43 percent of women confessed they have been at least moderately injured by shoes and eight percent reported serious injuries like sprains or breaks.

webphotographeer/iStock

What's Your Shoe IQ?

7. How many hours per year does the average women spend shopping for shoes?
A. 10
B. 20
C. 30
D. 40

monkeypics/iStock

What's Your Shoe IQ?

CORRECT ANSWER: D. Women spend 40 hours and 30 minutes shopping for shoes every year, over the course of 15 shoe shopping trips.

Digital Vision

Sex and Love Diary

C. Steinhausen

hook-up-getty-0407

lriza/iStock

What's Your Shoe IQ?

9. True or False: Historians believe the modern-day high heel originates from the chopine, a platform shoe, worn by women in Florence in the 16th century. The platform was often two feet high.

pcatalin/iStock

What's Your Shoe IQ?

CORRECT ANSWER: True. Venetian prostitutes often wore chopines. The platform shoes elevated the prostitutes, who often lingered in dark doorways waiting for potential customers, to a height which would make them noticeable.

millann/iStock

What's Your Shoe IQ?

10. Shoe fiend Darlene Flynn earned her title as Guinness World Record holder for the largest collection of shoe-related items. Over the course of 6 years, how many pieces of shoe memorabilia did she amass?
A. About 2,000
B. About 4,000
C. About 6,000
D. About 8,000.

DNY59/iStock

What's Your Shoe IQ?

CORRECT ANSWER: D. Darlene Flynn owns 7,765 shoe-related items, including a replica of the Disney Cinderella glass slipper, wooden shoes, leather moccasins, cloth shoes, cast iron boots, a red-stiletto shoe phone, and even a shoe made from the ash collected at Mount St. Helen's eruption.

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