There’s a lot of well-intentioned self-defense instructors out there with seemingly great ideas, and innovative approaches to personal safety – one of these, that has recently got a lot of press and interest, is “High Heel Self-Defense” – teaching women how to fight when in heels. Firstly, if this gets more women to consider taking self-defense classes, because it makes the training seem more relevant to them, I may have my concerns about the content, but I have to recognize that such classes may have a benefit; especially if good predictive and preventative personal safety methods are taught alongside the physical techniques etc. In a world where women’s self-defense training is largely seen as irrelevant and ineffective, I can understand the need to put some “spin” on the subject, to capture the attention of an audience which is largely tired of, and uninterested in personal safety and self-defense. Part of the critique that I have seen for the approach comes from the feeling that those teaching, “High Heel Self Defense”, maybe reaching a section of the population that those teaching a more traditional approach, aren’t able to appeal to – and that seems unfair. High Heel Self-Defense maybe a great marketing tool that gets more women to train, however it may also present women’s self-defense training as gimmicky, laughable and something that overall is a waste of time; something which those of us who teach women’s self-defense fight against all the time.

Do I believe fighting in High Heels is a good idea? Not really (I think the arguments of fighting from an unstable base are pretty self-evident)  – may there be situations where women are attacked when wearing heels, and are not able to kick them off? Of course. Unfortunately, the scenarios where women are likely to be attacked when wearing heels, are not the most common ones. This is perhaps my greatest criticism of the approach- that it draws attention away from the more likely and realistic scenarios women are likely to face – just as I have trouble with instructors who always teach women’s self-defense from the perspective of an aggressive stranger, approaching from distance etc. It may be what we imagine attacks on women to look like, but the statistics and reality, just don’t back it up. Yes, it’s easy and uncomplicated to teach, but when we look at reality, women are most likely to be sexually assaulted in their home or somebody else’s, by somebody they know - not by a stranger, approaching from distance – may they be wearing heels? Perhaps. Might a woman in heels, be approached by an aggressive mugger, panhandler etc? Absolutely, but in such situations, where a financial or material object is sought, compliance is normally the best survival option, rather than responding physically. My real concern is not the content, but the perception that High Heel Self Defense gives about the dangers that women actually face; it’s a message/throwback to the 1980’s and 1990’s when there were many archaic ideas about assaults on women. I’d hoped we’d moved on, however ideas such as High Heel Self-Defense seem to demonstrate that we haven’t; it’s even more disappointing that it is being promoted by a woman, in her mid-20s, who seems to have bought in to all the old and outdated ideas concerning women’s self-defense.

The reason women’s self-defense has become irrelevant, is because women know that what is taught in self-defense classes doesn’t marry up to the situations they’ve experienced or the situations they are likely to face e.g. overly persistent men who seem not to take no for an answer, or who become aggressive when their advances are rejected; male friends-of-friends, who turn up at their apartment unexpected; somebody at a party who makes inappropriate sexual remarks, etc. As long as we keep telling women that the scenarios they will face involve aggressive individuals approaching at distance, we will be seen to be largely irrelevant, and rightly so; and this will allow gimmicks such as High Heel Self-Defense to gain a foothold, and grab the attention of reporters and journalists; individuals who need to be educated by us in the industry – and we do have the chance to do this.

About a year ago, I was approached to do a 5-10-minute piece on women’s self-defense with a female presenter for her TV show. All of the conversations with the producer, beforehand, indicated it was to be a “fun” piece (unfortunately this is how women’s self-defense is often presented by the media). When they came to our school, and asked how we should start the piece, I suggested that I should simply attack the presenter, and we’d film her natural response, and then take it from there. I grabbed her from behind, at full speed and with aggression, and dragged her to the ground – was this reminiscent of the type of attack she’d most likely face? No, however it got across very quickly the idea of the speed and aggression that is present in an assault, and got everybody to focus on the subject matter a lot more seriously, from that moment on. There are some reporters and journalists who are lazy, and will continue to write fluff pieces on women’s self-defense, but there are also those who want to know and understand the truth, and we have an opportunity to educate them, and help them to educate the public. Media perceptions can change, but we need to actively change them – if we don’t we’ll be seeing other gimmicks along the lines of High Heel Self-Defense.

Before we reach out through the media, we need to make sure our own programs are in order; are we guilty of presenting an unrealistic impression of what assaults on women look like? Is what we teach relevant to women, or is it based more on what we’re comfortable teaching, and find easier to explain and talk about? Are we still presenting the idea that women are only attacked by strangers approaching them from the front or rear? If we aren’t dealing with realistic situations and scenarios and are simply presenting reality as being what we teach, we are really no different to High Heel Self-Defense; the only difference being we don’t train in heels, and that may actually be quite a small difference, when we look at the content of the program.