Kristin Davis feels pained, literally, that she caused so much discomfort to everyone who adored the prim-and-proper character she played on “Sex and the City.”
The 49-year-old actress recently expressed regret for teetering around in spikes and stilettos while playing Charlotte York in the hit HBO series, which she said encouraged women to squeeze their feet into uncomfortable shoes.
“I do feel guilt about the heels. It did seem we were trying to say to women, ‘You should be wearing heels like these,'” she said in an interview with Britain’s Sunday Telegraph. “But we definitely weren’t. Were they beautiful shoes? Yes. Were they appropriate for the characters? Yes, that’s what women like that wear.”
High heels were just as much characters of “Sex and the City” as the four female leads of the show, which ran from 1998 through 2004 and spawned two movies.
The show helped designer labels like Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo and Christian Louboutin become household names.
“But it became a bigger picture thing, where it seemed women should be wearing them every day,” Davis told the paper.
Davis said she now wears flats whenever possible.
“I wear heels so rarely now. It hurts when I do — you have to get in training for them, and it takes a lot of practice,” she said.
Luckily for Davis, flats have become fashionable. They have steadily gained ground on the runways. Karl Lagerfeld recently sent models down the catwalk in sneakers, while Dior debuted sporty slip-ons for the fall. Even brides are increasingly ditching heels to walk down the aisle in favor of flats.
Davis' "Sex and the City" co-star Sarah Jessica Parker recently admitted that wearing heels during every episode of the show caused her permanent foot damage. That didn't stop her from including stilettos in her new line of shoe wear.