Basic Trope: A woman fights in high heels, despite how impractical it is.
- Straight: Alice's battle outfit consists of a pair of high-heeled boots.
- Exaggerated: ...In addition, the heels are actual weapons.
- Downplayed: Alice wears high-heels into combat, but more sensible 4-inch wedge heels rather than six-inch stilettos.
- Justified:
- Alice wears them as they can be useful weapons.
- Alice can fly, so fighting in them is a bit more practical.
- Alice considers herself such a good fighter that she handicaps herself by fighting in increasingly-high heels.
- Alice sharpens the heels to the point where they can be used as knives.
- Alice was attacked while attending a dinner party, so she has to fight in her heels.
- The fact that Alice is supremely vain is a large part of her character.
- Alice is a master of The Way of Fighting In High Heels, a style which placed particular emphasis on balance, stabbing heel kicks and generally training your body to make it effective.
- Alice fights while riding a horse, and heeled shoes were made for horse-riding.
- Inverted: Alice wears combat boots despite never being in combat.
- Gender-Inverted: Bob fights in high heels.
- Subverted:
- Preparing to fight, Alice decides to switch to more sensible shoes.
- Or she doesn't switch, and pays the penalty in the form of a Broken Heel.
- She kicks her shoes off before the fight and fights in her stockings or bare feet.
- Double Subverted: These "sensible" shoes are still high heeled, but they do not contain the "ridiculous additions" as her previous ones.
- Parodied:
- Alice's high heeled boots has 12-inch heels to the point where wearing them requires her to stand on her tip toes.
- Alice wields a high-heeled boot as a hand weapon.
- Zig Zagged: Preparing to fight, Alice decides to switch to more sensible shoes. These "sensible" shoes are still high heeled, but they do not contain the "ridiculous additions" as her previous ones. However, it turns out these are genuinely practical, due to the odd physics of the area. Then it turns out that was just a bluff, she's Cherry Tapping. Except that was a bluff, her friend just turned off the gravity, so now shoes don't matter and the points of her heels (sharpened or not) are effective weapons...
- Averted: Alice's battle outfit contains sensible, flat-soled Boots of Toughness to begin with.
- Enforced: The writer and/or artist has a fetish for women in high heels, and lets that override practicality in designing Alice's footwear.
- Lampshaded: "I did all of that while wearing heels!"
- Invoked: "There is no way I'm going to be seen without my heels, even in a fight".
- Exploited: Finding herself wearing heels in a fight, Alice uses her heels to stomp on her enemy's feet and jab them in the chest.
- Defied: Alice is designing her battle outfit. While the heels are sexier and look good with the outfit, she decides to go with a more sensible pair of boots or sneakers.
- Discussed: "Who'd thought fighting in heels would be so effective!"
- Conversed: "How can you possibly fight in those heels?"
- Deconstructed:
- Due to constantly fighting in heels, Alice is viewed as a clumsy and slow fighter, bordering on being ineffectual, and has broken her ankles a few times.
- Cynthia ends up having to fight Bob whilst wearing high heels, but keeps getting knocked down due to being unable to balance with said shoes on. Bob proceeds to beat the crap out of her.
- Reconstructed:
- But constant Training from Hell in them has made her ankles stronger and has improved her balance.
- However, Cynthia kicks Bob so hard that one of her heels gets embedded in his leg, cripping him sufficiently and giving her one foot to balance on whilst she heel-kicks and beats the crap out of him
- Plotted A Good Waste: The fact that Alice wears high heels for every occasion, including fighting and mountain climbing clues in readers that something's not right. It is later revealed that Alice's legs have shortened tendons, thus making it necessary for her to wear heels or she would otherwise walk on her tip toes.
- Alice is a feline(oid) (Cat Girl, Cat Folk, Funny Animal) and cats naturally walk on their toes. The way she naturally does everything in high heels is a Genius Bonus Furry Reminder.
- Alice is a Succubus. Her Voluntary Shapeshifting allows her to reshape her legs to keep mobility, and the heels themselves not only enhance her status as a Living Aphrodisiac which she uses to great effect to disorient opponents, but can also serve as a nasty piercing weapon hidden in plain sight.
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