Last week during a trip to the mall I had a hard time digesting the fact that I looked shorter than half the other girls walking around.

I was standing in a store groping for some jewellery on a high shelf when a girl almost double my height walked over and stood right beside me. I got excited thinking that I might be standing next to the tallest woman in the UAE, so I ran my hand inside my bag looking for the camera.

Then I noticed something that made my face drop – she was not the tallest girl in the UAE, or Abu Dhabi, or even in that mall. Her spidery long legs were supported by nothing but seven-inch stilettos! The girl, surprisingly, did not even look older than thirteen years. A look around confirmed that lots of young tall girls were strutting around in awfully high heels.

A million questions flooded my mind. Who wears stilettos to the mall? Aren’t they just for special occasions?

Why not just wear sneakers if you’re going to be walking?

Now, we all remember walking around the house in our mother's heels as a child because the sound of the click was like a favourite music beat, but this heel fever was catching on and it wasn’t long before it caught me too. I could not wait to own a pair myself.

I purchased the highest heels I could find, put them on and sashayed out of the store like a model. It should come as no surprise that soon my feet screamed for painkillers and a visit to the doctor. After ten minutes, I was convinced that dreadfully high heels are a murder weapon for the feet.

As a teenager, I am going to make myself sound extremely boring and unfashionable, but those spike heels are a definite no-no for me. I will wear reasonably high heels but only on occasions where they will complement me instead of killing me with pain.

And as for going to the mall in soaring footwear? Forget about it!

Sadaf Hassan, age 19