How does one get inside a girl's head? This rueful question must have occurred to many people recently on hearing reports of the death of a 25-year-old woman in Kanagawa Prefecture after she tripped and fell while wearing sandals with 10-cm-high cork soles. To observers of the elevated-shoe fad over the past year or two, the news comes as no surprise. All those young women tottering about on platforms high enough to park a train at are accidents waiting to happen -- and accidents ranging from minor scrapes and bruises to serious fractures evidently do happen every day. This may have been the first death associated with the trend. It is, however, the last straw. What, it is time to ask, are these fashion victims thinking?

In the first place, they are thinking (if that is the right word for it) that they look gorgeous. This is not something that can be debated rationally. Older, wiser people may not see a pair of skinny legs wobbling along a slick pavement atop 20-cm-high sandals as a thing of beauty. They are more likely to react to the sight with a mixture of mirth and alarm. Yet look at the expressions on the wearers' faces. These girls positively beam with pride and self-satisfaction, especially if they are sporting not just platform-sole shoes -- the higher the better -- but the contemporary full dress uniform: ash-gray or sulfur-yellow dyed hair, orange tan, tattoo jewelry, a skimpy dress and a teeny little backpack. And who is going to persuade them that they do not look gorgeous? Fashion, after all, was ever thus -- strictly in the eye of the beholder.

But there is more to this sheeplike behavior than mere aesthetics. Even more important to the young than the illusion of beauty is the solace of conformity, the imprimatur of their peers. There is nothing more nerve-racking to the unformed personality than the awful obligation of deciding how to present oneself to the world, and what the world sees first is the outer shell: the hair, the clothes, the shoes, the bag. What to do? Look as much as possible like everyone else, obviously. Then one can blend into the crowd, relieved and happy, all thought and individuality suspended. If the crowd, for some mysterious reason, is wearing small skyscrapers on its feet this year, considerations of comfort and safety will be brushed aside in the rush to join it on the heights. And if the crowd declares that such monstrosities are beautiful, then for a season or two, they are beautiful. The crowd rules, OK.