Wear hooker shoes to get ahead?

So I used to work with this girl who wore these shoes to work. I'm not saying she wore them on occasion, I'm saying she wore them every single day. At a financial services company. She had a pair in black, white, and *shudder* red.

The women at the company had no respect for her, because of the shoes. But there were no women in power at this company; all of the higher ups were male.

The men at the company had no respect for her, because of the shoes, but they were always very nice to her, never challenging her opinion or giving her a ton of work with a short deadline. So she appeared like a *superstar employee*, because it's easy to be seen as really really good when you only have two things that take 5 minutes to do during the course of a day.

One Tuesday afternoon, I remarked to one of the board members of the company, a man, who I had a close friendship with, "Does she just not get it?" He replied, "Oh, she gets it.", meaning she understands what men like and how to give it to them. I remember the conversation today, nine years later, because it was such a bizarre moment. I was floored.

I left that company about three months later.

Shuffle forward a few years, and this is one of the styles I have seen worn around the office. They're patent leather, and six inches high with a platform at the toe. They are definitely more conservative than the hooker shoes of yore, but are they appropriate?

I personally don't think they are, mostly because if you wear something that is an obvious distraction, it's inappropriate in the workplace. It doesn't matter if it's a pair of shoes or a tie or a hair style. And if financial advisors are gabbing about your shoe choice-of-the-day at lunch with their buddies, it's a distraction. But guess what? The people who wear these shoes don't get laid off. Even though some of them might be poor performers, they don't get laid off. So I'm wondering, am I the idiot, for not wearing them?