In some ways, TOMS Shoes One Day Without Shoes is delightfully subversive.
The common mythos is that walking barefooted is horribly dangerous. Store owners are sure that they have hazards everywhere (if so, why aren’t they removing them?). Yet, in 16 years of shopping barefooted, I’ve never had an injury inside any store. Oh, wait. I’m lying — I cut my finger on a coupon dispenser in a grocery store once. A nasty gash, too. And I didn’t even sue them. After all, what were my damages? The cost of a band-aid? People are also sure that walking on streets is incredibly dangerous. They have fears of glass and needles everywhere. Well, there just isn’t that much. And if you do step on glass barefooted, the odds of puncturing your skin is quite low. See Dave Canterbury’s Assumptions.
And all those people who participate in “One Day Without Shoes” will find that out. In fact, I suspect that, deep down, most people might know that already. Nobody ever has a “One Day Without Seatbelts” (to draw attention to all the lack of seatbelts in vehicles in Africa), or “One Day Without Grounded Electrical Outlets”.
There was some concern about safety, though. In this story, Went Barefoot To Help “One Day Without Shoes”, Nicolette Saraf, a high school student, was suspended for participating, because her school had a shoe rule. The reason?
The Principal warned her not to come to school in bare feet because doing so violated health standards.
Oh, geez. That false myth again. Don’t school administrators know how to do research? Don’t they know how to learn?
Many of the participants also find out just how much more comfortable it is without shoes. They may officially be going shoeless to show solidarity with the supposed discomfort of the shoeless in Africa, but what is more likely is that they get through the day just fine while barefoot, and don’t have their usual stinky shoes to take off at the end of the day. (And if they do have discomfort, that’s from trying to walk on feet that have been splinted and coddled — they’d also have a lot of discomfort if they tried to run up the stairs of the Empire State Building without easing into it first.)
One more thought. In one of the comments to last year’s entry, someone wrote:
Awww, come on, people! It doesn’t matter HOW people are making a difference, but at least they’re trying. . . . I think that kids in third world countries would really appreciate something nice like shoes. What makes them all the better is that they know that people care!
That’s sweet, but misguided. Yes, it does matter how people try. I could “try” by twirling around 3 times while chanting, but that would be totally ineffective. And how useful for them to know that people care. While they are puking their guts out and getting horribly dehydrated from the dysentery from the diseased water they drank, at least they will know that people care. Please. That is, once again, why I recommend something like Peepoople.com. The problem, from both a health and barefooting perspective, is proper sanitation. Solve that and you’ve killed two birds with one stone.
“Nicolette Saraf, a high school student, was suspended for participating, because her school had a shoe rule. The reason?
The Principal warned her not to come to school in bare feet because doing so violated health standards.
Oh, geez. That false myth again. Don’t school administrators know how to do research? Don’t they know how to learn?”
And look at the comments – the vast majority agreed with the school, scolded Miss Saraf, and continued repeating how bad what she was doing was. A couple of comments mentioning that it is not a health issue at all were completely ignored, and no discussion actually took place, as usual. Once people choose to believe in that which is not true, almost nothing anyone will say or prove to them will change what they believe. It is part of who they are and how they present themselves, and they have to ‘save face’ no matter what.
Hell people are afraid they will cut theyr feet on glass but I allways cut my feet on something else. Last time it was some kind of curb at a parking lot. But yet again it werent soles i cut … clumsy me :D.
[…] entry is prompted by a thought from one of my previous entries, More Thoughts — One Day Without Shoes, in which I […]
I’ve argued somewhere on Linked about the seat belt issue. People often don’t seem to realize that while we have been very well designed to walk and run while barefoot at speeds which humans walk and run, we have NOT been well designed for the sudden deceleration of a collision at 60 miles per hour. How can seat belts be compared to shoes? That’s like arguing that we need to wear hats when walking because they protect us from bird poop. That’s a valid argument, yes, but it doesn’t compare with the requirement to wear a hard hat in a construction zone because a beam could fall on your head and kill you instantly.
We too often assume that risk should always be taken to zero, no matter if the risk is small and the danger low, or the risk is high, and the danger high. Nobody should be comfortable when we can make them just a little bit safer – even if that attempt to make people more safe, doesn’t really make them more safe. It’s comes down to appearing to be safe.
Which brings around to the idea that we care, because after all, “twirling around 3 times while chanting” does show that we care, even if it does absolutely nothing to solve the problem.
It’s not unlike … okay, yes, I know I’m rambling here – that’s the mood I’m in right now… when someone says that a certain test has a 50% chance of predicting the outcome of a particular action. “That’s no better than flipping a coin!”, and the answer to that argument? “well we need to do something, don’t we?”
Yes, absolutely. But let’s do something helpful and useful, instead of smoke and mirrors to fool those around us that we actually care!