When I wrote that They Just Cannot Resist, regarding an article in which the obligatory podiatrist made the usual comments about “support”, there was some speculation that it might be related to liability. I myself thought it was more just that everybody seems to think that feet somehow need support.
That’s when it hit me: Bare feet seem to be a magnet for myths. I cannot think of another topic that gathers as many myths about it as being barefooted.
Thus, when somebody bans bare feet, there are a multitude of choices of myths that we have to run through to guess their problem (and sometimes it can be multiple problems).
Here’s a limited list (all I could think of on short notice; feel free to add more).
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Feet need support. The myth is that arches just naturally fall, and that it is only shoes that are keeping us erect. The truth is that if you “support” a body part, it loses all of its musculature and strength. Barefooted cultures just don’t have the foot troubles that shod cultures have.
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Bare feet present a special liability to a business. Stores (and libraries) trot this one out, thinking that there are hordes of barefooted customers (or patrons) just aching to step on glass and sue a business. The truth is that it’s really pretty hard to hurt a bare foot, and a business is much more likely to be sued by a high-heeled person getting their heel caught in a mat, or a flip-flopped person slipping on a wet floor, or a leather-soled person slipping on a grape. These businesses talk about glass, but if you ask them to show you the glass on the floor, they never can.
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Feet are ugly. The myth is that bare feet are ugly and should be covered. The truth is, these same folks seem to have no trouble with flip-flops, which expose just as much of the foot (even the sole is usually not visible on a barefoot person). And these same folks are just fine with “sexy” shoes on a women. I have to admit, though, that seeing another barefoot person does strike me as odd. That, however, is just a function of culture, just as seeing somebody wearing a flowered shirt and bellbottoms looks odd (unless you lived in the 1970s). It’s really just an issue of what we are used to (heck, even nudity with a phallocarp looks “normal” on a New Guinean).
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Feet smell. You’ll hear people make this objection all the time, even when the feet right in front of them don’t smell. (Old joke: if your feet smell and your nose runs, maybe you were built upside down.) The truth is that it is shod feet that smell. The inside of a shoe easily provides the dark, warm, moist environment that bacteria and fungi thrive in. The silliness of this myth really stands out when you realize that people never get upset about feet in flip-flops smelling.
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Bare feet spread disease. Folks are concerned about athlete’s foot, plantar warts, and hookworm. The truth is that athlete’s foot, as a fungus, requires the warm, dark, moist environment of a shoe (see above). Athlete’s foot is a shod disease—it is unknown in barefoot cultures. The same with plantar warts. They are picked up in moist areas like swimming pools, and then stuffed into shoes where they can grow. If you leave them exposed to air, they have an extremely difficult time going anywhere. Finally, hookworm used to be a problem, and yes, one way of dealing with it is with shoes. But the real solution was providing proper sanitation: outhouses and real bathrooms. Under those conditions the hookworms die out, and even the south is safe today.
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It is illegal to drive barefoot. This has been passed around since the hippie days (and maybe even before). Folks make up stupid reasons like: what if a pebble gets stuck on the brake pedal? What if you have to slam on the brakes? The truth is that it is perfectly legal in all 50 states (and we haven’t found a single country in which it is illegal). Bare feet give you a better feel for your pedals, and how well your foot is placed on them. I bet that many of those unintended accelerations would not have happened if the drivers had been barefoot since they would have been able to feel the shape of the pedal and thereby known the difference between the accelerator and the brake. Regarding a pebble on the brake, I don’t know how a pebble would stick on a nearly vertical surface, and as for slamming on the brakes, power brakes operate with less than 20 pounds of force. If you can stand on one foot and weight 150 pounds, you can thereby apply 150 pounds of force to a brake.
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Bare feet are inherently fragile. People are always amazed that we can walk on gravel, or walk for a mile, or walk on glass. The truth is that feet are not inherently fragile. We evolved for them to be used, and as long as they are not coddled and weakened in shoes, they function quite well. The muscles and tendons and ligaments strengthen, just as they do when any other part of the body is used instead of being left to atrophy.
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Bare feet in businesses is against the Health Code. This one is probably the worst. An awfully large number of people believe it. The truth is that it is not against any health code in most of the United States (because, why would it be, unless one believed in all the other myths?). There are a few locations that do have health codes, which I documented here. Of course, this also leads to the “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service” signs, which also seem to date from hippie days.
Like I said, bare feet have produced the “perfect storm” of myths as people try to figure out what is wrong with them.
Our only saving grace is that we are out there, constantly busting those myths.
Reblogged this on home clothes free.
This post is almost like a miniature manifesto.
I followed the link to the list of local governments that prohibit bare feet and was floored by the chutzpah of several of them, especially the ones that went so far as to dictate how a person dresses himself in public and which types of clothes may be worn. Frankly, I don’t know how these things ever got through.
But I am genuinely curious how they got started to begin with. It’s as if the myth of health codes was so prevalent that people decided that since it was already true everywhere, they needed to comply with everyone else. So my question is, which came first? Was it the myth that every retail establishments prohibits care feet which then caused local rulings to come into place? Or was it the fact that a few local rulings already existed, which then spread into the myth that such rulings were in place everywhere?
When did these local rulings come into effect?
“I cannot think of another topic that gathers as many myths about it as being barefooted.”
The only other topic I can think of, but to a much lesser extent, is in car culture, that is, the topic of old cars vs new cars. Every other generation thinks the cars they grew up with are somehow “better” than new ones, the old “they don’t make ‘em like they used to” cliche, totally ignoring the technological advances that have been made. And they will argue this with all sorts of made up stuff, myths, misconceptions, outright lies, and what they “just know” as proof that old cars are better. And if you offer actual tests and proof that they are wrong, they simply say the tests were “rigged”.
I’m not sure that it qualifies as a myth, but an objection I often receive is that “it’s weird.” Supposedly normal, sophisticated people don’t go barefoot outdoors, or even indoors in the winter. I can use several examples against this, but to no avail.
I agree with the others you posted, the ugly feet option is often given along with this one.
Dave, we really don’t know how they started. My guess is that when hippies were going barefoot, stores used the old NSNSNS to keep them out. Other people didn’t realize that was the reason, and started trying to figure out why the signs might be justified. And as a result they made up myths to account for them.
Beach Bum. Good one. And it also reminds me of high-end stereos (particularly pre-CD). Monster cables, gold wires, speaker brands, phonograph styli, you name it. There was a whole mythology about how to get the perfect sound. (And for a while, there was the CD controversy, about how CDs sounded too “bright”; never held up in a blind test, though.)
Another funny equivalent is film vs digital in photography. It’s funny how people argue about that not knowing a thing! I’m all with the former, though.
I used to have flat feet that rolled frequently (really painful) and thought that bare feet were the week appendages most shod folks seem to think they are. I though boots were the way to go. Now after 2 years of mostly barefoot/minimalism (80% barefoot, 18% minimalist, 2% really shod), not only have I regained an arch and feet that feel wonderful, but I’ve also seen just how grand our feet truly are!