Did you see that Carrie Underwood injured herself in concert a few days ago?
You know if she’d been barefoot it would have really reinforced in everybody’s minds how dangerous bare feet are.
Except, of course, she injured herself because she was wearing 5-inch stiletto heels. That’s okay, right?
What happened is that she was wearing a cape-like shirt. As she stepped back while singing, the heel of her shoe got caught in the hem of the shirt.
That’s one of the well-known hazards of high heels. There are scads of lawsuits from when women get their heels caught in small cracks or holes or the like.
In this case, she lost her balance and fell over backwards.
Here’s the video of the fall.
Actually, she did more than fall over backwards. She also sprained her ankle in the process. Here’s a picture she tweeted with her foot in a soft cast.
The thing is, these sorts of accidents are accepted as just a normal part of wearing heels. Nobody tries to ban high heels from entering store, with overly-concerned store employees saying, “We’re just trying to protect you.” They don’t say, “It’s for your own safety.”
They don’t do that with a patronizing tone of voice as if they’re just too stupid to realize the risk they are putting themselves into.
And you don’t get judges saying that the cost of that medical care gives the state a reason for banning high heels because of the financial burden it imposes on society, as happened in my library lawsuit in the case of bare feet.
Store employees also don’t make up excuses against high-heeled customers, claiming they cannot wear them for liability reasons. But such store employees have no problem doing that to barefooted customers, even though the risks in a store (or the like) to a barefooter is nowhere near the risk to high-heeled customers. Furthermore, barefooters are not ruining their feet the was high heel users are. (Notice in that photo that Carrie already looks to have a pretty good case of hallux valgus going on.)
It sure would be nice if high heels were treated as the hazard that they are, and bare feet weren’t treated as a hazard when they aren’t.
But don’t hold your breath.
Yeah, when you point out all the high heels they just look at you really blankly and then repeat what they said about no bare feet. Or they change tact and start saying it’s unsanitary. Not that they care about unsanitary bare hands….
Mind you, if she was barefoot this never would have happened.
I noticed she kept performing like it was part of the act.
If she’d been barefoot, I doubt she would have fallen. -TJ
Yes, if she’d been barefoot it would not have happened. But if she had been barefoot and some other (less likely) mishap had occurred, you can be sure we’d be seeing horror stories about the dangers of going barefoot.
Yeah, something along the lines of stubbing her toe on a cable, because that’s really all it would take for people to come out of the woodwork condemning it.
There have been a handful of entertainers that have gone out on stage and sang barefoot. As far as I know, nothing happened to them during their performances in bare feet.
Not just a handful of entertainers. Have you watched “So You Think You Can Dance”? I have been watching this every season for about a decade, and almost all of the dances are done barefoot. They do some of the most incredible athletic and acrobatic moves. The only dances they put shoes on for are some of the ballroom and hip hop. Even those are sometimes done barefoot. And considering how extreme some of their moves are, the injury rate is really low. No more than one or two per season.
Decades ago, a former neighbor was lucky she ONLY broke her arm, when her shoe got caught inside her bell-bottom pants and she fell down the stairs.