Historical Hostility to Barefoot Shopping

Last week I discussed a 1973 article, No Bare Feet In This Store. By that time, the hostility was in full swing.

But we can look a bit earlier than that.

Public opinion was being formed in the mid-1960s, and we can see, first, how popular it was, and second, the hostility that arose.

I’ll start with an opinion column from the Oneonta Star in August of 1965. Oneonta is a small town in New York (current population of around 14,000) between Birmingham and Albany.

          Frankly Speaking

          Do these people gripe you too?

          By Frank Perretia

Last year we wrote about women shoppers who wear too-tight, short, shorts and gaudy plastic curlers on Main Street.

Short, shorts have their place — in play areas.

And curlers shouldn’t be worn outside your own backyard. The fad at Gilbert Lake this summer is to go swimming with curlers on — isn’t that disgusting?

One of the more recent fads — we hate to even mention it — is the practice of shopping barefoot downtown.

Within the last three weeks, we’ve spotted at least a dozen near-nudes shopping on Main Street. And they were barefoot.

This certainly is an indictment of the shoe designers. For years designers have been coming up with the near nude look in shoes. And though most shoes today are comfortable our barefoot babes are forsaking this form of civilization.

Where’s it going to end?

See how it starts? When you are barefoot you are nearly nude. “Civilized” people don’t do such a thing. This is the sort of thing that really can shape public opinion (or reflects existing public opinion).

The Onteonta Star even printed an editorial about barefoot shopping two years later in June.

          Star editorials

          Barefoot ladies too, too much

No scientist has ever offered convincing proof that when the temperature soars, women because of their physical makeup, are more uncomfortable than men.

But they must be, for they are much quicker to doff their clothes than men.

Want evidence? Walk down busy Main Street in Oneonta on a hot afternoon. Men, fortunately still wear shirts, slacks and shoes. The more daring wear Bermuda shorts while shopping but they are in the minority.

But more women — and not only the young — have turned their backs on conventional cover-up and wear Bermuda shorts, walking shorts, shorts, short-shorts and the newer short-short-shorts. The various modes of undress spotted on Main Street are more appropriate for the lake living.

The latest fad — and we hope it doesn’t last — is walking barefoot while shopping downtown. We’ve spotted barefoot lasses in supermarkets, downtown stores and even two restaurants.

Designers of women’s shoes, we feel, are most practical and have come up with a variety of comfortable shoes. If high heels or even low heels are uncomfortable there is a wide selection of flats and sandals that women can buy cheaply.

No! No, we’ll never condone barefeet in the shopping district.

Actually, I suspect that their columnist Frank Perretia was also their editorial writer. And he is suffering from a severe case of curmudgeonitis.

But we can find something similar in the summer of 1966 in Pampa, Texas (near Amarillo). This one is from a columnist named Frank Jay Markey.

We don’t know what’s happening in this country, but maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to give the ladies the right to vote. That led to the emancipation of the American female, which can lead to anything. The latest thing here is barefoot shopping and the merchants do not like it. They call them “The Great Unwashed” and whenever a barefoot female steps in some of the posher department stores, she’s asked to leave. The merchants point out that dirty bare feet are unappetizing at a luncheon counter or restaurant. And along with being in bad taste, a legal liability to the store owner if they stub their toes or step on a piece of glass. What will the gals do next?

Yes, the world is coming to an end. And regarding stubbing toes, or even glass, I think another post of mine from last week, Suing Kroger, rather covers it.

But I did find a slight ray of hope from back then, from Riverside, California. The following story, in August of 1967 (same time as the Oneonta editorial) went across the AP wires. (But I sadly fear that it made the wires simply because it was the exception, not the rule—the original banning did not make the news at all, probably because it was commonplace.)

Riverside, Calif. (AP) — You can go to a Riverside shopping center with bare feet but not with dirty ones.

The Riverside Plaza Merchants Assn., reversing an earlier edict, said Wednesday, “It never was our intent to ask barefoot people to leave the center.”

But a spokesman said shoppers with bare feet that are dirty “will be asked to leave.”

But somehow I suspect they weren’t checking their customers’ shoes to make sure that they were clean, too . . .

Barefoot Shopping

[Picture taken from flickr under a Creative Commons license.]