I am often amused about the way that some barefooters will see a commercial that includes bare feet for some reason and then try so hard to interpret that as some sort of increased acceptance of bare feet, or that the ad writer is conveying how freeing going barefoot is.
I suspect it is just some sort of bareidolia.*
Now don’t get me wrong. Sometimes the bare feet in commercials really are showing a bit of rebellion or freedom or just plain comfort in one’s own home. But that doesn’t mean that’s the message of every bare foot.
Take, for example, a new commercial for J’adore, a perfume from Christian Dior.
It starts with actress Charlize Theron walking down a long, wide hallway, wearing classic foot-killers.
Well-Heeled
A long scarf drops from the ceiling. She gets to it, removes her shoes, and then starts climbing the scarf.
Bye-Bye Shoes
Oh, wow. She’s escaping the humdrum world. It’s a great new future without any shoes. As one barefooter put it, she’s moving into a brighter future, and part of that new golden future is leaving a shoe-obsessed world behind and entering a new shoe-free world. It might even promote a barefoot lifestyle.
Right.
Starting the Climb
She continues to climb up to the top of a dome.
Climbing
At the top she climbs through a hole in the dome, still barefooted (oh, wow), and stands on top. It’s the barefoot lifestyle!
Here’s the whole commercial.
It’s escaping to a barefoot lifestyle!
Uh, not really. The whole scarf-climbing thing (including the way she wrapped the scarf around her leg at the beginning), is an art form called Aerial Silk. There’s even a Wikihow page on how to do aerial silks.
Aerial silk is always done barefoot. Here, for instance, you can see an example from Dusol Productions.
Duo-Silking
(By the way, on that page they also show “Ice Silking” where the artists start in ice skates. But then they take them off to do the aerial silking. They’re promoting the barefoot lifestyle!)
Bare feet are part of how you do it.
This is like seeing a commercial featuring a gymnast who arrives at the gym shod, takes off her shoes, and then does floor exercise.
Kristina Vaculik of Stanford
[Picture from here.]
It’s not a promotion of the freedom of bare feet, or promoting a barefoot lifestyle. Bare feet are part of how you do it.
Yes, there is a good reason that it is done barefoot: it’s because you need to feel and grip the mat to do it right. That’s worth promoting on our part, about how bare feet work and are better than shod feet. That’s true with aerial silk, too. Shoes would really get in the way and would probably get caught in the silk (that goes double for ice skates!).
But I really doubt that most folks would get out of seeing either activity that the freedom of bare feet was being promoted.
It’s kind of like seeing a commercial in which somebody gets out of a shower barefoot and thinking it’s a wonderful subliminal advertisement for going barefoot.
* See pareidolia.
Ahcuah 
Yeah, it’s kinda just wishful thinking mostly. However, there are rare adverts where people go barefoot outside. There is one where a woman is putting out washing barefoot and, ages ago I saw one in the Catholic Herald where people were walking barefoot in the woods. However, in that same paper I saw a piece about one of those bizarre people who run barefoot to raise money for shoes to give to children. (can’t have children with feet, can we?)
In 2008 there was a Mercedes commercial featuring people walking barefoot. You can watch it here :
Although it looks like promoting barefoot, the ending actually makes it clear that the point is: if you drive a Mercedes, people will consider you a natural leader.
But hey, that was close enough.
And to repeat this one again, Mountain Dew’s 1969 slogan “Get that Barefoot Feeling”
They were advertising to a young generation that thought going barefoot was hip and cool. No explanation was needed.
Actually, Bob, there is more than that. There is a barefoot photo session dedicated to the same perfume: http://www.standard.co.uk/fashion/news/barefoot-in-paris-gisele-bundchen-wanders-the-parisian-streets-for-chanels-latest-ad-campaign-9949855.html
As for the aerial silk, I like the way Rapunzel did it in the “Tangled” with her own hair 🙂
Victor, Gisele is a different perfume (Chanel No. 5), not Dior J’adore.
I’d that Chanel campaign really is using bare feet as bare feet, not just because it is part of the “uniform” for aerial silk.
Shame on me. My only excuse is my hyposmia.
Before the 1990s, female gymnasts used to wear shoes during their performances. Since then, every gymnast, both male and female do all their events barefoot. You’re right Bob, it gives them more traction especially when they stand on those bars.
Is this really true? Looking at some older pictures, I do see Nadia Comenici wearing a kind of slipper in 1976, but in 1972 and 1976 Olga Korbut was barefoot.
Men doing gymnastics wear some kind of socks and long pants. I have never watched a competition where male gymnasts would be barefoot.
If you search Google Images with the string “men’s floor exercise” you’ll see both bare feet and those silly footies.
That may be true for Google Images, but I don’t remember any barefoot men in competitions I have watched over TV.
I imagine it depends on the event. If I do the same search for “men’s pommel horse” they all have footwear.
Whenever I’ve seen Olympic footage of Dorthy Hamill back from the 1980s, she was never barefoot. She was wearing slipper shoes.