The culture of shoes & politics of bare feet

What do shoes really protect us from?

Since I started running barefoot two years ago, I’ve really enjoyed it and find myself more and more reluctant to put on shoes, and itching to kick them off when I am wearing them.  This has led me to do some thinking about why we wear shoes.  Plainly, if I can run miles (16 is what I've worked up to so far) on asphault in bare feet with nary a blister, as I do regularly (and many others regularly run marathons), then, in the vast majority of situations, I don’t really need to wear shoes for safety reasons in the course of daily life, except for cold weather & a few other special situations, just as I don’t need gloves most of the time.

The real thing that forces me to wear shoes most of the time of course is social pressure and conformity.  It seems clearer than ever to me that shoes are for the most part nothing more than a fashion item, required by custom not nature.  Fashion is of course by its very nature utterly irrational and tribalistic, and has at best a distant relationship to practical functionality. 

Once you realize this about shoes, and begin to discover how enjoyable it is to go without them, they begin to annoy you a lot more than they ever did before. 

The fact is, our Western society, despite its supposed rationality and scientific enlightenment, has a lot of arbitrary, tribal rules that are not really questioned by most people.  For example, when engaged in many activities you must display a phallic strip of cloth hanging from your neck as a sign of respect if you are male.  To get into some restaurants, or attend other formal occasions, you have to wear a coat, or a suit or other clothing that was well adapted to northern Europe in the 17th century -- even when you're in, say, Miami in the 21st century.

Shoes, it seems clear, have a specially enduring social function of demonstrating social rank, and more specifically an absence of poverty. Shoes demonstrate that you are not among the poorest group in society.  Even though that group (which was once a majority) barely exists any more, this became deeply ingrained in European culture over the course of recent centuries, and although we are barely conscious of it, this cultural bias has come down to us, and that is the reason that it remains embarrassing for most of us to appear in all but the most casual situations without footwear. 

Of course, people often suffer greatly to show their superiority.  I came across a good example of this kind of irrationality:  the British planters who lived in Jamaica, Barbados and other Caribbean islands during the 1600s.  They

tried their best to transfer English modes of diet, dress, and housing to the tropics.  Scorning to imitate the Spaniards, the Indians, or the Negroes, who were all experienced at living in hot countries, they clung determinedly to their own North European styles and standards.  (Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves [1972], p. 263)

The English wore linen when they could afford it, but “much of their clothing was woolen and worsted.”  For military infantry drills, for example, the white men of the islands were issued red coats and black hats.   

What idiots!  Parading around in the Barbados in woolen coats, just because that was what people were wearing up in London and Amsterdam?

Dunn explains,

The Caribbean planters, like all Europeans in the seventeenth century, conceived of food and clothing in hierarchical terms.  Each rank in the social order, from aristocrats at the top to beggars at the bottom, had its own distinct style of dress, diet, and habitation.  (p. 263)

When it came to clothes in particular,

The clothes a man wore in the status-conscious seventeenth century identified his social position more readily than the food he ate.  Every occupation had its own designated wardrobe.  The rich took care to dress richly, and the poor were expected to dress poorly. (p. 282)

According to Dunn:  “very rarely did field Negroes wear hats or shoes” (and overall “wore little clothing”) while the next people up the ladder, white servants, “generally used shoes and stockings.”  (pp. 283-84) In fact,

Unencumbered by layers of sweat-drenched clothing, the slaves probably kept cleaner than the white servants, and since they liked to wash more than Englishmen thought necessary in the seventeenth century, they very likely kept cleaner than their white masters.  Dr. Sloane remarked on their odd habit of bathing “in fair water every day.” (p. 284)

It’s easy to laugh at these rigid Brits walking around in wool coats in Barbados and Jamaica, trying to maintain the standards and propriety of a culture and couture that was adapted to foggy London town.  But face it:  we’re just as stupid today, walking around in suits in Washington, DC in August, and wearing shoes all the time, turning our feet unnaturally white, soft and flabby even as we pad around carpeted office buildings, mostly clean smooth streets and other environments that, I can tell you from personal experience, are much easier on the feet than any stick-strewn forest, pebbly field or other “natural” surface. 

Unlike many fashion impositions that are just burdensome and annoying, shoes are probably actively unhealthy (most foot problems are caused by shoes, experts say).

An irrational custom that is annoying, uncomfortable and unhealthy is bad enough.  It's worse when it's a way to say, “I’m better than you” (or maybe “I’m no worse than you”).  Let's face it, a suit and tie certainly serves no other purpose.  Although shoes have become standard enough now that they alone do not denote status, their absence still screams, “I’m poor and desperate!”

Check out this passage from Adam Smith in his 1776 Wealth of Nations.  In making a distinction between necessities and luxuries, he writes that

By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them. In Scotland, custom has rendered them a necessary of life to the lowest order of men; but not to the same order of women, who may, without any discredit, walk about barefooted. In France they are necessaries neither to men nor to women, the lowest rank of both sexes appearing there publicly, without any discredit, sometimes in wooden shoes, and sometimes barefooted. Under necessaries, therefore, I comprehend not only those things which nature, but those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people. All other things I call luxuries, without meaning by this appellation to throw the smallest degree of reproach upon the temperate use of them. Beer and ale, for example, in Great Britain, and wine, even in the wine countries, I call luxuries. A man of any rank may, without any reproach, abstain totally from tasting such liquors. Nature does not render them necessary for the support of life, and custom nowhere renders it indecent to live without them.  [Book five, Chapter II, Part 2, Article IV]

This offhand cultural report from his day sheds a lot of light on the origins of our attitude towards shoes today:

• Notice Smith’s report that in the 18th century, it was common for the "lowest rank" in France (and in 18th century France, that was a big group) to “walk about barefooted.” 
• Notice how Smith, who probably lived among a lot more barefoot people than anyone today, puts shoes squarely in the category of custom.  He makes no suggestion that they might actually be necessary –- instead, with no discussion of the matter, as though none of his contemporary readers would disagree, he groups them with the fashions of clothing, and specifically NOT in the category of things that nature renders “necessary for the support of life.”
• Smith says that the lack of shoes in England denotes “that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct.”  Here Smith is reflecting the old view that financial success was a mirror of moral rectitude – that good morals would lead to financial success, and that poverty was an indicator of poor character.  This view was held through the 19th century (and perhaps continues to hold some sway in some circles today).   If you're barefoot, you're not only poor, but you're of low character and morals too (or why else would you be poor?)  It’s important to keep this view in mind in order to recover the full extent of the disgraceful cultural associations that bare feet carry, which have come down to us to this day.
  

Perhaps at some point in the future we will outgrow this obsession with unnecessary footwear, and most people will begin going barefoot most of the time.  I have a vision of people in the future watching our science fiction movies of today, and laughing because in our portrayals of the future, we quaintly show everyone wearing shoes.  (As if Thomas Jefferson had made a movie about the 20th century, and showed everyone wearing powdered wigs.  Or like 1950s science fiction, where the characters are jetting around on spaceships, flying between the stars at the speed of light – and then when it’s time to do some calculations they whip out their slide rules.)

Well a guy can dream can't he?

Comments

[Jay]

You don't need to dream. I take it by the spelling of aluminum you're from North America - I am too but I'm currently living in Australia. In Australia it's perfectly acceptable to walk around barefoot...and people take full advantage of it.

[thinnmann]

I liked your original title of this post better.
Great writing and research and perspective. Keep it up!

[Noam]

Jay, you are truly a visionary. But why stop at shoes? There are times in the East Coast summer when I would wear a simple loin cloth but for the constraints of custom. Well, okay, maybe I wouldn't do this, but your post begs the question.

I often think of this phenomenon when people make the boneheaded argument that something is wrong because it's "not natural." Nothing we do is natural. I don't know if I would endorse moving back toward a state of nature (I like many of my technological comforts) but let's stop pretending "natural" and "unnatural" really have any fixed values associated with them. Or let's be consistent: think gay marriage is wrong because it's unnatural? Cast aside that bar of soap!

If custom does demand that you wear shoes though, I recommend Converse All Stars. They're minimalist and are about as close as you can get to walking directly on the ground. They are owned by Nike now, however, and as such, probably manufactured by children - barefoot ones, at that.

[Wolfmaan]

I am a barefooter like yourself. I am also an avid outdoorsperson. Working in the outdoor industry I often get flack about going barefoot outdoors. I've even been advised that the owner of one outdoors club is so prejudice against barefoot people that I was not allowed to join.

To spite all of this I spent 60 days barefoot and hiked the entire 850km of the Bruce Trail here in Canada completely barefoot!

I survived with rock hard soles and no injuries contrary to what some people expected.

[eurogirl]

Indeed, what do shoes protect us from? If that were the only reason to wear shoes, I myself would practice my rights and refuse to wear them. (Except, perhaps, in the state of Georgia where it is illegal to drive with feet bare of footwear.) However, I suggest that there are other reasons why one would wear a shoe.

Anita Loos, "Gigi" playwright, once said, "Now, shoes are pure sex." Disagree with Loos? A New England shoe historian--yes, shoes are important enough to have historians!--said that shoes were possibly the best indicators to how a person is feeling. A National Geographic senior writer wrote it well: "Baby booties to orthopedic sandals, we spend most of our waking lives in shoes, and from them we may learn something about our culture, our history, and ourselves. Last, far from least, they can be drop-dead gorgeous."

Break away from society's views on what is hot and what is not. Take away the media's impressions on fashions and footwear. In the end, someone would still be wearing shoes. Personally, I would be. Not as a conformist or a non-conformist. I would wear my shoes simply because I like them--the shinier the better.

[beach bum]

You said "Perhaps at some point in the future we will outgrow this obsession with unnecessary footwear, and most people will begin going barefoot most of the time."
We already did that, sort of, during the late 1960s and early 1970s in the US. Are you old enough to remember that era? You could not go anywhere in a public place on a nice summer day without seeing at least some young people, mostly women, going barefoot. That included stores, malls, etc. Even in places like New York City. It was not uncommon for some young women to go for weeks or months without wearing shoes. And they could walk on anything without getting hurt, they were so used to it. Then going barefoot went out of style in the 1980s, and we all seem to have forgotten, and pretend that it never happened.