Why be barefoot?

I’ve recently decided to be barefoot as often as I can.  This includes being barefoot at home, when I’m outside, when I’m going for my run, when I’m at the grocery store, when I’m at restaurants….all the time.  It turns out this is not the kind of thing you can do without people giving you hell about it.  So, I felt like publishing this…a manifesto of sorts.

• Because it’s comfortable…
  • Really, it is…try it.
• …it’s natural…
  • I struggle a great deal with (1) what natural means and (2) what normative force the category has, but I quite suspect that whatever the final answer to these questions is, it will yeild the following implications: (1) being barefoot is natural, more natural than being shod and (2) there is prima facie, very defeasible, reason to take naturalness to be a good-making property of actions and objects.
• …there are pretty well-documented health benefits…
  • see below.
• …it increases the variety and richness of my sensory experience and heightens my awareness of the world around me…
  • Again, I take this to be a prima facie, defeasible good-making property.
  • Do you know how many different textures you will encounter in a ten-block walk if you’re not wearing shoes?

What about the law that says you have to wear shoes in _______?

• There are none. This was a myth, perpetrated in the 70’s to justify kicking hippies out of stores and restaurants.

What about public health?

• It is not harmed by my being barefoot, and would be well served by everyone’s being barefoot. Anything that I might track in would also be tracked in by shoes.  Any threat that my foot poses to someone qua exposed skin is at least matched by my hands, and (unlike, possibly, my hands) you aren’t going touch my feet.  My feet do not smell (being inside of socks all day is what makes feet smell) my feet are not fungusy or gross (being inside of socks all day makes feet fungusy and gross).  If there is any transmission of grossness/fungusyness/disseasedness/unsanitariness (hint: there isn’t) it is between my feet and the floor.  It has nothing to do with you.  If your burger fell on the floor, you wouldn’t eat it anyway, so the fact that I may have walked on the part of the floor your burger fell on shouldn’t be relevant.  This is something worth realizing:  We are terribly arbitrary about what sorts of things we consider a threat to sanitation and public health, and what things we don’t consider a threat.  Your belief that my feet are a threat to you (in any way!) is unfounded.

What about your health?

• Concerns like cuts, scrapes, and invasive materials have turned out to be not very much of a problem at all, even when i was walking on my nubile, uncalloused feet.  I’ve bled more from biting my nails in the last week than i have from walking on streets and sidewalks.  And now, as my soles get tougher, thicker, the problem becomes more and more of what it already was: a non-problem.  Feet are tough.  You can walk on pebbles, jagged asphalt, even small bits of glass, without getting cut.  A little bit of awareness of what’s around me is usually more than sufficient.  To be sure, one day I’m bound to suffer a cut or a scrape that I wouldn’t have otherwise experienced…but the marginal threat of getting cut hardly moves me to cover other parts of my skin, and the benefits/enjoyment of being barefoot are great enough that I’m convinced I ought not think of my feet as any more needing of protection from the big bad world than the rest of my body.
• The exposure to bacteria, impurities, toxins, etc. are a worthwhile concern, but it’s strange to hear such concerns voiced by people that eat at fast food restaurants, use ATMs, etc., any one of which pose a threat to health of far greater magnitude than my absorption of impurities from the ground.  In general, I grow weary of people that try to convince me that being alive is bad for me–that I should stay out of the sun, avoid eating fish, etc. but Big Mac’s  and tequila shots are fine.  Trans-fat, tobacco, alcohol, stress…these are the real threats to our health.  The ground is not a threat to our health.
• Finally, two genuine threats that have been brought to my attention are hookworm.  But I’ve looked into it.  All of the resources I can find tell me that hookworm almost non-existent in North America, that it’s easily treatable, and even if we were in the midst of a hookworm epidemic, I needn’t be worried unless I were to walk on poop (so, yes, I wear shoes to the dog park).  As for tetanus, that’s a risk any time you could get cut by something, and as long as your shots are up to date you should be fine.
• Meanwhile, my chance of housing and fostering fungus (the sort that could cause infections like athlete’s foot) is next to nothing, compared to those that wrap their feet up in socks all the time.  Let me repeat this:  By wearing shoes you are drastically increasing the likelihood of your getting ringworm or athlete’s foot.  By being barefoot I have reduced the likelihood of my getting it to nearly zero.
• Also, walking barefoot naturally inclines me to have good posture and walk in a way that is far easier on my joints and spine then the way that people who wear shoes tend to walk.
• So, all of the information I can find leads me to believe that I am doing a service to my overall health by being barefoot, rather than the opposite.  But, even if that’s not the case (and indeed, the evidence is not all in yet), even if my new lifestyle has no effect or a slightly negative effect on my health, it should be noted that barefoot living has made me calmer, makes me move slower, makes my life more serene…all of which contribute to lower blood pressure, lower stress, and, presumably, a correspondingly stronger immune system to do battle with all of thoseboogeymen you think are waiting on the sidewalk to jump up onto my feet and burrow into my skin.

What about the policies at individual stores, restaurants, etc.?

• I’ll follow them.  But before I do so, I ask them whose policy they are enforcing.  If they claim to be enforcing a state law, then I inform them that they are in error.  I keep documents to that effect with me.  However, once that’s been cleared up, if they insist that they have a store policy, I comply.  I keep sandals with me for this purpose.  However, once I find out that a store has such a policy, I take note.  And if it happens to be a store whose services I can find elsewhere, then I will go elsewhere in the future.

C’mon, man, everyone thinks it’s gross.  Maybe it’s just because of convention, maybe we don’t have any final, iron clad reason that you should be wearing shoes, but don’t you feel some obligation, as our friend, and as a member of society, to not be systematically grossing out all of the people around you?  Wouldn’t it be, if nothing else, considerate of you to put your shoes on?

• This is probably the most honest reason someone has given me for putting my shoes on.  But it’s a load of crap.  If this line of reasoning is sound, if anyone who hears it ought to comply with the request, then many others are similarly guilty, including (these leap to mind) mothers who breastfeed in public, and women who choose to wear sleeveless tops or shorts without shaving their armpits or legs. I think that if you find such behavior unsightly, or discomforting, but you recognize that there is no good reason for you to feel this way, then you are morally obligated to stfu about it.  Likewise with my feet.  If you can give me a good reason, I’ll listen, but if you want me to comply with your preferences just to make you comfortable, where your preferences are based on no true assumptions and a few false ones, then I think you should stfu and mind your own.

Wikipedia has a nice collection of external links on their “Barefoot” article.  Additionally, there’s unshod.org.  I’ll admit, most of my evidence has not come from scientific sources; many of the sites I visit refer to studies, but they’re not always cited.  Much of what I’ve said is open to empirical refutation…but I’ve looked for the backlash sites as well! i’ve looked all over…if the things I’ve written are false (controversial even!) I think that I would have had a far easier time finding the opposite opinion expressed.  If you’re aware of sources that should give me pause in taking the above as empirically questionable, I would thank you to bring them to my attention.  Also, a man recently sued the library for kicking him out for being barefoot.  The library won the right to enforce their no-barefoot policy, but it was stipulated by all sides that it was the library’s policy that was being challenged and upheld, not a state law.  Here’s an interesting letter that the plaintiff wrote. I would have been happy to comply with store policies anyway, so knowing that such policies are officially sanctioned is fine; indeed, I think they ought to have such a right. But the point is, no, Miss Store Owner, or Mr. Shift Manager, it’s not illegal.

This entry was posted on 24. April 2010 at 12:07 and is filed under Barefoot. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.