There’s a post and conversation going on at Metafilter about how shoes are ruining the human foot and the benefits of going as barefooted as possible. I’m only taking a break from the housework I am trying to catch up on, so I haven’t gotten to read the links yet, but I did skim through the comments. I find myself amazed by the number of people who are grossed out by the idea of not wearing shoes and walking around with naked feet outside.

I do not wear shoes. If I added up all the time every week when I have something of any sort on my feet, even during the winter, it would at most amount to an hour or two a week, depending on how many times I have had to drive somewhere and go into a retail establishment or restaurant. Even then, at most, I have on a pair of plastic gardening clogs or some other sort of slip-on shoe … that I slip off whenever possible. This has been the case with me since I was born. My feet like to be free.

By far, year-round, I am shoeless, and my feet are some of the happiest feet I know. The toes are all straight and even, I have never experienced corns, bunyons or ingrown toenails, and I can’t remember the last time I had a blister, but I know it was caused by wearing shoes. To be sure, I have calluses, but only on the bottoms of my feet, where humans should have thicker tougher skin. The tops and sides of my feet and my toes are all callus-free. Have you ever looked at the feet of a woman who wears women’s shoes all the time? My feet have never looked like that, and they never will. I will be spending more time sans shoes than with for the rest of my walking days.

The overwhelming complaint in the comments about going barefoot seems to revolve around stepping on gross things like dog poo or bugs and so on. Well, sometimes that happens. It usually only happens when I am not paying attention to wear I am walking, but when I somehow manage to step in something gross, I walk over to the nearest water source and wash my feet off. Do these people wash their shoes every day when they get home? If not, all that gross stuff they walk through willy-nilly, because they don’t have to pay attention to where they are putting their feet, is still there being gross on the bottom of their shoes. Meanwhile, my feet get a good washing, and any grossness they may have encountered in their barefooted day is gone down the drain forever. I have never seen anyone washing their shoes when they get home. I’ve never even heard of anyone washing their shoes to remove the accumulated grunge of the day. It’s as if they think the soles of shoes are magic and don’t collect the same kinds of stuff that a bare foot would! Well, they do. Ever notice how dogs and cats sniff around on the soles of shoes when you come in from outside? That is because there’s stuff on the soles of the shoes. Gross stuff. Gross stuff that people don’t wash off of them.

The other main complaint is a worry about stepping on pebbles, rocks, hot asphalt and other things that might hurt … a fear of getting an injury and possibly bleeding. These are some valid concerns for the novice barefoot walker. A foot accustomed to shoes is soft, weak, has no sole. In the beginning, a person with feet like these has to watch where they walk. It’s as simple as that. If you see a piece of glass, don’t step on it. It requires a person to actually be aware of their surroundings, all the way down to the ground. I see this as a good thing. I like being completely aware of my surroundings.

Once the novice barefoot walker has walked upon open ground for a few weeks, those pebbles, pieces of glass, and hot asphalt will stop mattering as much. Unless something is particularly pointy, I don’t even notice them anymore, and even when I go stop down fully on a sharp stone, it doesn’t break my skin … it just dents it. Amen for thick soles!

Also, after a lifetime of not wearing shoes when out in the world, I would like to say that I have only had one actual injury to the bottom of a foot that led to any amount of bleeding. It happened when I was 7 years old. I stepped on an unseen nail. I sniffled about it for the three minutes it took my mom to put on some Bactine, and then I was right back outside running around like a wild child, having learned the lesson to be slightly more careful about where I put my feet. I’ve stepped on other nails and sharp bits of glass since that summer, and just like pebbles, all it ever does now is put a dent in the sole of my foot. The more a person goes barefoot, the less likely it is they will suffer a foot injury from having stepped on something.

The comments I found particularly hilarious were those implying (or flat out stating) that the human foot is an evolutionary mistake, a weakness. The human foot, in its natural form (shoeless) is not weak. We have made them weak and soft by wearing shoes. My feet and toes are strong. I am almost as capable of grasping things with them as I am with my hands, and when doing any sort of climbing, I can’t even imagine doing so with shoes on. Those toes are very, very useful. They were designed to be useful. Too bad so many people don’t use them.

And then there was a comment saying that feet stink when they come out of shoes but that bare feet stink all the time. That is simple stupidity, and without knowing anything else about the person, I can tell they have never actually spent any time at all without shoes on. My feet don’t stink. At the most, they smell like dirt and grass if I have just been outside, and it isn’t like I wash them multiples of times a day. Sometimes, I don’t even wash them every day. It’s true. Unless I have stepped in something that requires foot washing or I am taking a shower anyway, I often go days without washing my feet. Just the thought of that is probably grossing some people out, but I swear to you, my feet are never really that dirty … and they most certainly don’t stink. In fact, I am more likely to go out of my way to wash my feet after I have been wearing shoes, because yes, they do then have an odor about them.

I can’t prove to you they don’t stink, since we don’t have smell-o-vision yet on the internet, but in closing, I will share with you a photograph of the bottoms of my feet, the very feet that has not actually been washed for about four days and have been all over my yard, the street and inside my house.

See … not icky, not gross, not even especially dirty. Nothing there but healthy, happy feet!

Now back to the damn housework.