Seeking to be accepted, feet covered or not [I Go Barefoot In The Summer]
My mum was a keen barefooter for much of her life. She fought to be allowed to go to school barefoot, and was even barefoot for her wedding. She didn't go barefoot all the time by any means, but this was a major part of her style. It never really caught on in the rest of the family. In any case, I have probably never thought there was anything inherently wrong with it. After all, we tend to bare our arms and lower legs when the weather is sufficiently warm, so why should the feet be any different? It's not like the feet are an indecent body part that must be kept covered – indeed, that some footwear styles leave much of the foot exposed makes this taboo particularly absurd.
In my time, I have found my own love of going barefoot. When the weather's warm enough that I find myself in shorts, usually I would put on a pair of flipflops to go out locally, but every now and again I would just not bother putting anything on my feet and let them be exposed to the air and the ground.
But it seems many people have problems with this. Not infrequently, when I go for a barefoot walk, I would get comments thrown at me. Some are to the effect of "doesn't it hurt?" - it's true that some ground is rough, but not all ground is by any means. Others are things like "where are your shoes?" or "you've got no shoes on" - what makes them think I don't know this already? Yet others are even more persistent in trying to convince me that there's something wrong with it, but what that something is remains unclear.
A lot of the material I see online about barefooting seems to be about people going barefoot 24 hours a day, 365¼ days a year, or as near thereto as possible. I don't fancy myself as one of these people by any means, but would certainly do it more if other people generally were respectful of my choice of footwear (or absence thereof), or at least I knew how and felt able to reason with them.
I sometimes wish I could ask my mum for advice, but sadly she is no longer with us. I long for a world where people are free to go out in bare feet if they want and nobody will bat an eyelid (or at least, if they do, it will always be to make a positive comment).
In my time, I have found my own love of going barefoot. When the weather's warm enough that I find myself in shorts, usually I would put on a pair of flipflops to go out locally, but every now and again I would just not bother putting anything on my feet and let them be exposed to the air and the ground.
But it seems many people have problems with this. Not infrequently, when I go for a barefoot walk, I would get comments thrown at me. Some are to the effect of "doesn't it hurt?" - it's true that some ground is rough, but not all ground is by any means. Others are things like "where are your shoes?" or "you've got no shoes on" - what makes them think I don't know this already? Yet others are even more persistent in trying to convince me that there's something wrong with it, but what that something is remains unclear.
A lot of the material I see online about barefooting seems to be about people going barefoot 24 hours a day, 365¼ days a year, or as near thereto as possible. I don't fancy myself as one of these people by any means, but would certainly do it more if other people generally were respectful of my choice of footwear (or absence thereof), or at least I knew how and felt able to reason with them.
I sometimes wish I could ask my mum for advice, but sadly she is no longer with us. I long for a world where people are free to go out in bare feet if they want and nobody will bat an eyelid (or at least, if they do, it will always be to make a positive comment).
41-45, M
