The evil that shoes do

[sawyl]

Despite slanderous allegations to the contrary, I am not obsessed with feet. Interested? Indubitably. Devoted to keeping my own all cute and pretty? Undoubtedly. But obsessed? Absolutely not. Got it? Good.

Here then, in the spirit of the strictest scientific interest only, is, via Boing Boing, a piece from New York Magazine on the malevolence of most modern shoes:

Walking is easy. It's so easy that no one ever has to teach you how to do it. It's so easy, in fact, that we often pair it with other easy activities—talking, chewing gum—and suggest that if you can't do both simultaneously, you're some sort of insensate clod. So you probably think you've got this walking thing pretty much nailed. As you stroll around the city, worrying about the economy, or the environment, or your next month's rent, you might assume that the one thing you don't need to worry about is the way in which you're strolling around the city.

Well, I'm afraid I have some bad news for you: You walk wrong.

Look, it's not your fault. It's your shoes. Shoes are bad. I don't just mean stiletto heels, or cowboy boots, or tottering espadrilles, or any of the other fairly obvious foot-torture devices into which we wincingly jam our feet. I mean all shoes. Shoes hurt your feet. They change how you walk. In fact, your feet—your poor, tender, abused, ignored, maligned, misunderstood feet—are getting trounced in a war that's been raging for roughly a thousand years: the battle of shoes versus feet.

Yikes! I don't think I'm ever going to wear shoes again. It's going to be sandals and flip flops all the way, baby!

What's that you say? It's going to pour with rain tomorrow? Hmm, well, in that case, maybe I'll stick with my hiking boots for just one more day...