Billy Elliot The Musical (sigtheater.org)
For hundreds of thousands of years, humans did without them, but these days shoes are such an important aspect of our lives that there are few these days who do not wear one or another form of foot fashion during each 24-hour period. In fact, so distant have we gone from our more natural heritage that a pair of coverings for the feet can occasionally go for over $15,000,000. Though a perfectly serviceable pair of women's or men's footwear may as yet be purchased at WalMart for under $12, mere Nikes, an extremely popular brand, can go today for tens of thousands of dollars. People are even killed just for their shoes.
Much about a person's biography might be written from the point of view of his or her history with footwear. When we come into the world, most of us get our first pair as tiny booties. When leaving this existence, we go out with a nice pair of shoes on our feet, as if we shall still need them wherever we are off to next. Shoes can be as slim, elegant, and for most purposes delicate as a ballet dancer's or as functional, practical, and durable as thongs made from old tires, the vintage heavy deep sea diving boots one might have used to walk on the ocean floor, or space boots for tramping across the surface of the Moon.
Shoes are evidently so vital that even horses get into the act and have their own specialists employed to fashion and fit or periodically replace them.
Shoes are collectible, and some get into this in an almost crazy way. Imelda Marcos is reported to have stashed away over 3000 pair. One doubts she could have worn more than a fraction of hers.
Billy Elliot The Musical (sigtheater.org) |
In contrast, the footwear of Mahatma Gandhi was iconic for its mere functionality, without calling special attention to him. It was as though he had taken simplicity in material possessions as his motto.
Shoes can even be the object of sexual fetishes. I suppose this is harmless enough, far better than molesting children. Yet one might wish these folks would simply get a life!
Shoes are of great metaphorical significance. They can be a mark of empathy: "If you could but walk in another's shoes..." On the other hand, they can be a sign of extreme rejection: "I'll give you a pair of cement shoes," as occurred for a gang member, street name Petey Crack, whose body was found near Manhattan Beach in 2016, his feet encased in concrete.
Shoes may be used as an accepted form of cultural subjugation, for instance with women whose feet were bound since childhood, a terribly painful process, and were thereby considered more attractive, a practice that continued in China for a millennium. In much of this period women with feet longer than 5 inches were said to have poor marriage prospects.
Story or movie plots can hang on the interactions of characters with their shoes, for instance with "Cinderella," "The Man With One Red Shoe," "The Wizard of Oz," "Top Hat," or "Back to the Future, Part II."
In my childhood, Dad's combat boots were a prominent memory, as were his more everyday military shoes, as he was an Air Force officer, and when I was a little kid he expected me most evenings to shine them up for him, take them and his socks off, then replace them with fresh socks and his slippers.
My own shoes then were usually a children's customized variation on leather paratrooper boots, specially fitted and braced to support my feet and ankles in the correct positions, for I was born club-footed, and the feet tended instead to turn so their soles were facing upward or at least at about a 90-degree angle to what is more useful for standing and walking. Such footwear was worn in my case through my early elementary school years. The initial twisting of my feet and legs via casts, orthopedic shoes, and massage felt to me at times as if I were one of those dowsing rods, my spine in this case holding the tension, but I have yet to discover underground water.
As a youngster, I liked Buster Brown shoes once I could wear more trendy fashions. I appreciated too that I could go to the shoe store and look into a neat x-ray machine that would show my feet, including the bones. Very cool, if a bit unsafe by modern standards.
Still later, there was nothing particularly noteworthy about my own shoes. Like many in my state of TX, I have worn cowboy boots, sneakers, sandals, dress shoes, basic training boots, slippers, etc. While up in WI visiting relatives in winter, when there is often snow or mud, I have worn simply galoshes with thick socks. My high arches, residuals from the club-feet, prevent wearing of shoes too inside the wet weather gear. The past few years, plantar fasciitis having set in, I wear lifts in my shoes that conform to the bottoms of the feet and so mostly keep new tendon tears from occurring.
It is time for me to downsize and throw out the shoes I have not worn in years, along with donating or discarding a couple bushel basketfuls of clothes that have been hanging in my closet untouched for at least a decade. Like Imelda, I could do fine with far less. Gandhi probably had the right idea.