How Beautiful Are the Feet
The Case for Shoeless Homes, Going Barefoot, and Standing on Our Own Two Feet
Do you enjoy minor controversies? I do. A tempest in a teapot has recently bubbled up online about whether to wear shoes in the house, or whether to take them off at the door and pad around in our socks or barefoot. A letter-writer in the Ask Vanessa column in the New York Times apparently believes that shoeless homes are a hardship; otherwise she wouldn’t be asking “How do you deal with visits to ‘shoeless’ homes?” [my italics]. Vanessa agrees that shoeless homes can make guests feel insecure about the appearance of their feet (or their holey socks) and spoil the careful pairing of shoes and outfit. She cites an etiquette expert with the aptronym Hack,1 who recommends “dillydallying in the doorway to see if other guests feel the same, the better to persuade the host to relax the rules.” As though it were good manners to begin the evening by ganging up on one’s hosts and starting an argument with them about how they run their home.
If my bias isn’t already clear, ours is a shoeless home. This is partly because shoeless homes are the norm in Europe, and partly for a selfish reason: Many of our rugs are handmade and/or are special gifts that my husband’s brother and wife purchased in Turkey, where she was born, and we would like to protect them from the grit and gravel—and worse—that shoes bring inside.
Besides, I think a pile of shoes at the entrance of a home gives off a casual, welcoming vibe. When Noah was in high school, he had a wonderful group of friends, most of whom were six feet or taller, and all of whom had huge feet. Almost every weekend, the group of guys would convene at our house for Dungeons and Dragons and pizza, and I always loved seeing the lineup of giant shoes at the door.
The Psychology of Shoeless Homes
As with many cultural taboos, shoeless homes likely arose from practical concerns. In the days before sanitation, and when we lived among animals, people had a good reason for keeping shoes outdoors with the rest of the muck, just as it is still normal for people in snowy climes to remove their boots at the door rather than tracking in slush, road salt, and sand. Nowadays, in the absence of a sanitary reason to remove our shoes, the taboo fulfills the psychological function of drawing a boundary around our home, and of ritually marking the separation of public from private life. We saw the resurgence of this taboo in shoeless and shoes-on homes alike during Covid. Back when we were still quarantining groceries and sanitizing surfaces, many people also removed their shoes before entering their houses to prevent a possible disease vector from invading the sanctity of the home.2
Ours is a shoeless home for a different reason, though: I believe that going shoeless is informal, hospitable, and friendly. At formal parties, people do enjoy wearing the perfect pair of fancy shoes to show off their sense of style. I get that. But guests in my humble home are here because I value them for their hearts and minds, and not for how much money they are able to spend on shoes. It is also true that some people feel shame about how their feet look. They might want to hide chipped toenail polish or feet that were last pedicured weeks ago if at all. But most of us aren’t Quentin Tarantino and would never judge a person for something as superficial as the appearance of their feet. We aren’t even looking! When we remove our shoes at the door and go about barefoot or in socks, we are all on an equal footing; like Shakespeare’s Dark Lady, we tread on the ground.
Three Spiritual Exercises
It’s time for a confession. I sympathize with people who worry about how their feet look and who are thus reluctant to take off their shoes in public, because I, too, used to be ashamed of my feet. I am tall, and my feet are correspondingly huge—at least size 11 in the US and a hefty 43 in Europe. By the time I was in fourth grade, my feet were already size 10s. Readers with dainty Cinderella feet cannot imagine what a bummer it is to shop for shoes when you are a young girl, and the only options in your size are matronly and bear a dispiriting resemblance to aircraft carriers. Or when there was nothing in my size at all, salespeople would tell me that the too-small shoes would stretch, and, acceding to this lie, I would buy ill-fitting shoes—which caused blisters and bumps that made my feet look even worse.
I first learned to appreciate my feet when I went bowling with my college boyfriend and discovered to my horror that I needed a larger size of bowling shoes than he did. My chagrin must have shown on my face, because the clerk, himself about 6’6,” said, “We’re tall! We need big feet, or else we would tip over!” His kind words made such a difference to me, and I still think about him once in a while. Readers, if you have the opportunity to say something that will help another person to feel good about him- or herself, I encourage you not just to think it, but to say it out loud. It may feel awkward to pay compliments not just to friends but to strangers too, but it is a good spiritual practice to put kindness ahead of acting cool and aloof.
The other thing that improved my attitude about my feet was that I started running. I worked up to running about twenty-five miles a week and took pleasure and pride in what my feet could accomplish. So, our second spiritual exercise is to think about a part of our body that we dislike or feel shame about. Maybe we are worried that this body part is unattractive to other people, or maybe we compare ourselves with images in the media and feel we are lacking somehow. Now, think instead about what this part of our body does for us, and about what wonderful experiences we have been able to enjoy thanks to our body. We can transform our shame and self-consciousness into gratitude with a bit of reframing. In my case, my big ugly feet have taken me to the tops of mountains thirty-one times (so far).3 Thank you, feet! Or take a look at this ballerina’s feet, which are, not to put too fine a point on it, kind of gruesome. And yet I suspect that she is proud of them and considers her injuries to be battle scars.
The third exercise is physical as well as spiritual. Going barefoot is really good for us. Our feet and ankles have twenty-nine muscles—each! When we walk barefoot, we develop and strengthen these muscles naturally. The soles of our feet toughen up, and we become accustomed to navigating different kinds of terrain. We learn not to clomp and stomp, but instead to step carefully to protect our joints. By contrast, shoes allow us to rely only on our larger leg muscles, which weakens our feet and ankle muscles. Shoes prevent our feet from flexing and thus keep us from learning how to use our toes to help us balance as we walk. If we never go barefoot, we risk suffering from impaired balance, twisted ankles, and similar injuries, and we may have trouble modifying our stride for different surfaces. Going barefoot as much as possible is crucial for preserving our balance and healthy gait as we age. Most of my readers are younger than me, but the following exercise is for you too! To paraphrase the saying about the best time to plant a tree, the best time to start going barefoot is twenty years ago. The second-best time to start going barefoot is right now.
To begin this posture exercise,4 stand barefoot on a hard floor. Keep your feet shoulder-width apart, and concentrate on feeling all four corners of your feet resting firmly on the ground. Your weight should be distributed equally between your feet. Now imagine that a string suspended from the ceiling runs from the crown of your head down your spine. Align your spine along this imagined string and feel the string lift and lighten your upper body, while your arms hang comfortably at your sides. Slightly soften your knees and let your gaze rest on a single spot. Take a few deep breaths in this posture. You can stop here, or you can go on to try slowly shifting your weight from one foot to the other, again keeping all four corners of the foot bearing your weight firmly on the ground. Pay attention to how the shifting weight feels in your feet and ankles, and how this affects your balance. Remember to keep breathing slowly and deeply the whole time. Don’t you feel refreshed and restored? This is a terrific exercise to do a couple of times a day, when you think of it or when you have a spare moment.
Tips for Shoeless Homes
If you have a shoeless home, or would like to try converting to one, there are a few steps you can take to make guests feel comfortable. A great first step is to provide a shoe rack in your entryway, which serves as a subtle signal to guests to remove their shoes. Most of the homes we visited when we lived in Prague had built-in shoe racks in the entryway or mud room, but you can also buy them at IKEA, Target, or similar stores.
It helps to have a chair or bench near the rack, so that your guests aren’t bending over awkwardly, teetering on one foot, to get the shoes off. In Europe it is also common for hosts to have a basket of (clean!) socks or slippers at the door for guests, so that no one has to expose their bare feet or embarrassing socks if they would prefer not to. At my daughter’s school in Switzerland, children from pre-K through grade five kept Hausschuhe (house shoes) at school, which they changed into, Mr. Rogers–style, as soon as they arrived. Finally, shoeless hosts need to be aware that it is painful or even dangerous for some older people to go without shoes. We shoeless hosts ought to ensure that these guests know that we want them to be comfortable and safe, and so we insist that they keep their shoes on.
How about you, readers? Is yours a shoeless or a shoes-on home? Have I persuaded you to try going barefoot? Did you try any of the spiritual exercises? What happened? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
The Tidbit
Of course, “How Beautiful Are the Feet” is the eccentric title not just of this essay, but also of a soprano aria from Handel’s Messiah, performed here by the great Hana Blažiková and my favorite baroque chamber orchestra, Prague’s own Collegium 1704. The full text of the aria has an important message for us: “How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, that bring glad tidings of good things.” If we enter our friends’ homes with peace and glad tidings, they will welcome us, beautiful feet and all.
Aptronyms are fun! I have read that a larger percentage of dentists are named Dennis than there are Dennises in the general population, for example. Our childhood dentist was named Phil, and another dentist in town was Dr. Fangman. Tee hee!
For readers who are interested in this topic, here is an amusing Reddit discussion on countries that have the shoeless-home tradition. The comments are filled with people saying that the map at the top of the thread is wrong, and that shoeless homes are typical in countries from Malaysia and the Philippines on one side of the globe all the way up to Estonia on the other. Then again, we have “Those barbaric Antarcticans!” who wear their boots inside. Can we blame them, though?
As this post hits your inbox, I am on my thirty-second summit hike. The elevation gain is 980m/3215ft over the course of 16km/10miles. Wish me luck!
A quick disclaimer: Seniors and people with mobility issues should consult with a doctor before beginning any exercise. If you want to try this exercise but need more stability, you can also perform it while lightly holding on to a chair or counter in front of you.
While in California I knew a couple people who went barefoot all the time. I was always surprised how much attention it drew, and grew weary of discussions about whether businesses could or should insist on people wearing shoes. I'm a shoe person, and notice that even on hot days in the summer if I go barefoot for a while my feet just feel cold. I'm sure I could get used to it, but by now at my age I figure I have other tasks to conquer.
Responding late to this because I had a cold. We are a shoeless household. Also, since Covid I’ve been working out with my trainer over FaceTime, in bare feet, and my balance has definitely improved!