IN MY SHOES: “I'm Just Not A Flip-Flop Kind Of Guy.”
Stephen Hunter, who has “thin feet … like the talons of a sparrow, bony and fragile,” writes a personal essay for The Washington Post in which he explains his inability to walk in flip-flops (a problem The Stiletto does not share), as well as his pet-peeve at having to look at exposed feet that should be covered by socks and shoes on aesthetic grounds (The Stiletto couldn’t agree more):
I know that the Viet Cong managed to win a war wearing flip-flops. I know that people fly in them, go to ballgames in them, get married in them, work, run and sword fight in them. Lindsay Davenport wore them on Letterman. People even shop in them.
But I have this problem: On my feet they don't flip . . . they don't flop . . . they flounder. …
I cannot even make it to the bathroom in them. Stairways are out of the question -- outside a horror. Driving? How can you drive in them? Slippage has to occur, and you'll kill yourself and all who are in the 7-Eleven into which you smash.
Running, fighting, even moving briskly as if an important destination lay ahead? All inconceivable. …
We live, you have certainly observed but perhaps not processed, in a foot-rich culture. Feet are everywhere. The naked foot, once as taboo as a breast or a set of buttocks, has become commonplace, particularly in the summer, and I have to ask: Is this really such a good thing? …
The feet that you see today, my own being No. 1 on the Public Enemies list: old feet, gnarly feet. Toes twisted like an adulterer's lies, nails as yellow as a Kansas wheat field announcing to the world the presence of a demon fungus. Tectonic ranges of ragged nails, some offering harbor to filth. (I'm making myself sick!) What about the opposite of skinny feet, those fat things, like huge, flat slugs?
Those of us who cannot understand how feet can become the object of fetishistic desire given how ugh-ly most people’s feet are, are not alone. We have our pick of “I Hate Feet” groups we can join on Facebook – not to mention any number of blogs that have made it their business to slam celebrities and other worthies who should never, ever inflict the sight of their feet on anyone with a delicate stomach (with photos, blech!) – a form of “shoedenfreude” that has not gone unnoticed by the MSM, including London’s The Daily Mail newspaper.
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