Primal Feetedness

I read with interest Mark Sisson’s post on How to Strengthen Bare Feet some time ago. Obviously I was shocked to learn (once again) that what I thought was normal…

…isn’t normal at all. This is normal:

Both photos were taken in 1905 by an orthopedist doing a study on bare footedness vs. shoe-dness. The short of it is that our western proclivity toward shoe wearing has mucked up our feet. 

[Dr.] Hoffman concluded that of the “one hundred and eighty-six pairs of primitive feet examined, [he] did not find a single foot associated with the symptoms of weakness so common in adult shoe-wearing feet, which are weakened by the restraint the shoe exerts over function.” He also noticed that foot development was remarkably similar, in all populations, up until the introduction of foot wear. Shoes, it seems, have an undeniable ability to alter one’s natural foot structure.

As I’m making strides to return to all things “primal” and generally reject the “convenience at any cost” anthem chanted around me, I thought I should do something about this unnatural-foot-shape-business. But I can’t stand going barefoot: I feel every last little spec of dirt, total sensory overload… I’m constantly wiping the [whatever] off my feet, which means my hands have foot all over them all the time… drives me insane. Not to mention that living in my neighborhood presupposes that I’ll have a nail or two pulled from a tire at least once a quarter; what would happen to my feet if I ran around all primally? Besides, most people’s feet are ugly —mine definitely are— and who wants to look at ugly?

However, a happy medium was to be found (yay!): Vibram FiveFingers shoes. As Sisson noted,

They are the best of both worlds. They provide the physiological benefits of going barefoot with the advantage of having some level of armor against the elements.

They’re also freakin’ expensive, but I made a little extra cash shooting a baptism the other weekend —this would be a Greek baptism… think “wedding scale”— and treated myself to a pair. They came yesterday, and I’ve already taken a several-mile walk in them and I love them! Though I can’t get used to how they look. They look really, really funky. Not ugly, but funky.

All this blather to simply say: I have black, primal feet now, of the KSO variety. Well, I have black feet that are at least able to return to primality. We’ll see what happens…