Why Are Shoes Not Shaped Like Feet?
Foot binding is the practice of breaking and tightly binding the feet of people — typically young girls — in efforts of intentionally changing their shape and reducing their size. Foot binding originated from 10th century China, with records corroborating that it was practiced as early as the year 937 AD in Nanking. Although foot binding was declared illegal in 1911, there are still rare cases of girls and women that bind their feet.
Foot binding involved an extremely painful and functionally perverse procedure of breaking an individual’s toes and foot arch, binding those broken toes to the sole with cotton bandages, and then repeatedly rebinding the bandages tighter and tighter. As a result, the individual’s feet would shrink and deform, bifurcating the foot into two sections: a smashed and twisted coalescence of toes ending in a sharp point and a relatively unchanged heel, the two of which were connected by a very pronounced foot arch.
There were a myriad of health problems associated with foot binding. The subjects of foot binding commonly experienced infection and necrosis, the former stemming from ingrown toenails puncturing the skin, and the latter resulting from a lack of circulation to the bound feet. Additionally, muscular atrophy below the torso was typical, as balancing and walking properly was virtually impossible. With such a lack of mobility, women with bound feet were usually attended by servants and maids to take care of their needs as well as cooking and cleaning in the household.
For Chinese women, having small feet was considered an attractive trait of the upper class. Even prior to the first records of foot binding, small feet were considered desirable, as evident in the Tang dynasty story of Ye Xian (叶限). Similar to the Western story, Cinderella, Ye Xian tells the tale of a dainty-footed girl who loses her shoe. A king finds this shoe and proclaims that whomever has feet small enough to fit the shoe shall be his wife. Ye Xian proves herself as being the shoe’s rightful owner, and she marries the king.
It comes with no surprise that today, pointed shoes are more aesthetically pleasing than those with broad toe boxes, since historically, it has also been the case. Horse riding is a more recent example that also calls for pointed shoes. Popularized during the Renaissance period, horse riding was a popular pastime for those of higher social status. Horse riders found it much easier to slide one’s feet into the stirrups with pointed shoes as opposed to broad-toed shoes. Unlike peasants who utilized horses to work in the fields and perform manual labor, the upper class rode horses for leisure. Thus, pointed shoes solidified themselves as being symbols of social status and fashion.
Having already answered the question of why shoes aren’t shaped like feet for social reasons, the design of such footwear begs the question: Do we lose any functionality wearing shoes not shaped like our feet? First, we should consider the difference between the shape of our feet and the shape of our shoes.
If you look at your feet, you’ll notice that your big toe is the furthest toe from your heel (your second toe may also be of a similar length). The remaining toes are typically shorter than the the one preceding it, i.e. if the big toe is toe #1, the index toe is toe #2, etc., then toe #1 is the longest, toe #2 is shorter than toe #1, toe #3 is shorter than toe #2, toe #4 is shorter than toe #3, and toe #5 is shorter than toe #4.
We should also consider which part of our foot is the widest. Even without purposely splaying your toes, you’ll notice that your toes, rather than your heel, comprise the widest part of your foot.
Given that the big toe is the longest toe and that your toes are the widest part of your foot, it seems functionally counterintuitive to wear shoes with a narrow toe box, especially where the furthest point is around the second or third toe, not the big toe. Here’s an image to illustrate my point:
You’ll notice that the shoe on the right forces the wearer’s big toe towards the other toes, which encourages the development of bunions. A bunion, or hallux valgus, is a deformity of the metatarsophalangeal (MTP) joint that connects your big toe bone to your foot bones. Although the formation of bunions can be attributed to genetics or arthritis, wearing tight shoes is another major factor that often expedites the development of these painful bone deformities.
Again, for your own sake, I won’t include any images of bunions here. Search at your own risk.
Barefoot shoes
Barefoot shoes, otherwise known as minimalist shoes, are a type of footwear designed to impede the wearer’s natural foot shape and function as little as possible. These are some common features of barefoot shoes and their potential benefits:
- Wide toe box — Barefoot shoes have a wide toe box which allow your toes to take their natural shape and spread apart.
Allowing your feet to assume their natural shape doesn’t just avoid bunions, it’s also beneficial for functional strength and balance. From a static perspective, having splayed toes enables your feet to grip the ground more firmly, resulting in improved balance and stability. Walking or moving with splayed toes also engages the small muscles and tendons in the toes and forefoot, and larger motions that push off with the toes (e.g. a calf raise) can hypertrophy other muscles like the gastrocnemius.
- Flexible and thin soles — Unlike most modern shoes, barefoot shoes have notably thin soles that can scrunch up without much resistance.
Some soles are very thin compared to traditional footwear (~4 mm), which greatly enhances the sensory feedback that your feet receive from the surfaces they encounter. This can bolster proprioception (a fancy word for sensing your own body’s movement and position), which in turn activates and strengthens underutilized muscles in the feet and ankles in response to the more obvious sensory stimuli.
- Zero drop — A shoe’s “drop” refers to the difference in height between the shoe’s heel and toe. In the case of zero drop, there is no difference in height between the heel and toe.
In essence, that thick, comfy heel support that most of your shoes have is gone. Without it, you’ll find heel striking (having your heel strike the ground first in your gait) to be much more uncomfortable. As a result of this discomfort, you’ll naturally correct your posture and gait, using more midfoot and toe strikes, especially when running. If you do heel strike, you’ll be cautious to not apply your weight to the ground before your entire foot contacts the ground. Fixing the kinetic chain from the origin (the feet) ensures proper alignment and function for the rest of the body. Having strong and aligned feet sets a solid foundation for everything else to be stacked: ankles, knees, hips, spine, etc.
As any good developer would say, it’s better to solve problems upstream rather than downstream.
Final thoughts
Barefoot shoes rectify many of the problems associated with modern shoes, although transitioning to barefoot shoes is not something that can be done without careful planning and thought. If you’ve been wearing traditional shoes your entire life, I would say that it’s inadvisable to purchase a pair of barefoot shoes and immediately start wearing them 100% of the time you’d normally wear your old shoes. This sudden change in foot mechanics and increased stress on muscles and joints can easily lead to blisters, shin splints, ankle sprains, and very commonly, plantar fasciitis, an inflammation of the connective tissue joining your heel bone to your toes. Additionally, your chances of sustaining these injuries shortly after transitioning to barefoot shoes only increases exponentially with the inclusion of intensive activities, such as running or jumping.
Rather than abandoning your old shoes right as your pair of barefoot shoes show up in the mail, you should keep them and continue walking in them regularly. To smoothly transition to barefoot shoes, you should very gradually cut back on the amount of time that you wear your normal shoes. At the very start, you should almost certainly wear your old shoes a majority of the time while doing a short walk (15–30 minutes give or take) each day in your barefoot shoes. You can then progressively increase this time to 1+ hour, or however much time your spend in your regular shoes daily.
Of course, you can be more or less aggressive with this plan; there are a lot of factors to consider:
- Your daily steps
- How hard the surfaces you walk on are
- If you want to start running with barefoot shoes
- If you already spend time walking barefoot in your house every day
- etc.
Whatever you choose to do, be sure to listen to your body (as obvious and intuitive as that sounds). After I initially started wearing barefoot shoes earlier this year, I occasionally felt small pains in my knees or soreness in my soles. When this occurred
As a final word of advice, don’t get these unless you want to make a statement and/or enjoy getting bullied.
Happy barefooting! That doesn’t sound quite right…
