What is the big deal about being barefoot?

OK, I was going to refrain, but shall no longer: 80 degrees F, 80% humidity. 365 days a year. The most consistent climate on earth and total tolerance for bare feet. What can I say? It's the Island way...

 

it feels so good....just to feel so close to the earth there is no describing it, just try it. mmm

 

:cheers2:

 

I know it's worse elsewhere, but this is the view from our bedroom window. It's too cold for my toes!

 

Looking at the Continental Divide - at least the skiing should be good! How long till the Spring thaw?

 

A winter wonderland! No place for baretoes! I have a picture of me at age 2 (1949) standing in my backyard in the San Fernando Vallery in the snow. A rare sight. If I can find it I will scan the picture and put it in my album.
<(^o^)>

 

Whats the big deal about going barefoot? I dono. I wish someone would tell me. But it seems to be a big deal as people can't keep from commenting, and I've been kicked out of several places over it.

For me I just A. hate wearing shoes, and B. like to feel the ground under my feet, simple as that.

 

The societal phobia over bare feet goes all the way back to the middle ages when the peasantry was so horribly oppressed that they could seldom afford clothes, let alone shoes. The association became barefoot=poor, ignorant stupid, filthy peasant. This attitude has been with us ever since and was compounded during the 18th-19th centuries in the US, when barefoot was associated with slavery, rural poverty and Native Americans. During the 60s, being barefoot received more negative connotations by being associated with the counter culture; those "dirty hippies".

It's very difficult to overcome biases which have been entrenched for centuries and are inadvertently exacerbated by contemporary shoe company marketing. The unfortunate reality is that barefooters will likely remain a marginal subgroup in the US mainland for the foreseeable future. All the more reason not to live there

 

It feels so much better, and it's no big deal.

But it's kind of a social taboo, unfortunately. :sad:

 

Why barefoot?

1. The way it feels.
2. The simplistic personal freedom that it celebrates.
3. The contempt it communicates toward mindless conformity.

For an individual, I think it can be any or all of the three.

It started out as one of life's small pleasures, but its critics have made it into a big deal. I have no idea how an inconsequential act of personal freedom can become such a hated thing in America, but I have spent a good bit of time trying to figure it out. It is a serious cultural flaw.