Eighth Foot Walk 10.26.2010

 Today, I am a hopeless frazzled mess and I broke the number 1 rule of barefoot walking: look clean. You see, to me there are a certain number of rules that you must obey if you are walking barefoot because you still exist within society and you need to make barefoot walking plausible to the non-barefoot-goers.

My rules are as thus:

1.       Look clean
2.               Don’t put your feet on the table
3.       Dance

That last on is less of a rule than it is a side effect, as going barefoot increases the likelihood of one wanting to dance. Anyways, the first one (“look clean”) is a necessity to barefoot walking – that is, if you don’t want people to think you’re a complete slob. If you have the mindset of not caring at all what people think, then you essentially have no rules for barefoot walking and that would be a different case altogether. However, my purpose is to explore the benefits of barefoot walking and to make it appealing to all the N.B.F.s (non-barefoot-walkers). In barefoot walking, one needs to be clean in order to dispel the myths that walking without shoes is “dirty”. The social stigma of walking barefoot is most likely based in the fact that people can get many infections from walking barefoot. 

Question: Can you still have cute feet if you walk barefoot?

My Instructions for Clean Barefoot Walking:

1.     Shower regularly

2.     Paint and maintain toenails

3.     Use lotion on top of feet

4.     Dress nicely, not slovenly

5.     Wash your hair so it looks nice

6.     Use deodorant so you smell decent

       According to The Dancer's Survival Manual by Marian Horosko and Judith F. Kupersmith, M.D., there is a set of other instructions specifically for dancers who get nasty callused feet:

1.   "Manicures and Pedicures: A weekly manicure can keep your nails trimmed enough not to scratch a partner, and a pedicure can keep your feet relatively soft and pain-free or with the calluses in the right place with sufficient flexibility.

2. "Foot Odor and Fungus Infection: For a foot odor problem caused by... perspiration, use an antibacterial soap.  A fungus infection can be treated orally or externally. Beware of showers in public gyms and even in studios. Infected nails become thick and discolored, break, and fall off easily.
3. "Splinters: Gently open the skin with a cauterized point (such as a sanitized needle) and remove the splinter with tweezers.
4. "Blisters: Puncture the blister with a sterilized needle to drain, but do not remove the blister cap. Apply Neosporin and a loose bandage. Air to heal faster.
5. "Calluses: Rub with a pumice stone, sea salt, or a motorized slough machine. Cut out an adhesive pad to fit around the joint of the big toe to remove pressure along the side and bottom. Bunions are where most calluses occur."(Horosko 80-83.)

Even though the list above was designed specifically for dancers, we as barefoot walkers can take the basics of foot care and treatment and apply it to our own feet. Now, that we've gone over the proper foot care, please remember to always take good care of your feet!




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Works Cited
Horosko, Marian, and Judith R. F. Kupersmith. The Dancer's Survival Manual: Everything You Need to Know from the First Class to Career Change. Gainesville: University of Florida, 2009. Print.

INTERIM GAP PERIOD OF BAREFOOT WALKS 10.25.2010

Day 3 Hurt like hell.

Day 4 Rained and I slipped and fell comically in the mud in front of a line of umbrellaed viewers.

Day 5 I brought socks to University Hall because it was cold.

Day 6 Glass shattered in the Honors Annex. Dangerous.

Second Foot Walk 10.18.2010

A whole day of walking barefoot and I have so many questions!

Is the old wives’ tale about getting cold if your feet are cold tru?

If so, why the hell did I start this barefoot walk in October?

How easy is it to get tapeworms and what does that look like?

What does walking on mushrooms do to your sole/soul?

Who else walks barefoot? Who walked barefoot in history?

How do you properly care for callused feet? Barefoot feet?

A record of the day:

• I painted my toenails today!
• And I had to roll my pants up because walking without shoes makes me that much shorter.
• My feet were a little cold today but a long-sleeve and thin cardigan made me warm enough overall.
• I stepped on a snail.

First Foot Walk 10.14.2010

I don't know if my feet have feelings, but I think they felt relief today. Earlier today I had taken off my sandals – surreptitiously dubbed “Gladiators” by some pretentious hipster somewhere – because my calves hurt so much from running last night. The irony is that I took off my shoes to ease leg pain only to discover that the floor hurt so much more! I'm realizing how tender my bourgeois feet are, and I'm anticipating with great anxiety the development of strong calluses on my feet - anything to make the pain go away! There’s this one spot, a path rather, in front of the College of Business Administration building that is made up of sharp rocks that cut into your feet a little bit more with every step forward. This building, this path, is supposed to represent the path I follow to my future because I am a Business major. If I were to walk this path without calluses, I don’t know if I could stand the pain without giving up. 


After walking on concrete and jagged rock for few hours, I was able to walk on carpet in the library, which resulted in a peculiar sort of ecstasy, as I could still feel the dull throbbing from the walk before, but only realized how much pain I was in  when I stood on the spongy surface of the library carpet and the intense pain subsided momentarily. When I dared to look at the bottom of my feet, they were red and raw from the hot pavement and the skin was dry and cracking and my feet all over were covered in dirt. Needless to say, I was a little freaked out, and for good reason too. According to an article in the New York Times, walking barefoot with a cut or crack on the bottom of my foot makes me much more vulnerable to infection. (Hartocollis.) Also, walking on wet grass - even though it feels SO GOOD -  "can damage the skin's natural barrier, allowing infections to take hold, said Dr. Giuseppe Militello, an assistant professor of clinical dermatology at Columbia University." (Hartocollis.) Walking barefoot in the grass, I'm likely to catch a couple different infections like athlete's foot, or plantar warts. Additionally, I am likely to get infected with hookworms if "bare areas of skins such as bare feet or the torso come in contact with soil contaminated with [hookworm] larvae", which is shed in the feces of infected dogs or cats. (Marx, abstract.) Apparently, the right conditions for a nasty infection can be found in "many manicured city parks... where the grass is moist and shaded, well-watered by automatic sprinkler systems, and well-trampled by thousands of feet, shod and unshod, human and animal, carrying countless infectious organisms." (Hartocollis.) So if anything, my lesson learned is to avoid damp soil and grass! That's just as well because walking on wet surfaces softens my feet, which makes it hurt even more when I start to walk on concrete again.




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Works Cited 

Hartocollis, By Anemona. "Barefoot in the Park? Watch Your Step - NYTimes.com." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 26 May 2008. Web. 16 Oct. 2010. . 

Marx, M B. "Parasites, Pets, and People." Prim Care 18.1 (1991 Mar): 153-65. MEDLINE. Web. 15 Oct. 2010.