I’ve been a “shoe girl” my whole life. I’ve always loved shopping for shoes way more than bags or clothes, or anything else for that matter. And like other shoe girls, I will sadly admit to owning my fair share of shoes that could only be worn for 5 minutes before causing significant discomfort.
My love affair with shoes
It’s funny that literally for decades, I always blamed myself for not being made of sterner stuff, like I should have been willing to tolerate more pain in order to “break in” those shoes. I loved the way they looked so much that I refused to admit I had wasted money buying pretty but impractical frivolities.
It was never the shoes’ fault when I couldn’t wear them. It was my own fault that I hadn’t lived up to their aspirational potential at the moment that I had fallen in love with them. I simply didn’t have the discipline to match the image of myself in those shoes. I envied women who could wear such beautiful high heels all day long, shaming myself for being so wimpy.
I believed that shoes could be either good-looking or comfortable, but not both
It wasn’t until I became friends with a podiatrist that I confessed my shameful unfulfilled obsession with fashionable shoes. She helped me to see that I was not alone — our fascination with feet and shoes has a long and storied tradition throughout human history. I realized that my preoccupation with shoes even had a multigenerational component. After all, I was only two generations removed from the ancient practice of foot binding that had lasted for over a millennium in China.
Conforming for the sake of beauty
It’s grossly inadequate to compare our suffering in modern high heels with that experienced by the cruelly disabling custom that crippled so many Chinese women. Foot binding was a practice that had persisted in China since the reign of the emperor Li Yu of the Southern Tang dynasty in the 10th century AD. Upwards of 10% of girls are believed to have died from complications of fracture and gangrene caused by foot binding, but mothers continued to perpetuate the custom because it was the best way to ensure an advantageous marriage for their daughters.
Nai Nai’s mom, my great grandma Tai Po (Ju Xi), had not only had bound feet, but she had married successfully and borne 13 pregnancies on those tiny feet. So of course she wanted Nai Nai to have the best possible shot at climbing the social ladder.
Foot binding had been officially banned in 1912 at the end of the Qing dynasty, but Nai Nai was born in 1919 and there were no foot binding police to enforce the ban. Fortunately for Nai Nai, her father (my great granddad Liu Guojun) couldn’t bear to hear her crying and weeping day after day, and declared that he would be willing to keep her as a spinster if no one was willing to marry her.
So Nai Nai was spared the worst of the bone-breaking deformities. Her partially bound feet ended up being short in length, but the disrupted lymphatics meant that she would be troubled by swelling and discomfort from abnormally broad feet with high arches for the rest of her life.
Coming back to our present day conundrum with comfort vs. beauty in shoes, it’s almost as if we have accepted that shoes can either be comfortable or fashionable, but not both. Of course it seems obvious that people come in many different shapes and sizes, and so do our feet. Not all shoes fit all feet, and many shoes are designed for form rather than function.
This means that no matter how much I may love the look of certain shoes, they will never work for me. So rather than enduring pain and discomfort from shoes that neither fit my feet nor my lifestyle, I needed to get really picky about choosing shoes that were fun, fashionable, and comfortable.
Poor balance is usually due to weakness in the feet and ankles
Rather than conforming to someone else’s standard for beauty, I could choose to create what worked best for me. It wasn’t so much a matter of living up to my shoes, but rather more important to learn how best to be kind and loving to my feet, so that they would continue to serve me faithfully.
And that meant paying attention to what my feet were telling me. I had worked so hard to ignore the pain from my feet for so long that it definitely took some time to adjust.
I found that, like most people, my two feet were not entirely symmetrical in size and shape, so certain quirks and bumps made it harder to fit my right foot. My feet tended to shrink or change with hot weather, hormonal cycles, and even long haul plane rides. And pregnancy definitely changed my shoe size forever.
At first it seemed like a tragedy to give up my precious collection of treasured footwear, but then I realized that it was a golden opportunity to uplevel my shoe game once and for all.
Our humble feet
Our feet are quite literally and figuratively foundational to our health. And yet, they are also sadly a neglected and abused part of our anatomy. Neglected because we spend so much time wearing shoes, which means that our individual foot muscles and toes don’t get to move as Nature intended. Abused because our footwear choices are often driven by fashion trends more than support and comfort.
Our feet are miraculous feats of bioengineering (pun intended)! Each foot has 26 bones connected by 30 joints, and over 100 muscles allow us to walk, run, skip, jump, and boogie-woogie.
Balance issues are often attributed to inner ear problems or medications in elders, but in reality, muscle weakness in the feet and ankles is a much more common culprit when it comes to fall risk.
Try walking across the room without bending your ankles at all, and you’ll recognize the shuffling walk of some elders. The longer we live, the more important our feet become—not only to stability but also to mobility and thus independence.
Looking after your feet can have an outsized impact on your stability.
Just for a moment, consider the fact that your entire body weight is distributed across the relatively tiny surface area of your footprints. The bones of your feet are connected by a series of tendons and ligaments that form your foot arch. Your arch serves as a kind of trampoline that has to be springy enough to absorb the impact of running, while also tough enough to hold everything together when you pivot while dancing or spring up in the air.
My strong feet will take care of me, if I take care of them
The shape of your foot arch, which often runs in families, is an important determinant of the kind of foot problems you’ll be prone to later in life. For example, if you have high-arch feet and spend a lot of time sitting, you are more likely to develop weakness or even atrophy that leads to weak ankles, and hammer or claw toes. On the other hand, those with flat feet have a tendency to develop overpronation with too much weight rolling inward towards the inner edge of the foot, which sets them up for shin splints and pain in the knees, hips, and lower back.
Orthotics can be helpful in addressing foot biomechanics when wearing shoes, but it’s actually even more important to work proactively in your bare feet to correct any weakness or stiffness. Regardless of your arch type, foot health begins with relearning how to gently mobilize and engage the muscles of your feet and ankles.
Simply getting out of our shoes at home can help the foot muscles relearn how to support our weight more naturally.
Foot care is a huge topic about which volumes have been written, so suffice it to say that there are excellent resources to explore. And it is well worth the investment of time and effort to get a referral to a podiatrist or physical therapist specializing in balance and gait, if you notice any kind of wobbling or unsteadiness in your elder loved ones.
Both/and rather than either/or
My love affair with shoes continues, and I still love me some pretty shoes. But I’ve learned that I need them to be both good-looking AND comfortable enough to wear. And these days, I’ve also learned to carry back-up shoes to change into before and after an event.
It took me longer than I’d like to admit to see that shoes will come and go, but my feet are with me for a lifetime.
I’ve learned to appreciate the beauty of having strong feet that will take care of me, as I take care of them, for at least another 50 years!
Dr Em coaching tips
Do you have more of a low arch or high arch? —> One way to diagnose your own feet is by looking at the soles of a few pairs of your shoes. Do you notice the tread is more worn away along the inner or outer edge of the sole?
You can proactively work on building more balanced and stable feet by addressing foot mobility and ankle strengthening through simple exercises. See blog post on Barefoot Training by Miranda Esmonde-White HERE.
Love the article. Love the photo of Tai Po with Nai Nai...sadly we can't see the pain of her feet. Thank you for drawing attention to our balance. Pretty footwear seems to get all of our attention in our youth. Only recently I had my ankles "straighten" after years of constant imbalance and repeated sprained ankles. I'm retraining my balance every day. Thanks for the essentrics Barefoot Training recommendation!