Making feet into works of art... - foot adournment

Many barefooters like to accentuate the aesthetic point of barefooting by adourning their bare feet with jewelry, or even permanent body art - for instance, tribal patterns, tattooed on the instep or some picture on the ankle and instep make it difficult to resist the urge to kick off the shoes and show the piece of art to everyone, simply by walking barefoot.

Here are some examples of such a permanent foot adournment, presented in form of a little gallery, similar to the celeb. gallery on page 2. Just click on any of the thumbnails below to view a larger version with credits about the artist, copyright disclaimers, et al.

I, personally, wear toe rings and (mostly leather) anklets. The idea of an ankle or even instep tattoo is quite tempting to me as well - however, even a small tattoo can be costly. To summarize it shortly: the lifestyle choice of barefooting is an open and clear expression of personal freedom and individuality and it also is a decision towards walking a healthy way (sometimes even healthier than shod...).

'Healthy...?', people might now think, raising an eyebrow questioningly... 'it is healthy to expose your bare feet to all the things lying and crawling around everywhere around you...???'
The answer is: Yes, it is! And here is the source - the rather mythical source, really - of the most negative responses of people seeing someone walking barefoot (aside from the social acceptance of bare feet... more about that later...): People are likely to think that walking barefoot is utterly unhealthy, as they claim that bare feet get all dirty (this being a health risk), and walking barefoot in cold weather will inevitably lead to catching a cold, or worse... And then the clear and present dangers of walking barefoot: Glass splinters, sharp-edged stones, thorns, various sorts of dirt, and (yes, that too...!) dogpiles! These are readily quoted as the arch enemies of bare feet, only waiting to hurt, draw blood and stain the unprotected, delicate, bare foot. Hence, people believe, that feet are to be protected from their surroundings - by wearing shoes, of course... - and that dirty bare feet pose a great health risk, to the barefooter him- or herself, as well as to the general public.

A few words as an answer to these beliefs are well in order:
Yes, walking barefoot results in stained soles. And since these stained soles, or dirty soles, if you will, are quite apparent, people tend to react with disgust - sometimes quite strongly and openly. However, this is just because the dirt on bare soles is so blatantly visible, when a barefooter lifts his or her foot in walking. It is easily overlooked, that the soles of shoes are getting as dirty (if not dirtier!) as the soles of bare feet. Barefooters wash their feet at least daily, sometimes even several times a day, whereas people wouldn't care about washing the soles of their shoes, or would they...?
And then there is the 'unseen dirt' surrounding all of us anywhere... When touching hand rails or doorknobs in public places, we tend to ignore that these may be even dirtier than the pavement my bare feet touch. The unseen germs and bacteria are a form of dirt as well, and sometimes even nastier than the visible dirt bare soles pick up from their path. And a handshake can be a big health risk - thinking about the unseen dirt, people pick up a lot of it with their bare hands! By the way, walking barefoot will only result in dirty soles in dry weather... on wet days, bare feet are constantly cleaned by rain water. Furthermore, dirty soles tend to become a sign of an avid barefooter's pride, telling the world "Hey! Take a look!! My feet are getting dirty, and I don't mind at all...! In fact, I like the looks of my bare soles being stained a lot, my motto being 'the blacker, the better!' and you who are sneering or laughing at me, you are missing a treat, still wearing those sweaty, pungent shoes!"

No wonder, that a well-known interest groups of people who choose to walk barefoot as part of their lifestyle was known as Dirty Sole Society ! (It has been renamed, due to possible negative connotations of the word Dirty to be now known as:
Society for Barefoot Living
(And no wonder that I am a member of that interest group as well... :))
The second myth pertaining the 'unhealthy' habit of barefooting is that it must be painful and extremely dangerous to do so... I, personally, am not into masochism (as well as many other barefooters... some may be, but that is an entirely different matter, and their good right - let them... :)), and still I do walk barefoot on almost every surface - excluding as yet rough and large railbed gravel and burning coals or masses of broken glass... I am not a fakir, after all. And, it has to be added, I do not feel pain or contract wounds from that. I am no painless super hero, or a mutant - totally insensitive to pain, hence, a case for the X-Files... All it takes is a little training to get bare feet to tread any path.