A
person's choice of
footwear often provides insights into their
personality. I first realized this while listening to the
Firesign Theatre's I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus. Upon exiting the
bus the
main character is told to
inflate his
shoes, to which he replies that he
never wears them anymore. I spent a few minutes
contemplating this (as I am wont to do with
seemingly irrelevant comments) and decided that people seem to use shoes as much or more than
clothing to communicate to the world just who they think they are. For example, a
neohippie's decision to wear
Birkenstocks indicates openness and willingness to expose himself to
new experiences, while the
punk's decision to wear
Doc Martens displays her
rejection of the
world she finds herself
thrust into and corresponds to the
barrier she throws up between herself and
conventional society. When a sorority girl wears three-inch
spike heels to a
kegger she seems to be expressing a belief that she is (at least in part) a
sexual being, and the
business major's choice of
leather dress shoes shows that he is prepared to
conform to the demands of the corporate world and
play by the rules of his
profession (whether they include
insider trading,
graft, and other
white collar crime or not). As anyone who has ever recieved a
foot massage or walked
barefoot in
grass covered in
morning dew can attest. The decision to deprive one's feet of
sensory input is a
cultural phenomenon, and as such cultural
perceptions of
identity tend to be reflected in the method of
deprivation.
Thus ends another nodeshell's reign of terror :-)