A Matter of Feet

I recently bought new shoes.

Now this in and of itself isn’t monumental news. I don’t buy shoes all the time, but I do get new ones as needed.

What makes this time different is the kind of shoe, though you might not be able to tell the difference just by looking at them.

Black leather Birkenstocks oxfords with white soles

These are lace-up leather shoes, not precisely sneakers but not precisely oxfords either. They’re made by Birkenstock, a well-known brand, though not one I’ve favored over the years.

Here’s the thing: they have a very firm sole – they are not in any way flexible.

It turns out that I need shoes like this, because I not only have bunions, I have very rigid big toes, which is to say arthritis in the toe. There’s even a medical name for that: hallux rigidus.

And according to my physical therapist, shoes with very flexible soles aggravate that big toe, leading to various kinds of problems.

Now a few years ago, I discovered some running shoes with a large toe box, which was heaven for my bunions. Finding a shoe that gave my toes plenty of room and didn’t cut right across the bunion was glorious.

I mean, my bunions don’t hurt unless something is pressing on them and there’s no way I’m having the barbaric-sounding surgery to fix them unless they hurt so much I have no choice. (They break the bones in your feet to realign them. I cannot believe that’s the solution in 2024.)

I bought several pair. During the height of the pandemic, I had an attack of what felt like sciatica in my legs. I didn’t get it diagnosed because I was damned if I was going to the doctor for anything less serious than a heart attack at that point. I looked up some exercises online (from the UK National Health Service) and it went away.

I now suspect that it was wearing those very flexible shoes that caused the leg pain. Lately I’ve had other issues, including tingling and sometimes pain in my feet when wearing those shoes, but much less of it when wearing a pair of sandals I have that have a stiff sole and wide toe box.

Here are those sandals. I get compliments on them all the time, but it is possible that they are, like my aging Scion xB automobile, ugly cute.

Keen sandals with multicolored straps.

Now the truth is that, in a perfect world, I’d go barefoot. I spent a lot of years on the Aikido mat not wearing shoes and I love it. Flexible soled shoes seemed like the perfect compromise.

And for a lot of people, they probably are. Just not me.

My new shoes are awfully heavy, and even my sandals are a little stiff for quick pivots. I’m going to dive deeper into shoes and see if I can find shoes with rigid soles that are lighter and give me a little more freedom of movement.

But it’s likely that wearing such shoes will mean I have fewer problems with my legs and feet. And as someone whose knees are more than a little cranky, I want all the help I can get.

When I research such shoes online, I find a lot of things labeled “orthopedic.” When I was a little kid, I wore saddle shoes – lace up oxfords with a “saddle” in a different color across the instep – at a time when penny loafers were all the rage. The doctor said I needed the oxfords for my ankles. It was very much not cool.

I’m not sure the doctor was right back then, because he also said I should take ballet classes – that being the primary form of exercise available for little girls back in my day. (Doctors, in my experience, are good at diagnosing problems but bad at solutions.)

The ballet teacher put me in toe shoes. Toe shoes! A horrible thing for growing feet. I’m willing to blame my bunions and hallux rigidus on them (though genetics is also a big factor).

I am fortunate that I was supremely terrible at ballet and didn’t really like it, so when we moved to the country I gave it up.

Of course, I have ranted about the evils of women’s shoes for years – high heels are an invention of the devil, one I gave up many decades ago – but I still was looking for those perfect shoes, the ones that were both gorgeous and comfortable.

I’m having to rethink what comfortable means. I’m even having to rethink the virtues of orthopedic shoes.

Not that I’m going to quit looking for cute shoes. Purple shoes. Sparkly shoes. Shoes that stand out in a crowd and make people young enough to be my grandchildren swoon.

I’m on the prowl for cute shoes with big toe boxes and rigid soles in size 11. Shoemakers, get on it!

9 thoughts on “A Matter of Feet

  1. I would prefer to go through life barefoot; all my life, my first action on reaching home was to rid myself of shoes, Until this year, when I discovered that walking barefoot my have caused serious problems (by serious, I mean serious pain). I have wide toes (the legacy of walking on my toes as a small child) and high insteps–the opposite of flat feet–and in the last few years my feet had begun to pronate. Walking without shoes–even at home–meant walking without support for my arches, which was causing a cascade of problems that expressed themselves by sharp stabbing pain in the balls of my feel: metatarsalgia. Exercises from my doctor helped some, but what really helped was getting deep-soled “rocker” shoes–shoes that encourage you to roll from heel strike to toe–with orthotic inserts to support my arches and the metatarsal area (just between the toes and balls of my feet). Even more helpful is a pair of breathtakingly ugly plastic sandles with orthotic soles, which I wear in place of walking barefoot at home. I miss walking barefoot; I do not miss stabbing pain in the middle of the night.

    FWIW, I had bunion surgery–or, as it turns out, I had a failed bunionectomy. The surgery was a success, in that the bunion which had begun to cause near-constant pain was shaved off. However, I didn’t heal right–my foot doctor says that this happens in a small percentage of surgical candidates, and I came up on the wrong side of the statistic.

    1. Argh. Feet are so complicated. I strongly suspect that it would have been useful to get very good feet and shoe advice throughout life. We might be having fewer problems now. Maybe. It occurs to me that we might learn that caring for our feet is not unlike caring for our teeth in that foot problems lead to a lot of other problems if you’re doing the wrong thing for them. Possibly they aren’t as drastic as the teeth problems — the fact that gum disease is tied to many other diseases is a key argument for including dental in Medicare, imho — but when you’re hurting because of foot issues you’re not going to get the exercise you need.

  2. Heh—I’m barefoot as we speak. It’s been my customary state for most of my life.* Although that’s become a bit of a liability in the winter, when the floors get cold and I develop frostbite-like symptoms and have to resort to wearing woolly socks.

    I despise socks. Or more specifically, wet socks. Which you’re bound to end up with when you’re walking through a kitchen, or bathroom, or a mud room when someone has just come in and deposited their snow-covered boots on the mat.

    Another issue that’s begun to plague me is a result of the ceramic tiles in our kitchen. They’re low-maintenance but not so great during festive times of the year when a lot of preparing/cooking has to be done. I can’t stand or walk for long periods on hard floors anymore.

    Yeh, I know—slippers and/or house shoes are a thing. But I just can’t bring myself to give up the freedom and (for the most part) comfort of bare-footin’ it.

    *Come to think of it, I even used to go barefoot in the woods when I was a kid. The worst, though, was accidentally trodding on the thistles that that would spring up here and there in the backyard.

    1. Some kids even went barefoot to school when I was a kid. That was partly poverty and in a mild climate, but it wasn’t forbidden. I certainly went barefoot in the yard. I don’t think it was bad for me, but it does appear that I should not do it so much now.

      Have you tried any of the barefoot shoes as a compromise? I have slippers I got from Soft Star shoes years ago — they hold up well and can be repaired — that I love for around the house and for doing Tai Chi and other exercises. Meanwhile, I’m wearing Crocs around the house most of the time because they are light and stiff.

      I suspect hard floors — particularly concrete, which floors often are even if they are covered in wood surfaces — are generally bad for us. I have done Aikido on concrete floors covered by mats, and the mats were not enough for me not to ache quite a bit afterwards. Dance studio floors are so much better for everyone!

      1. Yeah, I don’t do it outdoors so much now. When you get older you tend to get heavier, so it’s not so comfortable walking on uneven or stony (or thistley!) ground without shoes on. Plus, my skin isn’t as tough anymore either. I bruise a lot easier than I used to.

        I haven’t tried any barefoot shoes (although those Soft Star ones do look enticing). Part of it is plain stubbornness mixed with a side order of of laziness. I mean, I’d have to actually put shoes on to go out and try things on!

        I hear you on the dance floor thing. Way back when, it was common for dance schools to hold classes in community halls or church basements. Sprung floors in properly appointed studios have probably saved a lot of feet and knees and hip joints in the ensuing years.

        1. I am of the opinion that all floors should be sprung wood, but certainly all dojo and dance studios should be. I noticed awhile back that painted concrete — very nicely and interestingly painted concrete — was the rage in floors, and while I liked the look, the very idea horrified me.

          1. The floors at convention centers are built for the convenience of the conference centers themselves–since they often have to move heavy equipment all over those floors–and because the convention centers can make money renting carpeting to individual booths to save the feet and backs of attendees. The floor of the American Bookbinders Museum was made of the same stuff–good for moving machines that weigh a literal ton, but terrible for feet. Particularly mine. I might not have some of the foot issues I have had I not spent hours on that floor explaining the history of bookbinding to guests.

  3. I’m also a barefoot-by-preference person, and I also have arthritis in my feet. I had never thought that the shoes I wear might not be good in that regard. I shall watch what hurts and when and how and take appropriate action. Thank you!

    1. I recommend discussing this with a physical therapist or podiatrist when you get a chance. Because my bunions are so obvious and because my toes have never been super-flexible, it never occurred to me that I had a distinct problem in my big toe (and maybe my second toe, too) as well. And there is a great deal of reporting out there about how barefoot shoes are what people were meant to wear if they can’t be actually barefoot. I always had reservations about that, given that we walk on such hard surfaces, but I was never sure what was right. Turns out what’s right for one person might not be right for another.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *