While flying to one of our neighbor islands today, I took a glance at the Continental Magazine, as the image of barefoot surfers in Costa Rica was rather compelling. When I found an ad for this company inside, I was filled with a great sense of irony/amusement/disguist. Not only are these scumbags capitalizing on the illogical fears of an unsuspecting public, they're also perpetuating a host of ridiculous myths while casting bare feet in a negative light by associating them with disease. If Continental's policy would allow it, I'd be willng to pay for an ad to counter these ludicrous spurious claims. Pitiful, just pitiful....
Obviously I think they've gone WAY overboard is in playing up the fear of getting some awful disease (they even mentioned gonhorrea!) from going barefoot in the airport, and their approach of selling "footies" is laughable. But I have to say that I can't be as dismissive about the overall subject, not because I think that bare feet are "gross" but because I often see people who NEVER go barefoot and whose shoes are probably caked in bacteria standing barefoot in line at the airport. I try and find a "flip flop fellow" to stand behind in line when I travel, primarily because at least I know their feet are dry and not being taken out of a swampy shoe. In fact, maybe what these people should do is suggest that people go barefoot MORE, so that they arrive at the airport already barefoot. I think that if there IS any evidence of contaminated airport security checkpoints, it's the SHOES that are to blame - the feet are simply carrying any unwanted organisms along with them when they take those horrible shoes off.
If it were this easy to catch something while BF in an airport, then I should have had it all by now. I've flown on over 200 aircraft and been in over 400 airports, all while bf, from trip start to trip end. Also, they should market gloves for your hands! I'll bet you touch more nasties with your hands than you will ever see with your bf.
Yeah I found an article for those people: http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/jan99/915854148.Gb.r.html Okay so everyone wash your feet before you eat with them or use them to scratch your eye. Then you'll be fine except for that whole hand disease thing.
Exactly! A lot of people are wearing closed shoes all day (breeding bacteria & fungus), then take off those shoes briefly, stand around in a small area so they all share those bacteria and fungi, and then put their feet back into those closed shoes again... dark, damp, warm environment, can't hardly create a better breeding ground in lab conditions. Wouldn't surprise me if quite a few shoddies did pick up athlete's foot and such at the airport... however barefooters and flipfloppers don't have much to worry about, likely as not anything you pick up will just dry out & die off in the open air. I'm not going to put booties on next time I go to the airport -but neither am I going to wear closed shoes!
Now that shoe removal is mandatory (even for flip flops, and while I'm not complaining, it just goes to show how stupid we have become in the name of "security") I have actually found that the airport presents a lot more opportunity for some barefooting. You can walk barefoot around the airport and if anyone questions you, you just need to say "Oh I just came from security", or "I'm on my way to security".
This works in most countries but in the Philippines and Indonesia, they have this bizarre way of doing things: You can enter the airport barefoot, get your boarding pass, go through the security queue and about 10 feet from the security check, some low-level flunky official will tell you "HEY! You can't be barefoot in here". So you graciously appologize and put on your zorries, take 4 steps and then another low-level flunky official will tell you that you must remove your zorries for the security check. After the security check, you can walk out barefoot and remain unchallenged for the rest of your flight. This has happened to me many times in both the Kuta and Manilla airports. Very humorous and a good reflection of certain aspects of both cultures.
