1970s vs 2020s. Why Did People Stop Going Barefoot?

According to the New York Times we are making playgrounds so safe that they actually stunt our kids’ development.

8 Reasons Children of the 1970s Should All Be Dead - Flashbak

I don't know why things got so crappy. All that "post nine eleven" hysteria did not help.

 

I have seen signs on playgrounds posting the various rules. Some even post the same stupid rule twice in slightly different ways:

PROPER FOOTWEAR REQUIRED

NO BARE FEET

 

I love to play on a playground when I was little I was always barefoot and the playground had sand no wood chips just sand

 

Most ridiculous thing I have read today in a world full of ridiculous.

 

Barefeet transmits smallpox,blackplague and pink eye. Bloody morons!

 

Some people think going barefoot is gross and some people think it’s wrong to go barefoot at stores and other places.

 

This baffles me. Hands, mouths and noses are much more gross than feet. But those who think bare feet are gross are the ones who keep their feet confined in yucky shoes all day...and their feet are, well, yucky when they come out of those shoes. Our feet are maybe a bit dirty, but not yucky (as in sweaty, stinky and germy).

 

Couldn't agree more!

 

The problem here is that it goes against the social norms, so the exposed foot touching a shopping mall floor is inherently dirty and gross. On the other hand no one bats an eye if you walk barefoot on a sandy beach. The shore is loaded with wet sand, bacteria, seaweed, dead fish and who knows what else. A lot fewer people think being barefoot at the beach is gross. How about your hands while working on a car? Greasy lubricant, oils, gunk etc. No one says that's disgusting.

Soap and water works wonders on bare feet.....Peoples reasoning just blows me away sometimes.

 

In Iran, women are daring to go out without their headscarves in public places, streets, cafes, banks and even airports.

Meanwhile Wearing a Head Scarf Can Be Grounds for Job Suspension, E.U.'s Top Court Rules (Published 2021)

Its that same social norm pressure when it comes to shoes. That link about the EU kind of surprised me. You can't wear a headscarf, that's nonsense!

 

We wash our feet a helluva lot more often than the shoe police wash their shoes.

 

I was a teenager in the 1970s, went barefoot whenever I could even then. But honestly, I don't remember it being any more common then than now. I lived in a New York suburb - maybe that wasn't the place to see others without shoes. But when I went shoeless, even then I was the only one and the recipient of stares and occasional comments. Sadly...

There were places like Berkeley and the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco where bare feet were briefly popular and common, part of the counterculture, but even then those were exceptions.

 

It was common in the Midwest to the extent one could go to a mall in any part of town and find barefoot (and male shirtless) patrons. From a social/economic point of view, working class and white were extremely dominant. Hispanic/Latino people (almost always males) also could be seen without shoes. Very, very common among gay men. In the 1980s, malls started enforcing "dress codes" rather than just putting up notices. One of the first stores I became aware to strictly enforce this was of all places, Radio Shack. Still, through about the early '90s, on a warm summer day, just about any grocery store in a white, working or poorer class neighborhood would have numerous barefoot and shirtless people. In some of them, I swear the shirtless young men could outnumber those covered up. Ditto for various big box predecessor stores to Walmart: Zayre, Woolco, K-Mart, etc. Again, location and neighborhood was a big factor.