…Every generation has its own demented ideas on supporting some part of the human anatomy. lder people still remember a time when everybody went through life ankle-supported. Young and old wore laced boots. A shoe that did not reach well above the ankle was considered disastrous to health. What, one asks,from some of our parent’s time, has become of ankle support, once so warmly recommended by doctors and shoe salesmen? What today, keeps our ankles from breaking down and wasting away to dust?
—click image for source…
Ankle support than gave way to arch support; millions of shoe-buying people were determined to “preserve their matatarsal arch” without so much as suspecting that it does not exist. Nevertheless, the fiction of the arch was perpetuated to help sell “supports” and “preservers” on an impressive scale.
—E.T. Wright & Company ran these paper advertisements, taken from 1952 magazines, which feature Wright Arch Preserver Shoes for men.—click image for source…
The dread of fallen arches was, however, a picayune affair compared to that other calamity, the foot’s asymmetry. Not about the difference within a single pair of feet, that is, the difference between the right and left foot of a person, but the asymmetry of the foot itself.
Few of us are truly aware that an undeformed foot’s outline is not symmetrical. It is distinctly lopsided. In looking at it, the big toe extends from one to two inches beyond the fifth toe. More important, the five toes spread out fanlike. They do not converge to a point in front as one would expect from the shape of the shoe. Quite the contrary, they converge to a point in back of the heel. It should be obvious, even to the least observant person, that to conform to the outline of a shoe, the big toe ought to be in the place of the third one, that is, in the center. ( to be continued)…
—For a thousand years the Chinese have viewed the sculpted female foot as a mark of beauty. When a girl attained the age of five or six, mother and aunts began the process of folding back and taping her toes under the soles of her feet. This would be repeated throughout her girlhood, causing her considerable discomfort. Her big toes, which she needed for maintaining balance when walking, were left untouched. As her feet grew, they pushed against the tight bandages until the heels and toes nearly met. Deformed ankles, constant infections, and limited mobility resulted.
— Women with bound feet
c. 1890
China
Photograph courtesy of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library,
West Branch, Iowa.—click image for source…
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