Toe Boxes: Or Getting Used to My FeetYou may remember the picture of an X-ray of feet in shoes, cour
Toe Boxes: Or Getting Used to My FeetYou may remember the picture of an X-ray of feet in shoes, courtesy of the US Department of Agriculture, found in The Lost Art of Dress. The Dress Doctors were warning against the effects of shoes that distorted the feet with high heels or tiny toe boxes. Think bunions, hammer toes, etc. Recently, I was reminded of that X-ray when I returned to wearing actual shoes after breaking my foot. My physical therapist made it VERY clear that I needed to make sure that any shoe I wore had to have a relatively straight line along the first joint up to the end of the big toe. Apparently, if you put a healing big toe into a shoe that forces it inward towards the other toes, and you may find yourself with a toe that heals pointing sideways instead of ahead. And you can never straighten in out. Yikes! Now, I have always sought out comfortable shoes. See the loafers on the left and the flat on the right. I sometimes walk for an hour around campus during my work day and I teach standing up. Even my evening shoes have to be pretty comfortable or I toss them aside as a lost cause. But nothing quite prepared me for discovering how hard it was to find the right kind of toe box as I sorted through my own shoes, and then went out to a shoe store. Turns out very few shoemakers believe in the natural shape of the foot. It wouldn’t matter if some of the shape of the toe box was so far out from the foot that it didn’t push around the toes. See very, very long, pointed loafers that make you look mean. But most of them do push around the toes. Some a wee bit, like my flats and loafers, and some a lot. As a result, I realized my design eye simply wasn’t ready to accept the kind of toe box I needed which you see in the middle shoe. All day long at work I would glance down and think, “Now, that’s odd.” When really that is not odd. That is the shape of my foot pretty much, and I have a typical foot (or says my physical therapist who calls it “standard” in shape and arch). Since healing a broken foot takes up to a year, I figure I will have plenty of time to get used to my feet and their actual shape. Maybe a good thing will come out of a bad thing? -- source link
#womens-shoes#womens feet#loafers#comfort shoes#healthy shoes#foot health