Socks Optional

Am I looking at that man’s feet? 

Yes, I am looking at that man’s feet. Or more accurately, at his ankles. Is he wearing socks? That’s what I want to know. We’re walking single file (he’s in front of me) out of a shopping center. I notice a distinct flash between the bottom of his pant leg and the top of his shoe, right leg. Could be flesh. Possibly flesh-colored socks? 

I do not ask. It would be impertinent to ask. 

I’ve had socks on my mind since attending a wedding last month. A nephew and I were chatting over glasses of beer when his uncle walked by. 

“There goes Uncle Bob,” I said. “Do you think he’s wearing socks?”

As long as I’ve known Bob, almost fifty years now, he’s lived sock free. Wedding, funeral, reunion, baptism, whatever the occasion, whatever the season, wearing tennis shoes, loafers, or shoe-shined black leather dress shoes, he puts his skin to the leather (or canvas, as the case may be). 

I try to picture Bob’s sock drawer. For as long as I can remember, or at least all of my married life, I’ve had a sock drawer, a dedicated space with many pairs of socks, black socks, white socks, blue socks, fancy socks I’m saving for a special occasion in the future; socks I bought in Italy from our dedicated underwear and sock lady in the mercato over there, also socks I wish I had not bought over there after our underwear and sock lady went into retirement. Obsession would be the wrong word for my feelings about socks. But commitment? Dedication? Yes. In almost 40 years of teaching, much of the time I wore blue jeans to work, dressing down daily, but wearing socks that made a statement. Many times a student would say, “Hey, nice socks.” If asked, I would have said socks make the man. When I think of Bob’s empty sock drawer, I wonder if there is not one fugitive pair in there, in a corner, next to or beneath sweaters, a pair of socks he could reach for in a time of dire need.

Wouldn’t you know it? There’s sock data. Men are more likely to wear socks than women (73 percent vs 41 percent). The average man owns 10-20 pairs of socks. The top five sock-buying countries? China, Turkey, Pakistan, Italy, and Serbia. At bedtime, 11.5 percent of the human population, provided they dwell in a cool or cold sock-wearing country, pull on a pair of socks. The study does not indicate male vs female proclivities. One might guess–more women than men? It’s manly to brave cold feet?

Five thousand years ago cavemen wore socks. At least those cavemen that got their remains discovered. Cave paintings show humans with foot coverings, likely made, according to the publication for No Cold Feet Co., “from animal skins, pelts and plant life tied around the ankle for support.” A few thousand years later the poet Hesiod refers to “piloi,” proto-socks made of human hair, worn with sandals. You might imagine a chic young Greekster saying, “Socks with sandals? No way.” That conflict arises in current times. “From fashion faux pas to fab,” the Tread Lab publication currently notes, “socks with sandals, a style once considered a fashion misstep, has intriguingly made its way into the mainstream.” For the record: Justin Bieber says it’s okay.

As far as I know, there have never been socks wars. But there has been controversy. A headline in the April 3, 2014 issue of Oxford Mail reads “You can now see The Queen without socks.” What a relief. In the 16th century laws were written making it “illegal to stand within 100 yards of the reigning Monarch without wearing socks.” Around the time of the British sock laws, in the interest of not offending royalty, “sumptuary laws” were also written. Black’s Law Dictionary describes those laws as “made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures for apparel, food, furniture, or shoes, etc.” Note the etc. That might mean socks, which would have to be worn, but needs must be modest socks, class-appropriate socks. No showing off in your socks, please. In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night the character Malvolio is tricked into wearing bright yellow stockings, cross gartered, and suffers humiliation as a result, leading me to believe that sock etiquette, and offenses, may have been on Shakespeare’s mind.   

In the summer of 1970 I was 18 years old and went sock-free.  My friend Jeff Schillings and I each bought a pair of cheap Adidas tennis shoes at Saginaw’s Fashion Square Mall. Both of us, it would be accurate to say, were fashion squares. Wearing cutoffs and t-shirts, we tied on those shoes and wore them without socks all summer, in heat and in rain, on asphalt and cement and in sand. By the end of the summer the shoes were still intact but, even for us, had become gamey; unbearable, unwearable, because of the smell. 

The summer of 1971, we both bought another pair, and I thought, I will always want to do this, wear shoes without socks all summer. It felt very zeitgeist, free and simple, sort of the way flipflops feel today, maybe even a little subversive. Those shoes couldn’t have been good for our feet. But at that age, who thinks about their feet? Your feet will always be with you. 

Feet-think arrived, however, when I was in college, in the form of Earth shoes. The branding was smart. If you wanted to get back to nature, which we still did at that time, put Earth shoes, definitely worn with socks, between you and the earth. Supposedly they were good for your feet, for your whole under-carriage. So I transitioned to Earth shoes from Adidas with its trefoil logo: trefoil, three-leaf, from the small European pea plant, symbolizing past-present-future, also a symbol of fertility and abundance, also, for the American Girl Scout, symbolizing the promise to serve God and country, to be helpful, and to obey Girl Scout Law. For me and Jeff Schillings the trefoil symbolized buy them, wear them, throw them away. 

I immediately regretted buying Earth shoes. Designed by a Danish yoga instructor, the Earth shoe featured, according to Bathroom Reader’s Institute,  “negative heel technology . . . a sole that was thinner at the heel than at the forefoot, so that when wearing them, one walked heel downward.” Heel downward sounds terrible. It was. How do you like walking uphill? There was a multiplier effect. An uphill walk in Earth shoes felt even more uphill. I imagine on a very steep incline you might have worried about falling over backwards. Even when you were walking downhill, something contrary was going on below the knee. Your center of gravity was mixed up. My friend Michelle, an Earth shoe devotee, told me I just had to wear them, they took some getting used to. It hardly seemed worth it, except for the fact that with what I paid for Earth shoes I could have bought 3-4 pair of Adidas. I wore them until I couldn’t stand them anymore.

After Earth shoes, in the early 70’s, we were heading into the platform shoe era. David Bowie, Kiss, and Elton John wore them. Platforms were lampooned by Steely Dan in the song “Pretzel Logic.”  

I stepped up on the platform
The man gave me the news
He said, “You must be joking son”
Where did you get those shoes?

Tizi wore a pair on and off–I mean occasionally–wore them without socks. They were bright green platform clogs.  They raised her up two full inches, and she looked fantastic in them.

No, Bob was not wearing socks at the wedding reception that night. Once we had ascertained that fact, the nephew crossed his legs and showed me a foot, sockless.  

You too, nephew?

He tapped his shoe. “And these,” he says, “are special shoes that Uncle John told me about. They’re barefoot shoes.” Uncle John, innovator in all things, though I did not expect in shoes as well. 

“Comfortable?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“No socks?”

“Socks optional.”

I told him I’d been seeing Hoka shoes, with the thick comfort soles. A physician friend of ours, a back doc, said he would never wear any shoe again other than Hoka.

“Totally opposite principle,” the nephew says now. “The barefoot shoe is scientific. A shoe that treats your feet the way feet were treated before there were shoes.”

Here’s the science, as summarized in Popular Science: “the shoes strengthen muscles and bones in the feet and ankles with a wide toe box and zero-drop footbed–toes and heel, same distance from the ground.” There’s room in the toe box (a term I had never encountered before and now every much love), yes, room in the toe box for your feet to spread out and get comfortable, to expand. I picture my feet in the toe box, in reverse evolution, becoming flipper-like. 

A few days after the wedding I looked for a pair of barefoot shoes on Amazon and bought them with the intention of going no-socks. I wouldn’t mind feeling 18 years old again. The first time I wear them, the barefoot shoes squeak when I walk. Negative heel technology in reverse, higher heel, lower toe, all systems equal. I skid when I walk. They’ll take a little getting used to. With and without socks, they feel great..