IDEAS ABOUT SHOES

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 138, 7 December 1929, Page 23

IDEAS ABOUT SHOES

LOW HEELS AND HIGH IDEALS

According to Dr. Norman Lake, an English doctor, tho toes of women are fast disappearing. For three centuries, he says, high-heeled shoes have been throwing the weight of;the foot on the forepart of th'o foot, atrophying it and

causing many ills. He prophesied that the foot would eventually become a large mass of bones, with little appendages as toes (says an Australian exchange). "A ridiculous statement," said one chiropodist. "To begin with, the foot cannot atrophy while it is so constantly in use. Then, fashions in shoes are like anything else, they change so often and so rapidly that not even one generation has time to get its feet set into any shape, before a new style is introduced. _ "The present tendency is toward sensible- sports shoes for day wear, and daintier, high-heeled, pointed shoes for evening wear. There ane golf and tennis shoes, and ordinary walking shoes, all of which keep the foot moving into different shapes." Another foot specialist said that pictures of feet as far back as Biblical times showed that the toes were very much tho same, as now. "Perhaps they were a trifle more splay-footed," he added, "through wearing wide sandals, or bare feet, but modern shoes do not pinch the feet to any extent. A physical culture expert said: "Apparently white women are determined to begin where Chinese women are leaving off.' The women of the East, profiting from their contact with the white races, have at last unbound their feet after centuries of torture. "White women, .vho boast of their emancipation, are prepared to cripple themselves to feed their own vanity. I thought the war had taught them the sense of comfortable drets, but apparently fashion and vanity still rule them. ' "Still, fewer women are slaves of foot fashions than a few years ago I bport has given woman an affection for low-heeled shoes, and she will not read|ily surrender comfort for a questionable improvement in style."