Baring all from the ankles down is in our DNZ. Maui didn’t wear steel caps. Frodo didn’t save Hobbiton thanks to a pair of Nikes.
Itook the kids fishing last week. While clambering up onto the jetty I scraped the top side of my foot on an oyster-covered rock. Heaps of tiny little cuts, mixed with water, makes lots of watery blood.
We hadn’t even launched yet and the kids were screaming ‘‘oh no, sharks will get us!’’
They’ve never seen Jaws but for some reason they think the sharks will bite them through the boat. I mean, it is a cheap boat but I’m pretty sure it’s shark-proof. Fingers crossed.
Anyway, a few days later and we’re off on a family road trip to Tauranga, we stop at Sylvia Park to grab a birthday present for my nephew (yes! The same Sylvia Park from the barefoot lady story).
My jandals are in the boot but are way too painful to wear so I just head in with the family in my God-given bare feet.
I’m comfortable in bare feet. It doesn’t bother me. I’d go anywhere in just bare feet – my number one choice is jandals (I even got married in jandals). Rugged terrain is where gumboots come in and bare feet are the footwear of choice in hot sticky summer, when your jandals are broken, or you have tiny feet cuts.
We were in that mall for over 30 minutes and no one gave me a glance, no one verbally expressed his or her concern and I sure wasn’t bloody asked to leave.
So why was headline-grabbing Rachelle McDonald of Panmure asked to leave the exact same mall because she had no shoes on? Was she wiping her bare feet in people’s faces? Did she walk over the mall’s freshly poured footpath? Did she wedge chopsticks between her toes and eat sushi with her feet?
Or was this barefoot sexism?
I don’t have the answers to any of the above, I’m not a reporter. But what I do know is women tend to have much better-looking feet than us men. Heck, my feet were even covered in bright red scratches and no ‘‘bare feet police mall cop’’ asked me to toe the line.
Why? Maybe the mall cop had a foot fetish of a particular size and shape and mine met those requirements so I was allowed to stay – again, not sure. I’m not a reporter.
Baring all from the ankles down is in our DNZ.
Maui didn’t wear steel caps. Frodo didn’t save Hobbiton thanks to a pair of Nikes and I’m pretty sure Sir Ed knocked the bastard off with his legendary large, naturally hairy, designed-for-mountaineering bare feet.
(Don’t quote me on that last one; not a reporter).
The kids and I go on missions around town in bare feet all the time. Supermarket, hardware store, main street – no issue.
But obviously there is an issue – why?
As a bloke that grew up in Rural New Zealand, I think this is a City Thing.
City people putting their noses up at something that is as traditional as butt crack sticking out of the top of your Stubbies.
The city folk are fine with cafe ‘‘Karen’’ holding her furry miniature dog under her arm while she eats her deconstructed avocado on toast and sips her fur-filled double shot soy macchiato. Hell, there’s even city cafes that have cats roaming about – cats!
Apparently city folk in 2018 can handle coughing up their own furball or two, but make them have to glance at a bare foot in public and they’ll run to their ‘‘residents of (insert suburb name) Facebook group’’ page and vent for a week or two about this little piggy that was flashing down at the market.
Rural New Zealand has no issue with bare feet. This is stupid city political correctness.
Get over it, Karen*.
PS: I’ve just typed this whole thing out with my toes.
The kids and I go on missions around town in bare feet all the time. Supermarket, hardware store, main street – no issue.