055: A Woman's Right to Shoes Off
When people refuse to remove their shoes indoors, what lies beyond their soles?
Every few years a white woman of not-so-mysterious fortune and of wilful ignorance emerges to declare on a public platform her commitment to refusing to remove her shoes indoors. The opposition storms the aforementioned platform with their metephorical torches and pitchforks. Self-described Carries rally around their queen. A world wide web is divided due to a misconstrued episode of Sex and the City and the white feminists’ desire to thumb their noses at age-old cultural practices, demonstrations of respect, and health codes. Earlier this week, while removing my shoes to enter my home, I couldn’t help but wonder: when people refuse to remove their shoes indoors, what lies beyond their soles?
Leaving my shoes at the door was an inherent part of my upbringing. It signified how I regarded myself and my home, as well as those around me. It was an indication of respect for a home and its occupants: in most cultures that are not Western, introducing filth from outside (if you live in New York, anything that touches your soles once you leave your home can only objectively be classified as filth) desecrates the sanctity of the home. The home should be a sanctuary. My home is most certainly my sanctuary. It is here where I live with the person I love. It is here where I favor spending time with loved ones, with take-out in front of the television or a home-cooked meal around the dinner table, my preference being the former.
On a less spiritual and more practical level, the removal of shoes is also about a quaint custom known as “being considerate”. For those of us not wedded to billionaires or aristocrats, the daily upkeep and maintenance of our homes cannot be outsourced to anyone else other than ourselves. Cleaning flooring – whether your method be mopping, vacuuming, Swiffering, or industrial ride-on floor scrubbers – is yet another task we undertake in our exhausting lives; decorously removing one’s shoes upon entering a home saves one the headache of bringing out the mop and bucket. Well, there’s no need to clean your floors so often, you may argue, to which I reply: there is, however, the matter of fecal matter.
But what collectively irks us so much when an incredibly privileged person puts their proverbial foot down and states their refusal to remove their shoes inside the home, or that guests should not be asked to take their shoes off? It’s not just the declaration itself, as bothersome its delivery may be. For me, most importantly, it is the disregard and ignorance of cultural customs and the lack of consideration regarding what one’s home means to them. People of color living in the West have such limited space to exercise their cultural practices outside of their homes and contend with cultural ignorance on a daily basis: confusing Eid for Kwanza; touching one’s hair; assuming all brown people are either from Mexico or India; Namaslay; being asked where you are from and how you speak English so well; the only South Asian character in And Just Like That getting in bed with her shoes on (I think not!); Africa is a country, and so on.
Home is one of the few places we get to fully be ourselves. An invitation into one’s home is not meant to be taken lightly: it is an invitation into one’s private sphere, and boundaries must be respected. For people of color, whose traditions and values are constantly ridiculed and denied, the home couldn’t be more sacred. Crossing the threshold with shoes on when that is not the house rule – a quick glance at the row of shoes at the entrance or the host in their bare feet, slippers or socks will save one the oblivious question, “Shoes off?” or the awkward confrontation “Shoes off, please!” – is incredibly disrespectful. And is this not why fancy socks exist, to be paraded in front of others and admired, not sequestered in sweaty sneakers?
The expectation that one should take off their shoes before entering a home is not a denial of their right to shoes. As someone who wrote about shoes just last week and spends an inordinate amount of time really thinking about shoes (and more money buying them), I’d be the first to admit that I have a thing for shoes. Yet, I value the sanctity of one’s home and its inhabitants more than I do my shoes. If I am concerned about the well-being of my shoes or that I may be in the presence of the Tabi thief, I would ask to store my shoes somewhere separate. If that will not suffice, I would bring a bag to put my shoes in and carry it for the duration of my visit, then I would book the earliest available appointment with my therapist to work on my trust issues.
After all that, if my shoes are stolen, I’m registered at Manolo Blahnik!
The way I feel about people who complain about removing their shoes inside a home is the same way I feel about the people at my local coffee shop who every day let their dogs put their paws up on the actual countertop over which food and drink is passed. The total lack of concern for everyone's health and well being, or refusal to understand what it means to share a physical space with others...
Omg in that last episode when Seema was on the bed with her heels I gasped and was like - this is impossible and wrong! I get that it was for the full outfit/look but it still bothers me lol. Why do tv characters always jump on the bed with shoes on- do people really do this?