(Reprinted with the permission of John Hart Studios)

And for anyone to try and dictate what may be "offensive" or not is presumptuous at best, not to mention highly unprofessional on the part of store or restaurant personnel.  Ask the kid with the piercings and six-inch purple mohawk about personal choices, or the woman across the room in full hijab, or the identically white-bonneted busload of Mennonite girls who just arrived for lunch.  Try telling that overweight lady with too much perfume on that she shouldn't be buying food anyway and needs to leave the grocery store.  They all have the same freedom to enter the same places of business too, legally known as "public accomodations", and receive equal treatment.  The employees and owners cannot predict what any customer may personally like or dislike about other patrons, and it's none of anyone's business to guess about either way.  It's part of going out in public and mingling with other people, where the only restrictions that carry any weight are those that address "indecent exposure", and last I checked my feet are not my genitals.

Barefooting in this country, while not covered specifically by law, lands in a grey area somewhere between discrimination and dress codes that remains annoyingly open to dispute.  Its acceptance is hampered by many misconceptions and flat-out lies formed in long-bygone times, stemming from resistance to the hippie movement and even before that, conservative reactions to civil rights legislation.  Fundamentally, it's a religious war, a culture clash.  It has nothing to do with public or business health and safety codes, but there are still plenty of misinformed haters out there -- all those "shod supremacists", trying to bully us into believing that it does.  Here is a printable text file quoting the applicable law in Massachusetts against discriminatory practice in public establishments, and clarifying how business owners can think more sensibly about the issue and change their outward policies for the better.  Laws and regulations are likely similar in most other states.

There are numerous websites where interested parties and facility administration alike can find all the information they need on the "barefoot movement", including full and factual debunking of all the timeworn myths.  Here are a very few to get started:

•   Society for Barefoot Living, the seminal resource site -- go here first
•   We are fundamentally born to live barefoot, and here's an extensive blog site about it
•   Stephanie Welch's Shoes: the Silent Killer, a 3-part video series on podiatric and general health
•   Bob Neinast's Ahcuah blog site

  health barefoot
  safety barefoot
  liability barefoot
  barefoot running
  barefoot hiking

[See this update about the Barefoot is Legal group.]

In early 2016 I began to correspond with some of the other online barefoot advocates in my area, and participate in various group activities like hikes and dinner gatherings.  I viewed this as further support in my own journey, particularly with helping bring awareness and reason to typically stodgy organizations that still harbored some unreasoned sixties-holdover fear and loathing for bare feet.  In keeping with my own personal tradition of advising selected companies on best customer-facing practices in the online world, it seemed a short step to use those same techniques and reach out to them to discuss customer and client policy decisions about footwear in an escalated and educational fashion.  It takes a bit of a shift for them to understand that their duty of care ends where my personal rights begin, and that nobody is worse off for it.

While my past efforts to inform have met with an entire spectrum of successes and failures, I've chosen this point in time to start bringing it to the web and chronicle some of the major interactions.  Most businesses can correspond with their customer bases via email these days, so addressing complaints or encouragement to people on their corporate ladders has become easier and copies can be placed online for public consumption later.  In general, their falling silent or failure to respond simply indicates that they can come up with no logical argument against barefooting, so they just rely on the ivory-tower corporate cop-out.  Whether they answer or not, change their attitude or just blow me off, the full exchange can likely be found here afterward, and the potential effects of that on reputation should not be ignored.  Discerning viewers can then make their own judgements and gather ideas.  The same message can be presented in so many different ways -- set my piggies free. 

There is no question that general awareness of the barefoot lifestyle is increasing, so if you've always wanted to kick off your shoes and exercise your own rights as a citizen, to walk where you want and how you want, now's the time!  Narrow-minded infringement by others on one's personal choices is simply unacceptable.  It has no place in a polite, well-informed society whose members want respect for their individual freedom, not misguided babysitting.