LARGER FEET FOR WOMEN.

Waikato Times, Volume 114, Issue 19010, 29 July 1933, Page 4

LARGER FEET FOR WOMEN.

From chiropodists the truth about feet cannot well be hidden, but they might, perhaps, have kept their deliberations more secret. As it is, not only the Californian State Association of Chiropodists but all the world now knows that women’s feet are getting bigger and their ankles larger, states an American review. The reason, said the experienced speaker, is the use of high-heelecLshoes and the current addiction to athletics;

But it is the fact, and ndt its causes, that arrests attention. Unfortunately the teaching of fashion is that feet ought to be small. Novelists and poets expect them to peep like mice, not to squat like cattle. The influence of Cinderella, felt early in life, is no doubt in part responsible, and the Targe foot suggests the ugly sister ever after. Some rooted tradition in favour of smallness must certainly lie in the depths of t consciousness, because there is in this matter none of the usual oscillation of fashion.

This is perverse, for the bigger foot would give the greater scope for decoration and variety, for jewellery and mascots, while the more utilitarian gains would be marked. A big foot is plainly an advantage in modern city life, as is. proved by a glance at the feet of policemen, who are carefully equipped with every advantage. The large urbanity- of powerfully built men is fortified by this sense of adequacy, and no part of them does more for their reassurance than their broad feet. Very small feet perched on very high heels give no firm grip of the earth and inspire no sense of rootedness.

People who look below the surface may well ask themselves whether those gains do not outweigh the arguments used for small feet, that they do less damage, if they miss more beetles, in the home, and that they are essential for the accurate driving of motor-cars. Such arguments are devised to bolster up an existing prejudice, which goes back to a day when fine ladies were less active than they are to-day and could grow small feet as a sign of elegancy.

It has been the same story with hands, and no one'denies that women are being punished for the vanity of a small hand. It is not merely that they lose their bags when thb sudden tug of the bagsnatcher disturbs their dreams with violent proof that it is a wicked world after all. A large hand could comfortably have held the sort of, objects which live in such bVgs, and no bag-snatcher would have been able to operate with any success against the lady with the fist.