I was born with feet in the 1st percentile of the population and they stayed that way even despite getting taller. Now every shoe shopping experience is awkward af.
How are you with stiff breezes I imagine there must be a lot of swaying?
As a woman, I think it’s stupid that shoes are gendered in the first place. My shoe size is in the realm that exists for both men’s and women’s shoes. So in shoe stores I can grab the same sneakers from the women’s and the men’s section. Just sort the damn shoes by size and let people pick the ones they like ffs.
The first few decades of my life I assumed that there’d been all sorts of important orthopaedic/podiatry research done into the difference between men and women’s feet, gaits etc that meant wearing sports shoes sold as “women’s” would in some way cause my feet long term harm. Nope, it was bullshit marketing all along.
I wouldn’t be surprised if on average women’s feet were narrower than men’s, but even if that’s the case, just make narrow and wide versions of shoes and let people pick the ones that fit their feet. Surely there are men with narrow feet and women with wide feet. It just makes no sense.
I have had to wear shoes 1 (or .5 depending upon the model) number larger due to wide fronts.
Barefoot shoes! Started wearing them 2 years ago and will never go back. I hadn’t even realized how much regular shoes crammed my toes together until I started wearing actually foot-shaped shoes. And my feet are narrow.
I’ve heard of them quite a bit.
Might try if I get the chance.
I recently learned that there’s a size rating for width. It goes from A to E, and says something about the length/width ratio of the shoe. Made my previous shoes a lot easier to buy (I also struggle to find wide enough shoes).
Well, guess I need to look for my width rating.
Not that it matters, because the shop ppl won’t understand.
And even if they do, it’s useless if they don’t have what I need.Goes further than that, my feet are technically 11EEEEEE but I usually have to get a 12EE since basically no one in the world makes 6E if not custom made.
Not just shoes, all clothes. We can come up with better terms, like tapered or straight line. Whatever would be most descriptive. It’s ridiculous.
To be fair, I don’t think it’s “ridiculous” to sort e.g. jeans into the broad categories of “typically wider or slipper hips/thighs compared to length” or t-shirts into “typically broader back vs. typically larger chest”.
The mens/women’s categories are probably the coarsest categories that makes sense, since the average man’s and women’s body are so different in so many ways.
The point is that you described it exactly as it could be described without using gendered terms.
Why do they measure your feet as an adult? Is that common in the US? I don’t think i had my feet measured since I was 15 or so.
Edit: I also want to applaude you for wearing Spiderman socks in this specific post!
Cause it takes about 30 seconds and makes sure you actually have the right size shoe.
Speak for yourself… I use my Brannock device each morning to check my feet and see if my junk got bigger from the chemicals.
—what size?
—three
—… please come this way
I don’t think anybody is asking to measure his feet, but these measurement devices are practically everywhere that shoes are sold, so it’s easy to check for yourself.
It’s absolutely not common unless you’re getting custom shoes or some other 1%er activity
Every shoe store I have ever been to, including thrift stores, had one of those foot measuring things.
Thrift store? Believe it or not, 1%er activity.
REAL people make their own shoes out of roadkill….
damned 1%
Do you NOT try to fit into any clothing you buy?
I never buy clothes online, exactly because I always try them on to check the fit before buying them. I haven’t measured my feet since I was around 15. I know my foot size, so I know that shoes in the range 42-43 are a good fit, depending on the shoe model. I don’t need to measure my feet when I buy shoes to confirm that they’re still around size 42.5.
I mean, your feet typically don’t really change size after you grow up? I just buy whatever size I last bought.
Edit: tho to be fair it’s not even always the same size because the size that’s comfortable highly depends from shoe to shoe, I always have to try on a few pairs to be sure.
Depends on if you get into barefoot style shoes or not.
Size 3? You have peg legs.
Yarr.
So I’m not sure if you know this, but in the US the big kids sizes and the adult men’s sizes are the same. For example, a men’s 5 is the same as a big kid’s 5.
Next time you need to use a Brannock device and you’re sized out, have them get the one for the kids.
You know it’s become a personal beef when you know the trade name of the device that insults you.
Haha yes indeed. You don’t know me Brannock device! Some men have footlets and that’s okay.
Some men have footlets and that’s okay.
What an odd childrens book this would be.
Insta-ban from Moms Against Liberty.
I think the word is “footsies”. /s
AFASS - Assigned Female At Shoe Store
Lmaoooooo 🤣🤣🤣💀
…i shop women’s shoes when i can; they generally offer a much wider selection…
And they’re so much more comfortable, it’s ridiculous. It’s like the shoe industry decided, several decades ago, that men don’t want comfortable shoes.
Comfort or pockets
Fair. Men get pockets, but shite shoes. Women get comfort, but no pockets.
Women get comfort
I know there are no women on Lemmy but CMON are we really going to say the people wearing high heels have the comfortable shoes? 🤣
Hol up, y’all have pockets on your shoes? I’m getting neither comfort nor pockets.
Ah yes the two genders
Wow dude, that’s crazy. Like, in a cool way.
My great-uncle was very small when he was born - the family story is that he used to sleep in a shoe box instead of a crib until he was almost a year old.
Probably not your shoe box, though.
Probably not your shoe box, though.>
Oh no, you didn’t
Haha bro thanks. And you’re right my shoe box would be too small for any baby!
Maybe the one from Slingblade
I had a girlfriend who had the inverse of your problem — her feet were far too large for shoes aimed at women. She ended up becoming friends with a bunch of drag queens, and finding that the specialist store they got their shoes from was the best place for her
Okay Hank Hill.
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Peggy Hill!
I have this problem, but width only, not overall size.
I just wear men’s shoes, and even those are wicked hard to find. There isn’t really a category of shoes for my size (not big enough overall for drag shoes to be right, but far too wide for normally sized women’s shoes - I wear 6-8 [brand dependent] 4EW in men’s) and I’m not willing to spend a fortune on shoes to have cute custom ones made, so men’s shoes and sandals are my options. Boring.
Did you call her L?
Same here, and now our seven year old is already a size 3, like OP.
I’m 6’3 with what I thought were fairly small feet at 10.5/11. OP’s on a whole ‘nother level, but hopefully saves a lot of money on sneakers at least!
I’m just confused by why you keep getting your feet measured. I haven’t done that since my feet stopped growing, I know my size by this point
How I imagine it:
“I’m size 3”
“No you’re not”
“Yes I am”
“You can’t be”
“BRING THE DEVICE”
Or like look at the size 3 they currently are wearing.
Yeah but maybe their toes are just jammed up all the way to the front and they don’t know how shoes work! You never know!
I only got my feet measured for a new pair of running shoes at a new running store that just opened up. You’re right - I don’t have to combat the Brannock device on a regular basis.
Do your feet hurt after a long day of standing/walking like being at an airport or something?
Yes they do. But I don’t know if it’s any worse than a “normal-footed” human’s feet.
Fair point
so do mine, but i’m a woman who’s shorter than you with size 20 billion feet
I wonder if it’s a function of total surface area or if it’s more about the weight pressing on your ankles…
Do your feet hurt a lot? It sounds like a lot of pressure on a small area
Good question. You would think but my calf and foot muscles are quite strong to compensate for what I lack in foot surface area. They do get sore after a long day but nothing too crazy.
I guess weight is more important than height for that maybe. Tall often means heavier but not necessarily.
The foot is a lever. A shorter lever has to bear less load.
Uh, no, that’s actually the opposite of how that works. Pressure is force per area, and torque is the cross product of force and length (at right angles). The smaller the area, the higher the pressure. The smaller the foot, in this case, the harder the muscles have to work to create the same torque (or moment). #ThanksForAttendingMyPhysics101TEDTalk
The smaller the foot, in this case, the harder the muscles have to work to create the same torque (or moment).
That’s backwards, a shorter lever arm requires less force. If you had a 10 foot long foot, you’d have to have insanely strong calf muscles to stand on your tip toes, because how far the load is from the fulcrum.
torque is the cross product of force and length
Correct. The force at the end of the lever is your body weight. A longer foot thus exerts more torque on your ankle and requires more calf muscle to move. Longer arms don’t make chest flyes easier, they make them harder.
True, i didn’t consider the point of contact.
This isn’t totally true (about longer limbs=harder to exercise), because it doesnt take into account how myosin works on a longer muscle/surface area, along with how electrical differences between limbs and the torso help with electrical flow due to potential energy.
Look at a thoroughbred (fastest over medium distance), an Arabian (best for endurance), a quarter horse (fastest in burst over short distance) versus a donkey (stronger pound for pound than a horse but not faster), vs a mule (stronger than horse, faster than donkey). Keep in mind there’s different types of muscle development, eg burst vs long distance. Look at their legs. They are walking on (1) finger, look at where their ankle is. Their feet, like many animals, are angled completely differently than humans. Elephants have a similar foot to humans in that their sole contacts the ground, but obviously their feet don’t extend like ours (and they have bigger muscles). So it is interesting but I think theres more to it
It’s totally true from a physics standpoint. A longer lever arm between the load and fulcrum requires more force to move the same weight, all else being equal. Edit: thinking on this more, I think a type 3 lever is more applicable to my chest flye example, but the same concept applies; as you lengthen the load arm relative to the effort arm, more input force is required to move a given load.
“Harder to exercise” is poorly defined, especially when you go on to discuss endurance, speed, and force, all of which are very different terms.
I totally get what you’re saying, but I specifically narrowed it down to force for a reason. My shorter friends kick my ass in lifting due to the mechanical advantage their shorter limbs have, but I smoke them in a distance run because my longer limbs allow me to traverse a greater distance in a single step. This is complicated though because larger lungs are a factor here too.
“All else being equal,” it’s not equal though, that’s what I’m saying. Our legs have electrical and muscular aids in them which make them unlike a lever completely.
You shortened it down to simplify a complex topic. I’m pointing out it’s not that simple and it’s okay to learn more. As we age we should keep up with learning dense subjects to keep up our neuroplastocity, and it’s a social virtue. Right now I’ve been learning about electrobiochemistry for instance. You can just download textbooks. Please stop committing to simplicity when reality is complex.
Physiology wouldn’t encapsulate a huge subject and multiple specialty fields (physiologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, medical technologists, physical educators, surgeons, biomedical engineers) if it was simple physics. We wouldn’t need all the other muscles and junk if it was all simple physics. It’s not. It’s a highly complicated series of biochemical, magnetic, electrical, energetic, and physical properties that work against and with each other
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The foot bears more than 100% of your weight because it is cantilevered. The greater the cantilever, the greater the multiplier to the weight.
You’re arguing that a small foot has a small contact patch. But we need to be able to shift all our weight to our toes, and that contact patch is more a function of the width of your foot, not the length.
That would be relevant to the calf muscles, but the lower surface area of the feet means higher pressure in terms of psi or pascals.
Yes I can confirm that there’s more pressure on my feet if my wearing out kids shoes every 6 months is anything to go by. They are not designed for a man of my height and weight!
Have you ever had custom shoes made? Or checked what adult little people wear? They may have some suggestions
Skinny 5’3 guy here. I’ve had that experience buying pants. “Maybe you’ll find something in the kids’ section”.
Went out with my cousin who is 5’ 4". He buys pants at the kid section.
I tried to poke fun at him and this short king eviscerated me how I had to pay a “Height tax” since his clothes are durable and cheaper.
Those are not bad. They fit better and honestly look better. Tight shirts shouldn’t only be for buff guys.
180cm tall guy, with longl back and short legs. Actually knowing it’s impossible to find pants that are short enough has made buying them easier. Once I accept I need to take them to a seamstress to have them shortened anyway, I just need to find a pair with the right width.
Sadly no such simple solution for most shirts out there being too short.
I have the same problem with shirts. If it fits across my chest it’s too short, if it fits length wise it is baggy across chest and stomach.
Recently I found a brand that offers a extra long sizes. Eg if the sizes are Small, medium and large they offer small+, medium+, large+. The only difference is the cut is 5 cm longer.
Get a sewing maching, even better, an overlock. Buy the bigger/longer size and sew them thinner. Its surprisingly not that hard.
Get me a small man’s foot-suit, please.
Be careful what you wish for. Small feet on a man mean you’ll be sentenced to a life of small dick jokes. Which is certainly not the worst thing in the world but it isn’t great.
My message was a tenuous reference to Flight of the Conchords (New Zealand’s fourth most popular folk-comedy duo). So it’s understandable that it was misunderstood, however, I did appreciate your thoughtful response.
Here’s the song if you need a laugh: https://youtu.be/yjfSZu246zE
I get the reference!
Shoes must be cheap then lol
That’s what I was going to say. Kids shoes are cheaper.
I’m 5’10" with a size 14 shoe, and it’s frustrating because they stop making half sizes above 12 which means it’s often difficult to find a good fitting shoe. I also have a 6’5" wingspan so shirts always either have too short of sleeves, or they are way too long on the torso.
I also assume that kids shoes don’t last as long, though. There is no reason to build them to last.
I can 100% attest to this. Kids shoes are cheap because they’re cheap.
Yeah that makes sense, I doubt they’re designed to handle the weight of a grown man, even a fit one.
I HATE that about having big feet, I’m on my feet all day and it doesn’t matter if I go up one or down, my feet are going to hurt, just in different ways.
Damn that sucks. You need a dedicated clothes manufacturer lol
