A friend sent it to me as bait, and I resisted three whole days. My main objections are:
- It’s 2025 and it seems that “everyone” is talking about Fivefingers as if they’d just been invented. They’re almost 20 years old. Maybe they hadn’t found their way to the UK yet (doubtful), but at this point it’s like writing an article about women riding bikes, or something. I mean, get over it already.
- “Mortifying” for whom? The wearer? If you’re mortified, don’t wear them. The beholder? If you’re mortified by someone wearing them, it sounds like a you problem.
- “[T]he rubber soles slap against the pavement like duck’s feet.” Like other shoes don’t slap, if you’re a slapper? Also, have you ever seen a duck? Last I checked, ducks did not have separated toes. Do ducks even slap their feet? (Again, doubtful.)
I can understand people’s general perplexity, but at this point this is filler content, because there’s obviously nothing else to report on in the world. I got my fist pair of Fivefingers in 2008, and the original KSOs were amazing. I still have a few pairs (a canvas slip-on, kangaroo-skin KSOs, and neoprene KSOs that are truly impossible to put on), but I’m not a devoted wearer anymore. I’d rather be barefoot as much as the season allows (and I have a broad seasonal range).
Newer versions have progressively increased sole thickness and overall stiffness, and they’re no longer doing what I needed them to do when I first got them (provide a next-to-barefoot experience when I started running barefoot, and more generally in daily life). But I think they still have a place—and, paradoxically, the harder someone finds it to put them on, the more that’s an indication that they have culturally induced foot dysmorphia.