I recently read a blog where blogger ranted against people who go to yoga class and don’t care about their feet enough to paint their toe nails or remove their callouses. Her point was you have to care about your body to attend yoga, why not care about your feet too?
I go to yoga classes… I paint my toe nails maybe once a year and I gave up removing callouses when I realized that I just got blisters in the same places instead.
I didn’t think this mattered… but now I wonder. Is anyone here offended by seeing unpolished feet? (walking around in flipflops, bear in yoga/pilates classes, etc)
When I was in kickboxing I was severely offended by people who didn’t adequately wash their feet…getting kicked by someone with smelly feet or grappling with them is just so nasty.
Well, I think if your feet are overly gross, then don’t wear flip flops. But in general, most people have feet that are ok in them. Even with callouses. Just be sure to get all the flaky dead skin off them, thats a little gross.
If someone in a workout setting told me that my calluses offended them my first reaction would be to see whether they’d prefer my callused foot up their prissy rear end.
OK, maybe I’d be a bit more polite about it than that but that’s the sentiment.
I’d agree that dirty or stinky feet would be offensive. Athlete’s foot or other infection that is getting on shared exercise mats isn’t appropriate.
But calluses and unpainted toenails? You don’t like how my feet look? Look at something else. It’s not unsanitary and they’re not going to catch anything.
FWIW I run and bike a lot. I used to do a certain amount of grappling and rock climbing. I have been up close and personal with calluses, blisters (from minor owies to infected bloody messes), damaged and missing toenails, broken toes, other broken foot bones, my last g/f had bunions so bad her feet were crosseyed, etc.
That blogger sounds like the sort of person who gets offended by non-super-models wearing swimsuits or people without great bodies working out.
I’d love to see her reaction to the feet in a martial arts studio. If it’s at all a worthwhile school, the feet within will be perfectly clean, but calloused as hell and any toenail polish will be little flecks hanging on for dear life.
If your feet stink, or are not calloused but blistered and all oozy and gross, then yes, that’s offensive, but non-pedicured is not the same as unhygienic.
this. I can’t believe someone would find non-pedicured/prissed up feet offensive. If they’re gross (as others have mentioned, open sores, athletes foot, just generally stinky, anything like that) than yea, it sucks, take care of your shit, but that’s far different than taking care of your foot’s appearance, which I find just ridiculous.
Seconded. Or thirded. Whatever. I study karate, and my feet get scuffed up from the mats. I have a lot of calluses. I don’t paint my toenails, but I do keep them(and the calluses) well trimmed.
I take a yoga class, and … I don’t get close enough to other people’s feet to inspect them for calluses. They could even bit a bit smelly and I wouldn’t notice them - it’s not like our mats are laid end-to-end.
Methinks the foot-freak needs to be reminded that “cosmetics” /= “caring”. Not polishing your toenails is neglect? Puh-lease!
I was in earshot once of someone who was utterly grossed out that another woman “obviously didn’t take care of herself”. Said woman was an athlete I know who jogs 10k every day and eats a carefully balanced organic vegetarian diet. I know no one else who is as fit as she is at her age. The problem? She chose not to shave her legs. In fact it was partially a cosmetic choice, since years of competitive cycling had left her with various nicks and road rash scars from spilling onto the pavement or crashing on trails. But in the eyes of this other woman, not shaving our legs is a sign of sloven neglect.
I suppose it the only reason you work out is to look good rather than feel good, you’re motivations may be swayed by common magazine-cover conventions. Most of us don’t have the time or inclination to paint our toe nails for the two hours a week that others just might see our feet. How inconsiderate of us.
I’m a pedicure fanatic myself, and I do wish that people wouldn’t voluntarily walk around in sandals without taking care of their feet, but yoga actually *requires *bare feet, and it’s a yoga class.
Personally, I don’t care about polish, at all (I mean, I do on ME, but not on anyone else). And callouses happen. I’ve got a particularly stubborn one that I’m never able to completely get rid of. But flaky dead skin and nasty yellow and/or overgrown toenails ARE hygenic as well as cosmetic issues, IMO.
Offensive? Probably not. If there is an issue with odor, remember that most people wear shoes during the day, and if it’s bothersome to the instructors, they need to furnish their clients with a place to wash their feet. If someone has a raging fungal infection, they shouldn’t be allowed to be on a common mat barefoot; that’s just good sanitation. So, yeah, if it’s a barefoot activity, I can see where some issues can be a problem.
OTOH, most of the time, I’m not paying attention to someone’s feet, so I don’t care what shape they’re in.
My son’s taekwondo instructor takes care of her feet, but that’s only because you’re supposed to pay attention to them when she’s demonstrating kicks and such. I don’t think she polishes them, but her toenails are trimmed and I can’t see very many other problems.
That being said, when it’s sandal season, I am a little more mindful of the condition of my feet, only because I wear sandals so often. It’s also nice to go in for a pedicure once in a while; it’s one of the few really girly things I do.
Of course they are not offensive. Fer chrissake, feet are what are meant to carry us around all day. I expect them to be callused and unpolished. I agree that infected, or very smelly feet should be washed or cared for before attending a class, but to get all worked up about calluses and polish? sheesh. Hell, in my Kan Moko Shi Do class, my grandmaster NEVER wears shoes, (though we wear tabi boots), and his soles are not only callused, but black as asphalt to boot. If uppity punk student mentioned it to him, they’d find said feet in their nose at every opportunity guaranteed.
There’s a difference between “callouses” and “gross feet”. Some calloused feet are also gross, but not all.
My guess is that she’s using “callouses” as a shorthand for “gross feet” since most gross feet do have callouses… along with dry, dead skin and even embedded dirt.
I still have an image burned into my brain from when I was waiting at my doc’s office, and this guy came in in flip flops. His feet were so freaking disgusting. His heels were solid grey dead skin, super cracked (you could see red lines!) with flakes on the flipflops. Ugh, nasty nasty nasty!
At my one martial arts club, there was a spray bottle of a rubbing alcohol solution so you could mist your feet and clean them off before hitting the floor of the do jang. It really helped cut down on the odor in the summer. That’s when I also got into the habit of similarly misting the inside of my rock climbing shoes to help dry them out and kill the stinky nasties. If you had a fungal infection, you couldn’t be barefoot at all. You also had to keep your nails trimmed (both hands and feet) for safety reasons anyway.
But callouses were a fact of nature in the sport. They were unavoidable.
My other martial arts club (I moved), required you to buy martial arts shoes. On the one hand, if you make a mistake and kick someone with a martial arts shoe, you may hurt them more. But on the other hand, the chance that you rip off a blister from floor friction or bust open a toe knuckle because you screwed up and hit something was much more likely, so that club had decided that you couldn’t have bare feet. That way no one has an open wound mucking up the floors or spreading athlete’s foot.
But even in martial arts shoes, callouses are unavoidable.
Swallowed My Cellphone, my son’s school is all barefoot for most drills, although they require shoes for sparring and weapons training. IIRC from the manual, students are expected to have clean, dry feet when they step on the mats. For this reason, most students wear flip-flops or Crocs to enter and leave the building.
This has been interesting to read. Even if 95% of the respondents agreed with the blogger, instead of the other way around (that was a general guess, I didn’t actually count them), I am unlikely to stop wearing flip flops or start sanding off my callouses. I just wanted to know if I should feel guilty about that