Must we therefore agree with Carl Vogt when he says, “We may be sure that, whenever we perceive an approach to the animal type, the female is nearer to it than the male”?
Perhaps, however, we can find a solution of the problem somewhat less insulting to women than this statement of the ungallant German professor.
It is Fashion, the handmaid of ugliness, that has thus apparently caused almost half the women to approximate the simian type of the foot; Fashion, which, by inducing women for centuries to thrust their tender feet into Spanish boots of torture, has taken from their toes the freedom of action requisite for that free development and growth which is to be noticed in almost all the men.
Considering the great difference between the left and the right foot, it appears almost incredible, but is a sober fact, that until about half a century ago “rights and lefts” were not made even for the men, who now always wear them. But even to-day “they are not, it is believed, made use of by women, except in a shape that is little efficacious,” says Mr. Harrison; and concerning the Austrians Dr. Schaffer remarks, similarly, that “the like shoe for the left and right foot is still in use in the vast majority of cases.” No wonder women are so averse to taking exercise, and therefore lose their beauty at a time when it ought to be still in full bloom. For to walk in such shoes must be a torture forbidding all unnecessary movement.
Once more be it said—it is Fashion, the handmaid of ugliness, that is responsible for the inferior beauty of the average female foot, by preventing the free development and play of the toes which are absolutely necessary for a graceful walk.
To what an extent the woful rarity of a graceful gait is due to the shape of “fashionable” shoes is vividly brought out in a passage concerning the natives of Martinique, which appeared in a letter in the New York Evening Post: “Many of the quadroons are handsome, even beautiful, in their youth, and all the women of pure black and mixed blood walk with a lightness of step and a graceful freedom of motion that is very noticeable and pleasant to see. I say all the women; but I must confine this description to those who go shoeless, for when a negress crams her feet into even the best-fitting pair of shoes her gait becomes as awkward as the waddle of an Indian squaw, or of a black swan on dry land, and she minces and totters in such danger of falling forward that one feels constrained to go to her and say, ‘Mam’selle Ebène or Noirette, do, I beseech you, put your shoes where you carry everything else, namely, on the top of your well-balanced head, and do let me see you walk barefoot again, for I do assure you that neither your Chinese cousins nor your European mistresses can ever hope to imitate your goddess-like gait until they practise the art of walking with their high-heeled, tiny boots nicely balanced on their heads, as you so often are pleased to do.’”
There is another lesson to be learned from this discussion, namely, that in trying to establish the principles of Beauty, it is better to follow one’s own taste than adhere blindly to Greek canons, and what are supposed to be Greek canons. The longer second toe, as we have seen, is not a characteristic of Greek art, but due apparently to restorations made in Italy where this peculiarity prevails. The Greeks, indeed, never hesitated to idealise and improve Nature if caught napping; and there can be little doubt that if in their own feet the first toe had been shorter than the second, they would have made it longer all the same in their statues, following the laws of gradation and curvature which a longer second toe would interrupt. For it is undeniable that, as Mr. Harrison remarks, “a model foot, according to Flaxman, is one in which the toes follow each other imperceptibly in a graceful curve from the first or great toe to the fifth.”
NATIONAL DIFFERENCES
The statement made above regarding the prevalence among Italians of a longer second toe enables us also to qualify the remark made in the Westminster Review (1884), that “Even at the present day it is a fact well known to all sculptors that Italy possesses the finest models as regards the female hands and feet in any part of Europe; and that to the eye of an Italian the wrists and ankles of most English women would not serve as a study even for those revivalisms of the antique which are to be purchased in our streets for a few shillings.” Whatever may be true of wrists and ankles, the toes must be excepted, at least if a larger percentage of Italian than of English women have the second toe longer.
Although in matters where so many individual differences exist it is hazardous to generalise, the following remarks on national peculiarities in feet, made by a reviewer of Zachariae’s Diseases of the Human Foot, may be cited for what they are worth: “The French foot is meagre, narrow, and bony; the Spanish foot is small and elegantly curved, thanks to its Moorish blood.... The Arab foot is proverbial for its high arch; ‘a stream can run under his foot,’ is a description of its form. The foot of the Scotch is large and thick—that of the Irish flat and square—the English short and fleshy. The American foot is apt to be disproportionately small.”