The Most Anatomically Correct Shoes Ever Made for Your Feet

Makeup by John Maurad and Jenai Chin. Photo by Tom Schierlitz.

The most anatomically correct shoes are the ones that are painted to your feet! These trompel'oeil paintings were applied directly to the feet by makeup artists John Maurad and Jenai Chin. The detail is superb!

These photographs were part of an interesting article in the New York Magazine entitled, "You Walk Wrong," on how we're all taking an evolutionary step backward by wearing shoes.

Last year, researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, published a study titled “Shod Versus Unshod: The Emergence of Forefoot Pathology in Modern Humans?” in the podiatry journal The Foot. The study examined 180 modern humans from three different population groups (Sotho, Zulu, and European), comparing their feet to one another’s, as well as to the feet of 2,000-year-old skeletons. The researchers concluded that, prior to the invention of shoes, people had healthier feet. Among the modern subjects, the Zulu population, which often goes barefoot, had the healthiest feet while the Europeans—i.e., the habitual shoe-wearers—had the unhealthiest. One of the lead researchers, Dr. Bernhard Zipfel, when commenting on his findings, lamented that the American Podiatric Medical Association does not “actively encourage outdoor barefoot walking for healthy individuals. This flies in the face of the increasing scientific evidence, including our study, that most of the commercially available footwear is not good for the feet.”

Continue reading the article on nymag.com.

Thanks to Laura Sesto, a medical illustration student at UT Southwestern, for sending me the link.