The feel of rubber between your toes

Before Sarah Michelle Gellar wore white Mellas in her wedding; before pairs of Havaianas turned up, bejeweled, in goodie bags for this year's Oscar nominees; before an entire shipment of Sigerson Morrisons sold out in Manhattan on a single day in April -- in short, before this became the Year of the Upmarket Flip-Flop -- there were certain things that were only about the beach.

One was the soft, thwick-thwack of thong sandals slapping bare feet. Another was the cheap smell of new rubber footgear in baskets and dime store bins. "Go-aheads," Southern Californians called them in the 1950s, because they'd fall off your feet if you tried to walk backward -- they were that poorly constructed.

Blisters formed where they split toes and rubbed tender insteps. Rare was the pair that went three weeks without breaking. Their sole promise -- temporary, like so many things about summer -- was that they'd keep the hot sand away from your skin.

Subliminally, though, they conveyed other signals that -- again, like so many things about summer -- have, over time, become commodified. They meant you were free, so free, in fact, that leisure could strike at any moment, so you'd better dress for it. That's what Californians of a certain age will tell you, because even here, fashion was not always open and easy. There was a time, even in sunny L.A., when people kept their toes to themselves when they weren't on vacation. Toes were personal. Toes were too much information. Toes had cleavage.

"At the beginning of the 20th century, women could not show their feet at all," said Mary Trasko, author of "Heavenly Soles," a history of footwear. "Feet were considered a very private part of the body." From the Middle Ages, in fact, a glimpse of a woman's foot in most places was tantamount to trespassing on another man's property.

Kevin Jones, curator of the museum at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, says that toes made a brief reappearance after the French Revolution, but shoes were closed again by 1810. They stayed that way into the 20th century.

"Even in the '20s and '30s," Trasko said, "the clothes were very modest. It wasn't until things opened up and women's roles changed that they could show their feet in polite society."