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Shoe Gazers, Shoe Gazing

Freshly cleaned shoes sitting outside a barbers shop on the outskirts of Kampala. The photos were taken on a Sunday morning - for many locals an opportunity to dress up and head to one of the many hugely popular church services. White shoes have their moments, but they take on particular significance in a country such as Uganda where the dust and dirt makes keeping white shoes white that much more difficult. Numerous kerb-side stalls offered shoe cleaning services - first scrubbed with a toothbrush then left in the equatorial sun to dry and bleach. Which in a round about way leads me to a topic that has facinated me for a while - when you are walking the street and you see someone where do you look? Where do they look?

Walking streets from Tampere or Tokyo and beyond I've noticed that one of the first things that people look at when they check me out is my shoes. The result is the same whether the target of their gaze is a beat up pair of Pumas or brand new pair of Antas. Shoe gazing is a form of sizing-up behaviour that is prevalent particularly (though not exclusively) amongst male youths and it involves four stages. The initial recognition that occurs at a distance of 10 to 15 meters which is trying to figure out whether the person's shoes are of sufficient interest to warrant further investigation. If the wearer's shoes past muster then this is followed by a short period of looking elsewhere - it is after all rude to stare at someone coming towards you even if its at someones shoes. The third stage occurs in close proximity and involves a sequence of quick glances to check out shoe details. Occasionally there is a fourth stage that occurs once the person has walked by - it involves turning back to check out other aspects of what the person is wearing - by concentrating on the shoes other related clothing details may have been missed, the assumption being that if the shoes were cool then the other gear they are wearing fits the same bracket.

It might be that the shoe gazing effect is extenuated by the fact that I'm 'not local', the implication being that 'someone not from around here' may have access to stores and fashions to which they don't. I've been wondering whether online window shopping extenuates shoe gazing - people have a good awareness of what others are wearing worldwide but this may be the first time to see them locally and in the wild.

So how might all of this evolve in our Future Perfect? What happens when people carry to tools to digitally project who they are or who they want to be? Will someone turn around and look back knowing that their mobile device has automatically recorded all the relevant details? What are all the relevant details? And can they be recorded? What is digital equivilent of shoe gazing? If your interest is piqued then you might like to check out research by my colleagues Younghee Jung, Per Persson and Jan Blom, in particular their work on Scent and Sensor.

And what does all this to do with the elegant group of barefoot ladies above? The photo was taken in a church opposite the barber's shop, above - they're about to energetically head onto the church stage for a dance routine. It reminds me that when it comes to understanding shoe gazing, or pretty much any other behaviour, context is everything.

Writing from Tokyo | August 11, 2006 | Permalink