Thai Lite

[PattayaOneTeam]

Starting off on the Right Foot

By S. Tsow

A warm and hearty welcome to the readers of this first issue of Pattaya One.

This column is called “Thai Lite,” and it takes a light-hearted look at Thailand and the world. It may not make you guffaw, but I hope it will at least make you smile. (If it doesn’t, I’m out of a job.)

To start off this first issue on the right foot, I’m going to write about feet.

One of the first things a foreigner learns in the Land of Smiles is that feet are bad. Thais regard them with disgust. They are the lowest part of the body, and they are in constant contact with the ground, which is not only low, but also dirty. Therefore feet are considered low and dirty.

The opprobrium associated with feet has inspired many taboos. In Thailand it is forbidden to point with one’s foot, or to sit with one leg crossed over the other so that the sole of the foot is pointing at somebody, or to step over somebody else’s body (especially, heaven forbid, his head), or to wear shoes inside a temple. And there may be other taboos I don’t know about.

Now, the feet have many noble qualities. I believe that the prejudice against them is old-fashioned, irrational, misguided, and unfair. We ought to consign it to the trash heap of outmoded superstitions.

But in Thailand this proposition is going to be a hard sell. Why, Thais will ask, should we redeem the feet from the ignominy in which they have languished for so long?

I’ll tell you why. My personal feet are such an integral part of me that I have fondly named them Righty and Lefty. This is so that I can remember which is which. They have carried me around all my life without complaint. Without them I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere. As I’ve grown fatter, I’ve inflicted more weight upon them to carry. But they bear it all manfully—feetfully, I should say—and never utter a murmur of reproach.

If my feet were Sherpas, carrying loads as heavy as my elephantine body up Mount Everest, they would surely demand more baksheesh for their labors. But my feet have never asked me for so much as a single satang for their lifelong service. Silently and stoically, they bear their gross and bulbous burden without thought of recompense, and seek only selflessly to serve. Indeed, if they were Catholic, the pope would have canonized them long ago.

No, these lowly limbs, these execrated extremities, these abhorred appendages, perform far nobler service than more lofty body parts, and reap only scorn and contempt for their efforts. The heart is extolled as the source of love, the brain as the locus of intelligence; but the feet suffer constant vilification merely for being the lowest item on the body’s totem pole.

How would the heart and the brain be able to function if they didn’t have the feet to chauffeur them around? Indeed, all the other limbs and organs would quickly starve to death if the feet were not gracious enough to carry these leeches and parasites out to the soi to enjoy an occasional bowl of noodles.

“Well,” the anti-feetists will object, “the feet are in constant contact with the earth, which is dirty.” Dirty? The earth is our mother. She cradles the seas that spawned our ancestors, the earliest life-forms; she brings forth from her womb grain, vegetables, and fruit to nourish us. We would be in a fine fix without the earth. Say not that Mother Earth is dirty; say rather that she is holy, and she imparts a portion of her holiness to the feet that tread upon her.

“Well,” the anti-feetists will whine, vexed at being so eloquently refuted, “the feet are ugly—possibly the ugliest part of the body.” Really? What of those internal organs which are so grotesque that nature has chosen to hide them from public view? What about the liver? The kidneys? The gall bladder? The pancreas? And the large intestine, with all its hideous contents? Anybody want to nominate one of those suckers to be the body’s beauty queen? When it comes to ugliness, the feet have plenty of company concealed beneath the skin.

Then there is the question of temples. Note, please, that we remove our shoes before entering a temple, but our feet receive the honor of walking on hallowed ground. If the temple floor is holy, may we not reasonably infer that some of that holiness is absorbed by the feet that walk upon it?

Finally, the principle of equality, which has been extended to include all human beings, logically applies to their body parts as well. With the possible exception of the appendix, every part of the body is essential to its proper functioning. Strike one part, and the rest immediately falls ill. To discriminate against any single part of the body thus violates the law of nature, and might conceivably bring down upon its perpetrator the wrath of nature and of nature’s God.

Let us therefore bid adieu to this irrational bias against the feet, and bestow upon them the gratitude, honor, and esteem that are their rightful due.

Ardent foot fetishist S. Tsow can be flamed for his deviant views at [email protected], except when he’s rewarding his feet for their selfless service by treating them to a foot massage.

-- Pattaya One 2010-10-01

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