I was 10 years before you and have never owned any Doc Martens. I remember when I started college in 1980, Sperry Top-siders were the rage and I had a fake pair. Mostly I have worn relatively flat shoes and have few foot problems, except I also have the longer second toe and have some mild issues related to that. But I did have some Candie's back in high school, they were horrendously uncomfortable!

I lived in Docksiders during high school and college, but I also sang with several groups that required us to wear heels with our dresses, and that was the beginning of lots of physical problems for me because I fell a LOT. Like, down stairs. When I was in my 20s I lived in shoes like Candies or other high heels, and I fell in those, too. It wasn't until I started going to California and later MSP that I saw women wearing comfortable not-hideous flats, and I've never looked back since then. I went through a Merrell clog phase in my 40s but pretty much the past decade has been all about flats with good arch support. One of my falls broke my big toe, and that of course has limited my shoe selection. If I had it to do all over again (and I guess through my daughters I kind of do, lol) I'd choose only good comfortable shoes with lots of cushion and arch support. For me, the clothing choices are dictated by my shoes.

I believe that wearing good, solid shoes from an early age did indeed save my feet. Today my only issue is swelling that occurs when I do an excessive amount of hiking or consume too much salt.

Gigi, I'm pretty sure I had a pair of Keds in grade 7 or 8! My mum used to call them "plimsolls" -- how very English.

Laura1975 and Style Fan, what a bummer. It DOES seem unfair. Still, you'd both probably have even more trouble if you'd spent your youth wearing bad shoes!

JenniNZ, I know lots of people find combat boots to be too clompy, but I think that's why I like them. I've always had a soft spot for decidedly unfeminine footwear -- although nowadays I have plenty of feminine shoes too.

Suz: Oh, plantar fasciitis is SUCH a drag. It can be debilitating. I had it on and off while I was expecting my second kid, probably because your ligaments tend to soften up during pregnancy. Thankfully it went away after the baby was born, but I'm careful to always wear appropriate runners when running/hiking/walking. (In fact, this is part of the reason I try not do do any serious walking in my fashion shoes, even the super-comfortable ones).

Robin and Thirkellgirl, I don't even know what Candies are! Will have to go google it in a minute. Maybe it was an 80s thing.

You too, huh, Sterling? Good to hear! (Btw I'm not on a moral high horse or anything when I suggest that we might have saved our feet by wearing comfort shoes. It was just the look I liked at the time, and it was popular, so it was just luck, really)

What a clever question!

As a genX, it was somewhere in the 80's that I confusely started realizing that what I wore on my feet affected how I looked in my clothes. I wore balerinas, heeled pumps, pointy toed kitten heel lace-up booties and kitten heels square toe pumps, all of which either hand-me-downs or second-hand or bought on sale. Doc Martens were also present at some point but not enough to say they had an impact. My feet did not get a good treatment in this era. I was running around all the time in most uncomfortable, ill-fitted and cheap footwear but I was 18 and thought I was eternal.

It took me another 10 years to really tackle footwear in my outfit planning, and integrate the notion of comfort. By then it was the nineties and all the rage were mules (and later flip-flops) which I never bought into, being a young single mother during those years. I wore platform heels and platform flats, athletic runners. So far you could think I was taking better care of my feet. But then were also strappy heels (which hurt), with which I went dancing.

By the year 2000, I was an avid but savvy footwear consumer, and by the 2010's, I can frankly admit that me and my now fussier feet have contributed to fatten up many shoemakers' wallets, especially the higher end ones. I am now realizing that most heels are inaccessible to me due to a hallux rigidus, and that some flats are too uncomfortable too... I am now into the stage where I am fattening up ostheopaths and podologists' wallets, knowing full well where this is all leading to: surgery, (and more $$).

Let's hope young milleniums have a different foot history due to more sensible footwear.

Hi. I hadn't meant to imply that either of us were on a moral high horse. I probably used poor wording or was in a hurry when I posted.

BTW Az you might like this page that one of our Sunday newspapers does, called "Shoe of the Week". Just one pair of shoes on a page, often styled in an interesting way like on top of a cake or something! You could Google the odd one- Sunday Star-Times NZ Shoe of the Week. When we got the paper regularly in the past it was the first page I always looked for and my husband would look at my face. If my face dropped he would shake his head and ask "Too clumpy?"

I lived in nothing but Converse and Docs from 1992 (beginning of high school) until 2008 or so... really, I never stopped, but my current Converse and Docs are more refined somehow. (I do have three pairs of each and they're still my workhorses, but I have a lot of other shoes now too.)

But my mother always wore very practical shoes and she has bad bunions. I'm sure shoes can make things worse but I don't think we have that much control over the outcome unfortunately.

I came of age in the 70s. I graduated from college in the late 70s. My feet are pretty good, except for that poor broken toe. My first job out of college I dressed up, but didn't wear heels. I remember wearing wedges. Then in the early 80s I became a CPA. The dress code was so strict that I wasn't even allowed to roll up my sleeves. In summer. In Houston. Anyway I wore heels for several years, but I remember buying Naturalizers, which had lower heels and cushioned soles. In the late 80s when I was pregnant, I stopped wearing heels. I never went back. In various jobs I could see that I was more competent than most of the men, and they wore comfortable shoes. So I never wore heels for work ever again. It was that simple.

JAileen, I used to go to Houston on business trips in the early 80s. I remember wearing pantyhose and suit jackets on trips there in the summer. Of course, I also remember business dinners at Ninfa's and staying at the Warwick, so it wasn't all bad.

Ninfas's...mmm. I wore pantyhose and suits, too. Yuck. I remember looking at new cars. The most important thing was the air conditioner. Oh, and how could fast could it accelerate onto the freeway.

So, it's not really a very big sample size, but it seems like some people are destined to have foot trouble no matter what they do.

Krishnidoux, I am sorry to hear about your foot woes. I hear you about the painful strappy heels. I had a pair once -- the most beautiful pair of beaded bronze sandals with tiny, tiny straps -- that I suspected would be uncomfortable but couldn't resist buying to wear to a wedding. Ha. Stupid mistake. I underestimated the degree to which they would kill my feet! I never wore them a second time. Now they're in my kids' dressing-up box.

Sterling, I didn't think YOU were on a moral high horse at all! It just occurred to me that others might thing I started this thread because I was congratulating myself for my good shoe choices -- when in fact it was purely luck that I ended up wearing comfort shoes for most of my life.

JenniNZ, I'll look it up! You know, the funny thing about clompy shoes is that they are often not things of beauty in an of themselves in the way that elegant evening shoes can be. But I really like how they look on -- and not just on me, but on most people who I see wearing them. It's the way they make the rest of an outfit look. They balance things out.

Greyscale, my current Docs are more refined too. My Cons are the same old thing I've been wearing since high school -- I've never seen any I like more than the classic Chuck Taylors!

JAileen, shoes aren't the only thing men get to wear that are more comfortable. Have you noticed? Men's clothing is almost never skimpy. They don't have straps that slip down and tights that constrict their waists. Suit jackets add warmth and smooth lines, hiding unwanted lumps and making most men look pretty good. (I've borrowed my husband's jacket more than once at dressy events because my dress was sleeveless and my stupid shawl was inadequate). And don't get me started on bras!

I'm actually a little horrified that I lived in Keds during college. I am lucky that I don't have foot issues now! Those things are like cardboard. I can only imagine how cheaply made the current Keds are, since everything seems to be made even cheaper now.

I switched to comfort shoes maybe 20 years ago and thought, "Where have you been all my life?" When I tried to switch back to fashion shoes some years later, I found that the fashion shoes hurt my feet. It took my feet a while to readjust, especially to flats. It makes me wonder whether wearing comfort shoes exclusively can baby the feet too much (?). I now wear comfort shoes only if I am going to be on my feet for several hours.

Lol, Gigi, after reading other people's horror stories involving foot pain, I don't think it's possible to baby your feet too much!

JAileen: I wore the low-heeled Naturalizer pumps, in the C width that I was told when they measured my feet.

I walked a mile to and from my office every day, so I wore athletic shoes until I got to the office and then changed. I mostly sat behind a desk, and kicked my shoes off. I wore heels to church, too; again, mostly sitting. Later, I resigned that position and was out of the work force, teaching piano at home and raising my girls, for a decade. I dressed professionally when teaching but wore sensible shoes. I really liked kitten-heeled shoes. They were so easy to walk in and still looked great. Again, teaching piano mostly involved sitting, and the shoes got kicked off when I wasn't teaching. Now I wear Danskos because they have arch support and keep my toes from bending. That keeps my right big toe from hurting. Alegría clogs are great for inside the house. Those are my house slippers.

My mom always wore sensible shoes but had far more foot problems than me, believe it or not.

Interesting discussion! Put me in the camp that feels heredity and sheer luck seem to be the big players in deciding who ends up with foot issues. I have a friend who spent her life in Birks who, in her 70s, has bunions and collapsed arches, and another friend who wore heels and "girly" shoes all her life who seems blissfully free of any foot problems at the same age.

And I'm with Lisap in not being a Docs fan, much as I like the look. Too many negative associations of the brand with the skinhead/neo-Nazi thugs who wore Docs back before grunge adopted them. I have the same aversion to Burberry's plaid when turned into an accessory instead of a lining. A brand is a collection of perceptions in the minds of consumers which probably explains a lot about our subjective reactions--for seniors as well as teenagers, obviously.

I think the shoes we wear as children probably has a huge impact on our adult feet. There's a lot more orthopaedic knowledge available now to parents, and I don't see anyone forcing their kids into stiff patent leather mary janes anymore. It's all about flexible soles, roomy toe boxes, etc. I suspect that improved practices in children's footwear will lead to progressively better foot health across the population.

For generations that grow up in comfortable, ergonomic shoes, it's really hard to imagine intentionally switching to something uncomfortable. My own generation (I'm an older millennial) is more car-free than older generations, and this has absolutely impacted footwear choices and style in general -- I don't like to wear anything I can't walk in. I think it's one of the factors in the rise of athleisure too.

I *love* the look of Docs and Chucks and wore both regularly up through my 20s. At this point, though, they feel too heavy and stiff to me. I love the chunky look, just not the way they feel on my feet. Picky, picky.

My fussy feet don't like flexible soles. My big toe starts throbbing. That's why I keep buying Danskos. I don't think I did anything to bring on my foot problems.

LP: you know, it's funny. When I was a kid in the 80's we wore a lot of sneakers (think hi tops with rainbow laces, that kind of thing) and my mom was always fretting about how wearing sneakers all the time would cause our toes to get all "spread apart and ugly"! I think we know better now, lol!

That's funny Diana! I think my Mum had a similar fear about us going barefoot, as lots of Kiwi kids do! ( Her father was English and probably brought her up that one needed to wear shoes all the time). She thought our toes would spread out too much and then not fit "proper shoes". Think we ignored her

Nothing could have saved mine after the accidents I had at 13, so I can't call shoes any defining factor in my foot problem development.

I'm wondering about the opposite going on now though...what's down the road for the current flip flop generation? I've heard those are despised by foot doctors, except for the business they bring in.

I would also say that your profession will determine your feet future. I grew up in the 90s and loved wearing Doc Martens and all lug-sole shoes. Most of these had decent arch support and the heels were stable. I have worked as a RN for 14 years and unfortunately, that is what did the damage. I always wore the best shoes possible, rotated them, and wore shoes with appropriate arch support off-duty as 12 hour shifts and then some did a number. In spite of that, I ended up with Morton's Neuroma in both feet. Custom orthotics, steroid injections, and sclerosing injections were all tried as a last resort prior to surgery. Would I love to be able to wear a small heel or adorable ballet flat? Yes, but it isn't worth additional damage to my feet. I will look longingly but remember that other stylish options exist for someone bound forever to a one inch heel or less and custom orthotics. I haven't noticed other women with my situation unless they chose to wear high heels constantly and other shoes without adequate room in the toe box. All of the people I see wearing ballet flats and flip flops are heading toward trouble. This is something my Podiatrist sees often and knows that the foot issues will come sooner than later.

As others have said, some of it is hereditary; I also came of age in the 90s and I have a noticeable bunion on my right foot and a nascent one on the left. My grandma has extremely buniony bunions, so that's where I got them from.

Having said that, I have a friend (also early 40s) who in her 30s began to wear heels daily for work. She then got bunions from that. But when we compared our feet, our bunions look different. Hers are more about the foot having been reshaped pointily (reminded me of the ancient Chinese practice of lotus feet). My bunion is more about the big joint that is dislodged outwards and that's what pushes the toe inwards.

Also, I asked her if her bunions hurt, and she said no (!) even though they are quite pronounced!!! Whereas my bunion acts up from time to time and becomes achy--sometimes not even triggered by a tight shoe or day on my feet--because of the arthritic/inflammatory process.

On flats: why on earth are they promoted as comfort shoes?! J.Crew even has a Lottie pointy flat described as a commuter shoe!!!

PS. I miss the 90s aesthetics of heavy clunky shoes. I liked a lot at the time.

I have got not very good feet, and I am in my early forties, despite of a lifetime of supportive shoes. However, they are only about half as bad as my mother's were at my age. She grew up without access to good shoes (back in the USSR). She was determined not to let me suffer from the same issues.

Recently, I have been reading more about the "natural foot" movement. For people who are interested, have a look at correcttoes.com Basically there are some podiatrist who believe that all of the modern compromises which take us away from having properly splayed toes serve to create unnecessary stresses across certain joints. They have a long list of shoes sandals boots etc which maintain natural foot shape.

They recognize that it needs to be a gradual transition to natural shoes. I am very far from this point, but the suggestions have helped me to customize existing shoes with insoles and alternative lacing strategies to make my feet more comfortable. My preexisting conditions are bad enough that I don't know if I can ever full transition, but it has been helpful in terms of optimization of my regular shoes and even to evaluate and trouble shoot my special occasion high heels and such.

We've been slowly going through my husband's shoes, and when we tweak things he finds his endurance to stand and walk without changing shoes midday improves