By Christopher Cudworth

If you are sensitive to R-Rated language, cover your eyes or stop reading right now. Because we are about to embark on a journey through the sexy, seedy world of Running Shoe Porn.

That’s right, pictures of running shoes should be rated R at least. The styles and textures of today’s Running Shoes are so sexy they now rival the wide expanse of R and X-Rated material found all over the Internet.

Closeups

These shoes will do your feet right.

Take a close look at the texture on this Running Shoe. I dare you to try to tell me that you don’t want to run your fingers across its surface, caress it’s plastic ridges and rubber sole, and perhaps even lean close and sniff those exotic glues and thermal treatments used to fuse it all together. That’s right. I thought so. We’re all dirty little Running Sluts down deep.

Hooked On Shoe Porn

Of course with Running Shoe Porn you can’t stop with just one model or brand. You have to keep looking for the next colorful thrill. So lets move on to the next closeup. Because this is how it works. The Running Shoe companies pull you in

Those curves. Those details. Those textures. Running Shoes are seductive and irresistible.

with all those textures and colors, and suddenly you’re spending $199.99 on a pair of running shoes that will last you about 400 miles but make you feel guilty and dirty about them the entire time you’re on the road.

Unless you’re so turned on by the thought of that bundle of podiatric sex wrapped around your foot that you just don’t care about your sense of propriety any more. Then you’ve got a problem. You’re a Running Shoe Slut with a habit on your hands.

How We Got Here

It’s been a rather insidious journey to the modern era of Running Shoe Porn from the days when running shoes cost $40 and runners were known to get 700 miles out of their shoes by actually adding copious gobs of goo to their heels.  Some Running Perverts even went so far as to replace the little rubber dots on the waffle soles of certain styles of Nikes. That’s right, some runners actually  replaced the nipples on the waffles. Now that is a little sick. You can blame Bill Bowerman.But it was a rather sensuous process. A friend once told me…

The Nike Pegasus is like one of those porn models who never grows old. They just get facelifts and keep on going. +30? The MILF of Training Shoes.

that it took a certain kind of perverted talent to touch each nipple with that phallic little glue dispenser. Of course it was a little obsessive, and only once removed from an actual foot fetish, but quite seductive to those with a lust for Virgin Waffle Soles.

The New Shoe Habit

You need to understand that’s how Shoe Sluts act once they’re hooked on their New Shoe Habit. True Shoe Pervs are always about the youth of their shoes. Always want the newest model. Yet even as you buy the newest model shoes, your mind is drifting to the next Hot Model on the market.

Sure, she’s pretty on the shelf, or he makes you want to take him on the road with you. But just wait a few days. Shoe Sex isn’t everything. But it’s something, that’s for sure.

It never ends. It really doesn’t. That maiden pair of Brooks you bought that looked so good on the store shelf?

Well, wouldn’t you know it? After the first 100 miles your fidelity is already starting to drift. You’re like a cheating husband or wayward wife. Every run turns into a scene from a Country Music song and the title possibilities are endless, and sordid. And yes, the comparison between pornography and country music is intentional, because I’m sure you can imagine these songs actually being written and put to music, and they seem to be about love, but they’re really about the dangers of infidelity and illicit sex. Much of country music is emotional porn, in case you haven’t quite figured that out.

“How Do You Run From a Cheatin’ Heart?” 

“Will You Come Runnin’ Back To Me?”

“How Can You Say You Love Me When You Got No Sole?”

Fidelity

Now that we’ve trashed an important and major form of America music, let’s get back to ripping on the running shoe industry and its seamier side.

Which brings us to the notion of Sloppy Seconds.

Just like a guy or gal from a Country Music song, at first you think you’re married to your brand new shoes for life. You can’t imagine life without them.

But then you run through a puddle (proverbial or otherwise) and suddenly you feel like you’re wearing a pair of Sloppy Seconds. Then your heart wavers. You begin to think there might be something better out there for you. And you’re cheatin’ heart gets tempted by the Shoe Porn Industry.

So you go on the Internet and start surfing around looking at all those shoe styles, zooming in on the closeups. Sadly, those formerly new shoes don’t look so good any more.

That’s the danger of Shoe Porn. Social scientists of many sorts warn us against the dangers of porn, shoe or otherwise. But here’s the truth about Shoe Porn. Like most other forms of porn, it’s pretty much harmless if you keep it in perspective, or share the joys of patent(ed) thrills in the company of someone else with a fun little dirty habit like yours. Then you can actually increase the fun and fidelity of your relationships, and not show up in country music songs.

It might also help to view the movie Don Jon, which chronicles the journey of one young man who finds out that his understanding and appreciation of relationships is being obscured by his practice of using porn in place of true intimacy. We’re all susceptible to desensitization of one sort or another, which keeps us from appreciating life in the moment.

But then, there is such a thing as being too much in the moment as well. Which brings us to…

Sometimes the wildest shoes end up in the Sloppy Seconds bin like the Land of Misfit Toys, no pun intended. Who knows if this model will be a Sloppy Second someday?

The Lure of Hot Messes

Not everyone’s lucky enough to have a fellow Shoe Porn aficionado to share their happy fetish for pretty shoes and well-crafted objects made of rubber.

That means other temptations are waiting, specifically The Shoes Nobody Wants, otherwise known as Hot Messes.

If you’re an enlightened type or have lots of Street Experience, you can probably spot a Hot Mess when you see one. You pick them up from the Closeout bin and something tells you, “These look pretty, but I bet they go stale in a hundred miles.”

Uh oh. The two worlds of Shoe Porn and actual porn collide.

But you’re a Shoe Slut (male or female) who buys those Hot Messes anyway.  And you take them on the road with you, but there’s alway a part of you that doesn’t want to be seen in their company. Finally someone looks down at your Hot Messes and says something like, “Where’d you find those shoes? I hear they suck.”

A hot mess or a hunk on the run?

You admit they do suck a little. But deep down you’re thinking, “These are my Hot Messes and I’m sticking with them.” Because that’s the ironic loyalty of a true Shoe Slut. We sometimes love our mistakes even more than our glories.

After all, they only cost $34.99, and pretty soon they’ll look good walking around the Supermarket. So you forgive them even if you keep getting blisters on the knuckle of your Big Toe. In a pinch, they say, a Bad Rub Is Still Better Than No Rub at all. That is the Shoe Slut Philosophy.

Confessions

This little model makes runners horny for Energy Return with Springblades that promise to help you run faster. Really, they will.

And come on, we’ve all done it, haven’t we?

Succumbed to temptation.

Bought that pair of expensive shoes or one too many pairs when all we wanted to do was stop by and browse the Big Sports Store or the Local Running Shop.

Then you come home with a  box of New Shoes and stare at the logo on the side with that unique sense of Buyer’s Remorse that comes from spending too much on your favorite hobby and finally admit to yourself, “Oh, My God. I Really Am A Shoe Slut.”

Getting Shoe Religion

If you’re Catholic, you go to Confession and ask forgiveness, and the priest utters some penance and tells you to stay away from Amazon or Dick Pond Athletics. 

And if you’re Lutheran or another Protestant faith, you eventually donate your Slutty New Shoes to Goodwill. But only after you’ve pounded them into the cement for making you feel so guilty, and you make sure you get a receipt so that you can write off what remains of the value of your formerly Slutty Shoes. And that is called Redemption. Or Salvation. Or something like that.

Best of all, if you’re a Unitarian, you can look around for other people wearing the same pair of shoes and approach them on the street with a smile and say, “Isn’t the World Great? I love Your Shoes! Let’s go Running Together!”

Shoe Porn at its finest, as seen at Dick’s Sporting Goods. Seriously. At Dick’s.

Interventions

In my Wild Youth, I was a full-on, no-holds-barred Shoe Slut. Then I got the opportunity actually work in The Shoe Industry.

Let me tell you that Working at a Running Shoe Store is very much like being the cameraman or the Key Grip in the making of a porn movie.

You see people come into the store all innocent and wild-eyed, yet with that unique brand of Running Shoe Saliva forming around their mouths as they approach the Running Wall and begin to touch and feel and even sniff the Running Shoes.

Bare Foot Running

With all this sexy shoe stuff going on, it’s no wonder Barefoot Running took off when it did. The only thing sexier than beautiful running shoes on your feet is no shoes at all. But some people can’t get into “running naked,” as it were. Too much flopping around down there. Your toes and such. But what a temptation. The idea that you can run without getting hooked on sexy running shoes is so novel it’s surprising no one had thought of it before. Perhaps the fact that the average person who goes out to run barefoot comes home with feet bloodied and battered by mean streets has something to do with it. Sometimes being naked in public is just not worth it.

Not discounting compassion

Somewhere deep inside, it makes you sad to see people lust for their next pair of shoes. Then you start to think to yourself, “I don’t want to be like them anymore. I need to control my Shoe Lust.” And after a a few months of handling every kind of shoe on the market, you begin to get kind of jaded to it all. Like the girl on the Apple computer using Photoshop to remove wrinkles and moles from the Porn Girls and Guys on the Internet, it all becomes part of the process. Not sexy anymore. It’s just shoes. And feet. And people wanting $10 off for repeat business.

The Ultimate Shoe Slut Temptation. The $200 Paid Escort of Distance Training. But in 300 miles, you’ll want a new pair. That’s how it works.

The Shoe Porn Industry

Yet there are always Shoe Sluts that can’t seem to stay away from the store for more than a couple weeks. They come wandering in with That Look in their eye and before you know if, they’re rifling through the Sloppy Seconds bin or worse yet, actually staring at a pair of $200 Asics as if they were the Holy Grail.

Don’t worry, you’re not alone

We’re here to tell you, it’s okay to be a Shoe Slut. You’re far from alone, and it’s not your fault. The Shoe Porn Industry has actually broken free from the running community to sell their sexy, slutty shoes to people who don’t run a step all year. This phenomenon, known as Faux Running, is driving costs up in every sector of the Running Shoe Market. It is one of the tarsnakes of the running shoe industry that you would not buy so many shoes if they were not pretty, yet the people outside the business who glom up running shoes just to wear around like fancy slippers may be the very source of rising prices in the running industry.

Who Can Blame Them? 

All that Super Slick Technology and Shiny Rubber will make any normal human being weak in the knees.

But once you’ve had a few Shoegasms the effects of Shoe Porn do start to wear off a little. Take it from those of us who’ve seen the whole Shoe Porn game from the Inside Out. We know there really is such a thing as Self Control. It may cost you several thousand dollars to get there, but you can do it. You can manage your Shoe Slut Habit.

Enablers and Stabilizers

We’ll admit, it helps to actually work at a Running Shoe Store and get the Store Discount so you can afford that extra pair of New Balance Guilty Pleasures or that set of Racey Road Runners with Sure Grip Laces. You can get your kicks much cheaper and quicker when you work in the Shoe Business.

Shoe Porn can teach you a few things, such as the fact that even the prettiest shoes or the most studly of soles all look the same when you turn them upside down. The same truth holds for both men’s and woman’s running shoes.

Wink wink.