Loafers As Bad Shoes

Details

My fetish involves clothing that's 'bad' -- it looks racy and emphasizes style and looks over function and comfort. And if it can be difficult or painful at times, then even better. When it comes to shoes there really isn't an obvious choice to be a men's S/M shoe. For women it's very different. Women's reigning queen of S/M fetish shoes is the high heel stiletto. They look sexy and they add to the sexiness of the person wearing them. They victimize the wearer by making her unable to run, unable to escape danger, unstable on her feet, and they make her suffer for it all at the same time. Wearing them is torture in the moment. And long-term wear can cause serious body and foot damage. In short, they're the perfect S/M fetish shoe. Unfortunately, men don't tend to wear them and there's no male equivalent. So I need to invent this s/m shoe for men. And this is my attempt.

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Fetishizing Loafers

Since there really isn't a ready-made S/M shoe for men, I've decided to create one -- an S/M fetish 'bad shoe' for men. So let's start with a shoe that's really easy to degrade and make harder to wear. For a men's shoe my pick is the loafer - ideally with clean, simple lines and a low-cut vamp which exposes more sock. Loafers are ideal because they are purposely designed to keep their fit without any adjustments. A loafer's most defining feaure is its omission of any mechanism to tighten it. Loafers are shoes worn mostly by men who don't do a lot of walking - mostly sitting or standing (think lawyer or banker). They're meant for 'genteel' surfaces like boardrooms and carpeted halls. They're not used for traversing challenging surfaces (rocks, streams, mud) and are not often worn for fast-action sports or highly physical work. So I want to use them all the places and ways where they're not designed to be used. For our S/M play we will start with its primary feature (and handicap) - it's inability to be tightened, and go on from there. We will start with an ordinary shoe and then wear it down, degrade it (thrash and trash it) and alter it insidiously to make it worse (and badder) in a number of ways.

Loafers are playing a 'style' or 'fashion' game with their 'no way to adjust' feature: "Look ma 'no hands' or rather 'no laces', but even so, I'm still holding on". When new, yes, but eventually not -- and that 'eventually' is something I want to hasten -- along with more dings, scratches, scuffs, stretching and grinding down. Once loafers lose their grip on the foot, they don't get it back. Your loafers will then start to pop off the heels of your feet. Then slip off more and more until they're just flopping with every step. And there's no built-in way to adjust them to regain some grip -- As their grip recedes, the loafers will just slip, slide and pop off your heels. With more wear and 'destruction' they'll be so loose they'll flop wider and wider, increasingly prone to fall off completely.

Some loafers push it even further with less area gripping onto the foot. Loafers with low or very low vamps expose much more sock, so they look more dramatic and 'daring'. The vamp provides the greatest part of the grip that the shoe keeps on the foot. With a lower (shorter) vamp, there is less area to grip and the grip itself is farther offset toward the front of the foot, leaving the heel farther from the most active grip. Loafers designed with low vamps compensate for this most often by making the vamp area squeeze tighter on that part of the foot (sometimes uncomfortably tight). The sides and back of the shoe extending around the arch, mid-foot and heel provide additional grip, but the vamp provides the most.

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Making A Loafer Be Even Badder

I will turn a standard loafer into a bad loafer by forcing it to do what it's bad at. These loafers will see lots of rocks and gravel and wet, slippery, and muddy trails, they'll be worn in pick-up games of soccer, football, etc. They'll be worn gardening and while doing heavy, dirty work. All this will make their grip loosen far quicker than normal. And if that's not enough, I will torment them more myself by pulling, bending, stretching and yanking on them; by cramming too-big feet into too-small loafers; by adding thicker insoles and thicker socks to further stretch out the vamp, spraying heaving inside and out with rubbing alcohol before wearing (alcohol stretches leather). If not enough, and these shoes have an inner lining, I'll remove it from the vamp area and perhaps from the sides. Multiple layers of material glued to the outer leather skin of the shoe inhibit the leather from stretching. Leather material without layers of stiff fabric to adhere to will stretch far more readily -- the thinner the leather the easier it will stretch. Once the shoe gets loose and starts flopping off the heel regularly, you can increase its tendency to flop off by adding a long flat metal piece to the sole running from the toe area to at least the arch area. I use old (or new) sawsall saw blades because they're pretty flat and not easy to bend. Insert one of those under the insole and when the foot lifts up in front, it steps on the blade which pushes it down and the other end of it pushes down on the back side of the shoe. You can go from a loafer that's barely slipping off to one that flops hard and wide open (or something in between).

To reiterate some of those ideas and add a few more ... there several things we could do to the shoe to make it badder ...

• There are many ways to stretch the shoe leather and the stitching to decrease grip
• Loafers are meant for light-duty activities. Abuse them in heavier scenes - flag football, soccer, hiking, rock climbing, slogging through mud, tug-of-war, sand and surf, etc.
• If there's a shoe lining, remove it. Linings are often glued to the leather outer material to act as a non-stretchable matrix to keep the leather from stretching.
• Modify the body of the shoe to shorten the vamp to decrease the leverage on the foot or lower the sides or back by cutting or crushing them down.
• Make the shoe less stable to stand on - make it wobbly or tilted. Perhaps the heels and soles bulge out convex, not flat, or are worn down at an angle.
• Make the heel of the shoe narrower, or make it angle inward, or add layers length-wise to the center of the sole to raise up the center to make it wobblier side-to-side.
• Add a small knob to the center bottom of the heel to further degrade stability ... like wearing a stilletto heel.
• Line the areas that the socks touch with a material that is super smooth and slippery and as frictionless as possible, so the sock slips and slides about in the shoe.
• Insert thin but rigid metal bars on the sole extending from the toe area to mid-insole, so as you take a step, the ball of your feet presses down, pressing down on the bar and you heel rises up. But the downward pressure on the bar in front, also presses down on the back of the bar which in turn pushes down on the back of the shoe which goes down as the heel of your foot rises up. This will cause the loafer to flop off with vigor, often arcing widely.
• Make holes in the heel area of the insole or use a material on the bottom of the insole that has small ridges so the foot is forced to stand on an uncomfortably textured surface.
• Create and add mechanisms that ostensibly increase the grip or hold, but which do a poor job of it, but which make you 'suffer' for the effort. A binding serrated gore at the vamp that bites down on the foot but too far forward to be effective. Or a 'trap door' at the heel that pinches the foot there (more about this later).

Worn again on the outsides of the heels. Note the outward tilt and how they bow down towards the outsides.

So we create and play with all these elements in a 'sped up', 'enhanced' and 'exaggerated' manner. Ideally we have several pairs of these bad shoes in play, so we have different kinds and degrees of bad to play with at all times. By wearing these bad shoes and contending with their challenges, I'm rejecting the good and rational. I'm way off the straight and narrow with these attention grabbing, low, loose, unstable, broken-down, functionally deficient but still wild, beautiful and sexy 'bad boys'. It's a way of flailing against the good, the structured, the firmly laced, functional, practical but frumpy looking shoes I 'should' be wearing. If you want to know more about how this fetishistic thinking started for me ... the idea of a 'bad shoe' started here with my mother.

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Even More Details About Turning Loafers Bad

I don't want a normal 'good' loafer. I want a very used, very BAD one. And I'm really impatient!
So to get one, I will have to hasten its degradation, and do other things that can further reduce its functionality and usability. This includes ...

Stretching them

• Clean them with rubbing alcohol. It cleans well and it also removes odors and kills bacteria and other such critters. But it also enables leather and some synthetics to stretch more easily. So we regularly clean our loafers inside and out with rubbing alcohol.
• If the loafers have an inner lining along the vamp (the forefoot and toe area of the shoe), then by removing it, you're also removing a major anti-stretch component. Leather by itself stretches fairly easily. But when glued to a synthetic that doesn't stretch as easily, the leather resists stretching far better. Take the lining out, and now nothing is saving the leather from getting stretched out.
• Stretch and flex the shoes yourself. Stomp forewards, backwards and slam them side-to-side as well. Going downhill, smash your toes into the front. Going uphill, let your heel press against the back. Walking along tilted surfaces, let gravity pull your foot sideways downwards to stress the sides of the shoes.
• Crush the topline, counter and collar of the shoe (the back and sides of the shoe that cradle your heel). If you put big wrinkles and folds in them, they'll deform there against the downward force of your foot whenever it tries to enter the footbed of the shoe. When you first put on the shoe and whenever the heel flops up and out and needs to come back down. Over time these wrinkles will cause the topline to shrink down. Loafers are low-cut shoes with low toplines. A new loafer lines up the topline with the widest and easiest to grip area of your foot. If the topline shrinks, it will be lining up against a lower, narrower area of your foot that isn't as grippable, thus making your shoe fit looser.
  
  loafers with the heel counter and topline smashed down
  
  
• If you want seriously loose shoes, then keep crushing the topline, counter and collar until they're flat and now only a mat your foot stands on. If you're back totally crushes like this, you will have a backless mule, a shoe that's even looser with reduced grip on up and down forces and no grip on to and fro movement (especially any back-directed force). Your foot is very likely to slide on out the back when it pushes back -- like pushing back to start walking forward. Attempting to run or jump will fail with loafers blown off. Up inclines might too. And if the insides of your loafers are slippery, you'll really struggle to keep them from falling off.
• Stomp down on the back of the shoe while simultaneously trying to lift up onto your toes. This will pull at the vamp, and if there's no longer a lining, will probably stretch it a bit.
  
  
  Loafers stretched in back
  
  
• Be evil and have someone (or you do to another) stomp the heel of your loafer down while you're walking, so that you pull up on the shoe while they're holding it down. If They push you forward at the same time, it'll increase the leverage. Even so, your foot will probably slip out if they've stomped down firmly.
• Get your shoes wet. Walk through puddles. Get other solvents on them. Then clean them with alcohol.
  
  Loafers stuck in the mud
  
  
• Walk through mud. If your loafers are even slightly loose, the mud may suck them right off your feet. If your socks get muddy, put your shoes back on. Walk some more. Then clean with alcohol.
  
  
  Walking into the mud.
  
  
• Play soccer, football or other sports wearing loafers. Quick back-and-forth. side-to-side movement with lots of jumping and running should help evaporate some grip.
• Ask someone who wears shoes 2 sizes larger than yours to put your loafers on and do 50 jumping jacks in them. Be evil and do that for someone you're 2 sizes larger than.

Modifying the soles and heels to make them uneven

• Use a grinder (or just a knife) to cut or grind at the edges of the shoe's heel. If your heels tend to wear down in a particular direction, then grind it down to resemble that. If your heels don't but you want to play with worn down heels like that, then go for it.
• Or grind down all sides so that center bottom part of the heel bulges out making for a rounded surface to stand on. This will make the shoe feel wobbly. If you do an extreme grind down on one side, then your shoe could slant in that direction and your foot might slide that way at times.
  
  Loafer tilting to the side
  
  
• The sole can be narrowed by cutting excess material away from the edges (careful of the stitching holding the vamp onto it).
• An extra cushioning could be glued onto the bottom in a strip along the middle from front to back. This would cause the center to bulge out, leading to a side-to-side wobbliness.
• You can cut out part of one or both sides of the inner heel or insole. This will cause the foot to slide that direction or twist slightly that direction.
  
  
  
  You can make the wear-and-tear on shoes into elements of S/M too. These shoes are seriously worn down on the outside edges of the heels which causes the foot to slide toward the outside, pushing the outside edge of the shoe further down and out and making the stance in them less stable.
  
  

Adding inserts to force the shoe to flop wider off your heel

• Thin rigid metal strips (like the thin metal saw bands used for reciprocal saws) are best for this since you're less likely to feel them underfoot.
• Insert a strip in one or both shoes under the inner insole or if possible from the outside between the sole and the insole. It can go in the center or to one side -- your preference. Place it so that it extends forward at least to the place where your toes press down when stepping and back 6 inches or so to the middle of the shoe (front-to-back).

Now when you walk, your toes will press down on the strip, causing the other end of the strip to press down further back, pushing the heel of the shoe down as your forefoot rises up. It should force the heel of the shoe to pop off your heel. It's often quite a forceful action with a noticable pop-off sound. Adjust it so that it works for you. Now you can get seriously large flops (up to great big yawning flops) from your heel pops, not just the little murmurs you got before.

• Rigid inserts can also be used along the inside sides of the shoe (between the lining and the outer shoe). Extend back all the way to the heel and forward toward the ball. Stiff plastic tends to work well for this.
• This is also good in case the sides of your loafers start to collapse so that you're stepping on them instead of slipping back into them when your shoe flops off. If you use plastic with an outer curve to it, it will help keep the sides upright.

Making Them Slippery Inside

• Line the insides (tops, sides and bottom) with slick tape so that your sock slips more easily forward-back and side-side. More likely to slip out.
• Add silicone lubricant inside. Sprinkle some dry or drip some wet lubricant around inside.

Cutting the Sides Longer And the Vamp Shorter

• Make the sides of the shoe extend farther forward by cutting them farther into the vamp. This will reduce the leverage from the vamp so they're more likely to flop off. And when they flop they'll flop wider.
  
   
  Loafers where the sides have been cut longer and the vamp shorter
  And loafers cut lower into the vamp flop much wider when crouching
  
  

Making Them Hurt

• Add a gore at a location that won't leverage it well (so it won't do much to keeping the shoe on) but squeezes well enough to gore in, chafe and make sore.
• Create a heel biter mechanism (make the imaginary torture device real) and make its bite adjustable (from mild to evil).

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Loafers And Losers

My loafer fetish is about losing. From an adequate starting grip, it's a path going downhill as every aspect of that grip begins giving up.
The grip is a loser. Causing the shoe to be a loser. Causing the wearer of the shoe to be a loser.

The wearer then gets to play at being:

• Offended and unhappy. A victim with no choice.
• Accepting of his fate but dreading what he will have to deal with.
• Accepting unenthusiastically, but certain that he can deal with whatever arises.
• Not certain about it, but ready and willing to explore this 'bad shoe' fetish.
• Yes! Turned on to play a fashion victim willing to suffer for style and looks.
  
  Fitted out for fetish and looking oh so good doing it!
  
  

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Many reasons why women's stiletto high heels are bad, even evil.

• Heels of the foot are raised so high that it's hard to maintain balance.
• Loss of balance can result in twisted ankles, bruised legs and feet, broken bones or worse.
• The stiletto heels can easily get caught in soft dirt or grates and sometimes get broken off resulting in lopsided shoes with one heel high and one not high.
• Running is difficult or impossible. With far less ability to escape an attacker, the wearer is vulnerable.
• With heels up high, the weight of the body is shifted toward the toes of the feet, which get pressed hard into the toes of the shoe.
• Wearing heels places the spine out of alignment.
• Aches and pains often result from just a few hours' wear.
• Long-term, the spine can be damaged, feet and toes can be damaged and arthritis provoked.
• Long-term use can result in painful, crippling debilitation.

Showing off in a sexy high heeled stiletto requires paying a price of a lot of very real pain -- suffering for style -- very S/M! Now loafers (even my 'enhanced' loafers) are not as bad as stilettos -- but maybe with a bit more imagination we can make loafers for men into the S/M paragon that stilettos are for women.

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