It’s 2007. I’m in high school. The hallways are peppered with the sounds of $1 Old Navy flip-flops dragging on vinyl floors and smacking against bare heels as sandal-clad students shuffle to class.
But if you ask Andrea Michelle, a high school English teacher in California, the scene is a bit different in today’s halls. Generation Z, the generation born between 1997 and 2012, is now occupying high schools across the country, and their feet are decidedly covered.
Today, many kids “wouldn’t wear their slides without socks,” said Michelle, who is a millennial (born between 1981 and 1996). “It was confusing to me because I live in San Diego County. I grew up wearing either Rainbow sandals or Ugg boots.” Gen Z has also taken to pairing chunky sneakers with everything and slipping socks under dressy sandals — or, perhaps even more horrifying to millennials, they’re wearing Crocs with socks. “That stood out as super weird that [my students] were dressing like my dad on a fall day,” Michelle said.
Not only do they often prefer not to show their own feet, but they can take offense to others who do. Michelle, who was in the habit of exposing her feet in sandals, was heckled by her high school students for the sartorial choice. “Usually, I hear, ‘Miss, the dogs are barking!’ or ‘Miss — for free?! You just giving out those free foot pics?’” she recalled. She has even experienced students barking at her feet.
On TikTok, the hashtag “dogsout” ― a Gen Z-coined phrase to describe visible toes ― has inspired countless videos with millions of views. TikTokers post clips of “dog attacks” (when people are touched against their will by someone else’s bare feet) or people embarrassingly having their “dogs out” in public.
It’s not unique for the exposure of a particular body part to go in and out of style. Crop tops (and thus stomachs) have come and gone, waistlines on jeans have risen and fallen (to conceal or reveal hips), shorts have gotten shorter and longer again (exposing and hiding thighs and even butt cheeks).
But there is something happening with Gen Z’s hidden feet that goes beyond pure aesthetics. Michelle, who goes by @EducatorAndrea on TikTok and has more than 215,000 followers there, has posted about the phenomenon. In response, she got “an influx of feedback” from Gen Z-ers who peg the trend’s origins to the awareness and online presence of foot fetishes.