Gen Z Won't Let Anyone See Their Feet. Here's Why.

Illustration: Jianan Liu/HuffPost Photo: Getty Images It’s 2007. Annabel Smit, a Gen Z lifestyle and fashion influencer with 119,000 Instagram followers, has gotten “creepy DMs” from followers “begging for feet.” If Smit — who said she tries not to let such comments influence her style choices — posts a photo from her summer vacation in which she’s wearing sandals, “I’ll get a fair amount of creepy requests in my DMs to share another peek of my ‘beautiful, sexy’ feet,” she said. “It’s more self-confidence than anything.” For Schaefer, socks with sandals is a “go-to” look, “but in the summer, we’re always barefoot, so it’s pretty normal.” Still, she doesn’t want to see anyone’s “close up” foot photos online: “If it’s like a full body picture and feet aren’t the main focus, then I don’t even notice.” Similarly, Smit is motivated by hygiene to cover her feet, more so than by the “creepy” messages she receives. In her work as a “stylist for regular people,” Strauss says she sees the biggest aversion to bare feet among her bridal clients, who these days gravitate toward closed-toed shoes rather than formal sandals. “They dislike the idea of having their feet showing in the wedding photos they’ll look at for years to come,” she said, noting that most of her bridal clients are millennials.