The slow conversion of a Masai worrier
Rachel Johnson was not convinced at first by the vogue for footwear based on the physique of African tribespeople At first I was not convinced. Not at all. As I trudged my daily circuit around Hyde Park in old Reeboks, dog at heel, I would endure the humiliation of being lapped by skinny women friends in black Lycra leggings, barrelling past me like geishas on speed.
‘Where’s the fire?’ I felt like shouting as they rocked past me in those funny black thick-soled shoes, leaving me a distant speck in their pert-buttocked wake. Honestly, it didn’t look as if they were going for a walk at all, in the sense that you or I might go for a walk — they were going at it like knives.
Once or twice I invited myself to join them. It was never a great success. While they did their power-walking thing in their special matching ugly shoes, and had enough breath left for some serious gossip, I panted and jogged, and panted and walked, to try to keep up with them. Usually I had to give up by the time we reached the Serpentine.
Then I started seeing their shoes — which I discovered were called Masai Barefoot Technology physiological footwear, or MBT trainers for short — on everyone, not just in the park. I saw them at school. I saw them in the shops. I saw them in Heat and Hello!
Emma Freud, Jemima Khan and Cherie Blair — lithe, fit women for whom my admiration and envy know no bounds — were all wearing the funny orthopaedic black banana boats on the ends of their elegant legs, as if they didn’t care how ugly they looked.
So I went to the chemist, and tried on a pair, and then bought them, because I wanted some of whatever it was these women were getting from these shoes. Yup, the chemist. You can’t get them in shoe shops. Why not? Ah. Because, as the leaflet tells me, ‘Strictly speaking, MBTs are not shoes at all. MBTs are highly effective pieces of fitness and exercise equipment.’ Among the claims for these not-shoes-atall are that they ‘activate’ neglected muscles; they improve posture and gait; they increase buttock muscle activity by 28 per cent; they ease joint, muscle, tendon and ligament injuries, increase stamina and co-ordination, burn calories, and so on. By the time you have waded through the list of enhancements to your physique that these ungainly items of footwear will magically impart without either surgery or going to the gym, you would honestly believe that if someone told you that MBTs were also the answer to climate change, global warming and Middle East peace, you’d believe that, too.
Now, before you think I have fallen for some advanced marketing guff designed to part bored Notting Hill housewives from their husbands’ money, let me give you the science part.
According to the DVD (encouragingly called ‘Step into a Better Body’) that accompanied my purchase, the human muscularskeletal system is designed to walk barefoot on soft, uneven, natural ground like soft moss or a sandy beach (shots of tall, dignified Masai warriors stalking across grasslands). The reason the Masai tribespeople have thin, muscular legs (shots of Masai warriors pogoing with spears) is because they are used to walking long distances over natural terrain (shots of etiolated, burnished tribal chieftains wearing kikoi and beads in the sun-bleached bush).
The reason we lardy, osteopath-frequenting Europeans all suffer from back, knee and Achilles tendon problems is, apparently, because we walk wearing shoes that ‘support and lead the foot’ on hard flat surfaces like concrete and tarmac (grey shots of boring, accountant-type men in suits and specs getting out of cars and wheeling boring suitcases into boring Frankfurt-type airports).
With me so far? Anyway, ten years ago this insight smacked the inventor of MBTs, a Swiss with knee problems called Karl Müller, between the eyes. Inspired by the upright gait and athleticism of the semi-nomadic Masai, he began to develop a ‘unique sole technology’ that would enable the body to walk naturally, like the Masai. And the rest is history. Masai Barefoot Technology ‘since 1400 BC’ is now a huge industry and available in 20 countries all over the world. Now, at this point in my journey towards a better body, I have to say that I felt a little pang of First-World guilt. A little concerned. I felt sure that in only a few days I would be walking tall and proud and that the pain in my shoulder would disappear as if by magic. But I was still worried that Mr Müller was using the Masai name in the same way that Volkswagen uses the Touareg name, or the international eyewear group uses the name Serengeti, and so on.
I was so worried that I rang Claire Beale, the editor of Campaign, the advertising industry magazine. I asked whether there were any, you know, ‘issues’ here: were MBT trainers, which retail for about double the annual per capita income of the average Masai herdsman, an ethical choice? Or was I colluding in the exploitation of the tribe whose livelihood and way of life are already under critical threat from the drought caused by consumer-led, petrol-head global warming — when I handed over my £134?
‘I don’t have any moral response to your question,’ she replied. ‘There’s a marketing wave at the moment about getting back to nature and the outdoors, which is why camping and caravanning are cool again. I’m sure the word Masai is an effective USP but not nearly such an effective USP, I have to say, as the claim that wearing them gives you a firmer bum.’ I also emailed the lovely Eritrean-born writer Hannah Pool, who has decried in her Guardian column, The New Black, the fashion industry’s use of the continent of Africa to sell items that are ‘no more African than the Pope’ and much more likely to be made in China than in Chad.
‘I am doing a piece on MBT trainers,’ I wrote to Ms Pool, ‘and I wondered if you had any comment on the use of African tribes with among the lowest per capita incomes on the planet such as the Masai and the Touareg being used by Swiss/German companies to sell very high-end products such as shoes and cars to rich white consumers.’ I am still waiting for Hannah Pool’s reply. For the record, since I have inserted my size six feet into my MBTs a few days ago, my shoulder feels better, I do my morning walk in 36 minutes rather than 52, and I go everywhere on foot wearing my new footwear (and this was only partly because I threw away the leaflet pertaining to the laces and actually could not remove them from my feet).
For honesty’s sake I should also reveal that I have put on three pounds, but that may be down not to MBTs but to the festive season revelry and the chocolate-coated St Nicolas brioches that are suddenly on sale at Paul on Holland Park Avenue, a pâtisserie that I like to patronise after my morning constitutional.
As for the really big question, the historic matter of whether I am perter of buttock well, as Chou En-lai said of the French Revolution, it’s too soon to tell.
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