Tomatoes or Shoes? What to Throw, What to Throw

Yesterday when I landed in Miami I headed to baggage claim to get my bag.  While waiting there I saw a headline on CNN about protester throwing tomatoes and shoes at Secretary of State Hillary Clinton while she was in Egypt.  Wait, shoes?  What’s the significance of shoes?

I remember a few years back when a protestor threw a pair of shoes at then President George Bush, but I thought it was because that was all he had to throw.  He was in a press conference, after all.  Not a lot of tomatoes at press conferences, usually.  And tomatoes I understand.  Throwing tomatoes has been a staple in protests for years, dating back to medieval times when criminals in the stocks were pelted with rotten fruits and vegetables to further humiliate them.  But shoes?

Now, truth be told I don’t have much experience protesting (I’m more of a letter writer).  And personally, I love shoes.  They are one of my favorite accessories, and I would be hard-pressed to find a pair of shoes in my closed that I would be willing to throw away in protest, especially when there is probably some produce just ripe for throwing in the back of my refrigerator.  So to figure out why someone would throw shoes in protest, I first asked my friend with whom I was traveling.  She thought that someone might throw shoes to signify that the intended target stinks because, as she put it “shoes stink.”  

Well, it turns out she wasn’t that far off.  According to a 2011 LA Times article throwing shoes is seen as a serious insult in Arab cultures.  This is because streets are considered unclean, and therefore the bottoms of shoes are also considered unclean.  And it’s not just throwing shoes either.  Simply facing the soles of shoes towards someone is considered an insult as well.  

So if you are planning on throwing your shoes at anyone, be aware that they just might be offended.  And if you are wearing super cute shoes, well maybe consider tomatoes instead.