Dubbed as thongs in Australia, zori in Japan, jandals in New Zealand, and slippahs on the Hawaiian Islands, flip flops are found all over the world. Dominating SHP as one of the commonly worn pieces of footwear, their clapping sound is easily heard as students walk through the halls. Their design is simple, yet their history is more complex.
Flip-flops are 4,000 years older than Jesus Christ, but they originate from the same region: the Middle East. Worn from pharaohs to peasants, the flip-flop was a common shoe as it easily kept the foot cool in the desert heat. According to the Independent, “the oldest surviving flip-flop is currently on display in the British Museum and dates from around 1,500 BC.” So how did such functional footwear reach the California Coast from ancient times?
Through war with Japan!
In her book Feet and Footwear: A Cultural Encyclopedia, author Margo DeMello explains how American soldiers brought home the Japanese flip-flop, the zori, after the end of WWII. When this shoe hit US soil, surfers on the West Coast quickly picked them up, and flip-flops found their name and place as an iconic part of California culture. Now, back at Sacred Heart, students are carrying on this piece of Cali culture through the slipping on of the flip-flop.
Henry Wehner ‘26 is a big fan of the flip-flop. “It’s freeing and it’s grounding,” he says, “and we’re in California and the weather’s always great, and I would not wear anything else.” But what if you weren’t allowed to wear flip-flops? The handbook never explicitly mentions flip-flops as being “not allowed,” but it does mention slippers.
When asking interim assistant Principal for Community life, Brian Bell, for clarification, he explained, “When I first started here, no students could wear flip-flops. Between like 2003 and 2004, one of the students actually went on the paper that year and said, ‘If Jesus wore sandals, why can’t we?’” Since then, the consensus among students and faculty has been that students are allowed to wear flip-flops. They are a staple at Sacred Heart, just like the Gator as our mascot.
Even if flip-flops are banned, students will probably just think the same as Eva Averbuck ‘26 said: “I’m just gonna come to school barefoot!” One could say Eva would simply be following in Saint Francis of Assisi’s footsteps, a famously unshod Catholic saint, as Mr. Bell described a student from the early 2000s doing with Jesus and flip-flops. First, flip-flops were allowed as a part of the dress code; maybe we can expect being barefoot at school to be removed from the handbook’s list of “No’s” next.
