If you're on holiday or just journeying through a foreign land, sometimes you may find that your kids need new shoes. Maybe your daughter has unexpectedly worn hers out, or possibly she may need a special type of new shoe for a particular activity like hiking or running. The problem is that the size scales vary in different countries, so you'll need to know the correct size equivalent to get in the country that you are visiting. Use Springfrog's nifty girls' shoe size conversion chart to discover the correct size of shoe to get in the country that you're visiting. Just find your country in the left hand column, then scan along that row until you find the column showing your daughter's size in your country. Then scan up or down in that column to find the size equivalents in other countries.


USA and Canada	9.5	10	10.5	11	11.5	12	12.5	13	13.5	1	1.5	2	2.5	3	3.5
UK	8	8.5	9	9.5	10	10.5	11	11.5	12	12.5	13	13.5	1	1.5	2
Europe	26	26.5	27	27.5	28	28.5	29	30	30.5	31	31.5	32.2	33	33.5	34
Japan	14.5	15	15.5	16	16.5	17	17.5	18	18.5	19	19.5	20	20.5	21	21.5
South Africa	8	8.5	9	9.5	10	10.5	11	11.5	12	12.5	13	13.5	1	1.5	2

When using any shoe size conversion chart, be aware that different brands may have differing size equivalents in different countries. It is therefore always a good idea to allow your child to try on a sample pair of the particular shoes that you're thinking of getting before committing yourself to making a purchase.

Shoes in Fairy Tales, Legends and Mythology

Being associated with walking and movement, shoes have been related to numerous fictional characters in mythology, fairy tales and legends, conferring exceptional powers to the wearer.

Hermes, messenger of the gods, wore winged sandals which enabled him to fly and therefore to travel very quickly between destinations.

In European Folklore, the Seven League boots allowed anyone who wore them to cross a distance 7 leagues in only one stride. They adjust their own size to fit the wearer's feet, whether they be worn by be a giant ogre or the diminuitive Tom Thumb.

In many tales, particular shoes are allotted to the characters. Iron shoes denote that the character must walk until they are worn out, which implies a long restless wandering before arriving at the eventual goal. In the tale Cinderella, the heroine is equipped with shoes which convey her position and her beauty. In earlier versions of the story which are thought to originate from Egypt or Asia, she has slippers made of squirrel fur. Cinderella's glass shoes arrived on the scene with a version of the story in 1697 by Charles Perrault who changed the word "vair" (a medieval word then out-of-date meaning fur) to "verre" (meaning glass in French). In the Grimm brothers' adaptation in the 19th Century, Cinderella wears golden court shoes.

It is said that to dream of shoes is a symbol of wealth, abundance and material goods.

Barefoot Walking

Even with the almost complete popularity of wearing shoes in industrialised countries, there still remain a few people who still prefer to walk barefoot. They say that shoes desensitize the foot to the pressures of walking and make it difficult to walk barefoot over the long term. In addition the suppression of sensitivity of the shoed foot, which does not percieve the quality of the ground upon which it walking as well as it would if the owner was barefoot,means that the feet no longer assume the optimal position for walking and a person's stride becomes less cautious, with consequent repercussions on the rest of the body.

Another aspect is the alteration of the body's feedback from the foot's sensory receptors. It is argued that when combinations of these receptors are stimulated, the distribution of the various pressures supplying information to the nervous system which in turn gives the correct information to our muscular chains which regulate our balance. The shoe modifies the pressure on the foot's sensory receptors, which causes false information to be broadcast to the central nervous system and, therefore, the muscular chains are regulated in the wrong way, which some people say, can result in negative consequences on our health.

The shape of a normal footprint should be roughly triangular with an apex corresponding to the heel, whereas shoes usually have a shape tapered toward the front of the foot, this being the opposite of the foot's natural geometry. Barefooters say that the compression that this can put on the toes and the blocking of their free movement when walking can cause their musculature to weaken. This completely changes the equilibrium of the whole body, with negative effects on the bones of the whole skeleton. Such a situation becomes worse with women's high heel shoes, as the weight of the body, rather than being supported by the heel normally should support the majority of the load, moves to the toes which are far more delicate. This can cause fatigue, eventually resulting in arthritis or arthrosis.

In an attempt to avoid the problems which wearing shoes can sometime cause, a Swiss footwear company called MBT has created a sole which it is able to generate instability to the foot. It attempts to to recreate walking on natural ground in order to activate all of the the postural muscles, whilst still allowing the foot to benefit from the protection offered by wearing shoes.

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		Shoe Size Conversion Charts and Fascinating Facts about Shoes
Men's Shoe Size Conversion Chart and The History of Shoes from Prehistoric Times to Ancient Rome	Women's Shoe Size Conversion Chart and The History of Shoes from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Age of the 19th Century	Boys' Shoe Size Converter and The History of Shoes in the Modern Age
Girls' Shoe Size Converter plus Shoes in Fairy Tales, Legends and Mythology

Please place a link to this page from your website or social media profile to let your friends know about these useful tables. You can also bookmark Springfrog's Girls' Shoe Size Converter plus Shoes in Fairy Tales, Legends and Mythology to easily revisit any time you need to get international size equivalents for your child's footwear.