Sian, as longsuffering residents of Australia we are both frequently subjected to the national pastime known as a shoey. Unfortunately, Kylie Minogue is no different; she was coerced into doing one at the Brit awards. What happened?
A diplomatic incident is what happened. Global icon Kylie was at the Brits to receive the global icon award on Sunday when host Roman Kemp crouched at her table and asked if she would do a shoey – or drink from a shoe, which has been described by the New York Times as “Australia’s Grossest Drinking Tradition”.
“If I could ask for your shoe, could I do that?” Kemp asked a baffled Kylie, before popping two high heels on the table and pouring some kind of brew into both. The insolence! A shoey is something Australians inflict on Harry Styles and Post Malone when they come to town. But you can’t pressure Kylie into drinking foot juice, and certainly not if you are a Brit. Call the ambassador.
Please don’t ever say the phrase “foot juice” again. How have other public figures responded to requests for shoeys?
Just this morning, Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese warned the press not to expect any shoeys at Asean, just in case anyone was really holding out for Joko Widodo to do one. “I’m far too neat and far too clean, it’s something that I would never do. I think it’s a bit weird myself,” Albanese said, before hastily adding: “I am not judgmental about it, mind you.”
Some celebrities have been very game about doing shoeys. Just last year Harry Styles drank beer from his $1,170 Adidas x Gucci sneaker in Perth. (“I feel ashamed of myself,” he said after). Post Malone did seven shoeys during one Brisbane show, using sneakers, a cowboy boot and even a boot brace. Lizzo put a bottle of tequila into her boot and drank from the bottle in Sydney, which is a creative way of avoiding athlete’s foot in your guts.
If we strip the shoey of its contemporary connotations, it almost sounds like a medieval ritual – like Cinderella if Cinderella guzzled Tooheys. Where did it actually originate?
It is hard to say. Motorsports guys seemed to suddenly get very fond of doing shoeys on the podium in the mid 2010s, with shoe-guzzling F1 driver Daniel Ricciardo once crediting a group of Queensland surfers known as the Mad Hueys for developing it. Frequent Guardian Australia writer Katie Cunningham once did a deep dive investigation for Junkee that involved the Mad Hueys, punk bands and an international running club that had been using shoeys to haze members since they picked it up from ex-British military types in the 1930s.
So like most Australian traditions, the shoey is not actually Australian?
Just like pavlova and Sam Neill, we claim it. But boot and shoe-shaped drinking vessels dating back to the second millennium BCE have been found in Asia Minor, while later examples have been found in Azerbaijan and Armenia. It is thought that these were made because it was believed in some cultures that drinking from a higher up’s boot would bring good fortune to soldiers.
Germany also has a strong historical tradition of Bierstiefel, or boot-shaped beer glasses, which are a more sanitary version of the actual boots German soldiers would drink from during hazing rituals.
A concrete, if apocryphal shoey story comes from early 20th-century Chicago, when Prince Henry of Prussia reportedly had his whole entourage drink from the slippers of dancers inside a swanky brothel called the Everleigh Club. But as I have always said, there is a world of difference between drinking champagne from a sex worker’s slipper and drinking VB from a sweaty Reebok.
You’re hearing it more and more. So in this world of fables and folklore, what makes a true shoey?
It comes down to the motivation behind it, which is just not the same for horny drunk Prussians and rowdy Australians. When an athlete chooses to do a shoey on a podium, they’re celebrating. If a crowd orders a musician to do a shoey, we’re mostly just being mean to them.
It is important to say: there is a definite correlation between shoeys and Australia’s love for both drinking too much and disguising bullying as larrikinism. But in several Islamic hadiths, some kindly Muslims use their shoes to give water to animals; a 600-year-old Ethiopian manuscript depicts the Virgin Mary offering a dog a shoey of water from God himself. So there are ways to do what could be termed a benevolent shoey – but we’re just being mean to celebrities.
If you want to do one at home for heaven knows what reason, a New Zealand publication did a very scientific study of the best shoes to use for shoeys, which included a measure of “toe taste”. (Ew.)
I’m calling the authorities as we speak.
