Just Because Rihanna Can Go Barefoot in the Airport Doesn't Mean You Should (2024)

On an average day at Los Angeles International Airport, over 220,000 travelers pass through airport security, emptying their pockets, stripping off their belts, and stepping out of their shoes to be scanned and groped by both machine and man. In an ideal world, most of those people wear socks under their shoes. Undoubtedly, not all will.

Rihanna, traveling through LAX over the weekend, joined the sock-less masses, making this as good a time as any to reflect on why, exactly, socks are a necessary travel carry-on.

Airport floors, like most public floors, are covered in germs, including bacteria associated with the common cold, influenza, E. coli, and listeria. Sharp objects are also a danger, and open sores make feet more susceptible to picking up bacteria. However, as William Schaffner, an infectious-disease specialist, told the Wall Street Journal, foot fungus only really results from dampness—if an airport security line is wet, that raises a whole other list of concerns—and the risk for other infections remains low for healthy travelers. It's just a floor, after all, albeit a much-used one.

As far as common decency goes, walking barefoot through a security line is pretty unappealing to other travelers. (The same goes for taking your shoes off while seated on the plane—unacceptable.) Feet, and the odor they can carry, should remain private. And in the summer months, as the heat rises and flip-flops become semi-acceptable, airport travel delays peak, rivaling those of the winter months, according to Quartz. There is all the more time to stand in TSA lines, bare feet shuffling across the well-traveled floor and brushing up with all kinds of germs.

And while Rihanna, of course, is probably impervious to such mundane concerns as germs and travel decorum, not every traveler is Rihanna. So please, cover your feet.