The pavement is radiating a dry, white heat that measures 32 degrees on the digital thermometer Julia T.-M. uses to check the temperature of her styling emulsions. She is currently kneeling on a concrete patio, obsessively wiping the screen of her phone with a microfibre cloth, ensuring not a single smudge of oil or fingerprint distracts from the image she is about to capture. She is a food stylist, a woman whose entire professional existence depends on the illusion of effortless perfection, a state that requires 12 hours of agonizing attention to detail. Below her, the source of her upcoming undoing is slapped against her soles: a pair of generic, $12 flip-flops. They are thin, navy blue, and fundamentally deceptive. To the casual observer, Julia is the picture of summer ease. To a biomechanist, she is a slow-motion car crash of connective tissue.

Sliding the rubber thong between the first and second toe feels like an act of liberation. It is the sensory equivalent of a long exhale. We associate the lack of constraint with health, yet this specific freedom is a biomechanical poison that works its way up the kinetic chain with patient, rhythmic cruelty. When Julia moves to adjust a sprig of mint on her salad plate-a plate she has spent 42 minutes meticulously arranging with tweezers-her toes perform a