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Notes -
Aristocrats also have a large degree of separation in their actual living space for hosting guests and parties/events in their mansions compared to your typical home. When your entire hallway is marble flooring and your mansion is capable of hosting 100s of guests and you actually live in an upper floor and you have servants to clean your home and your events likely have dress codes that's completely different from having guests in your home where your carpeted bedroom is right next to your likely carpeted living room. Do you really need to "signal status" if you're just hanging out with your friends?
What's with the entitlement of "being the guest" anyways? Both the host and the guest should try to be respectful of each other. Frankly speaking, if someone is going to get offended when they're asked to remove their shoes, I don't want them in my home. If you think your shoes are cleaner than my floor then you're delusional. In my home we offer slippers for guests.
Easy thing to do is just copy what the home owner does. They keep shoes on, you keep shoes on. They take shoes off, you take shoes off.
Honestly seems to me that Keturah has an ick against taking shoes off for whatever reason and so wrote an entire article trying to justify that.
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