Is Foot Fetish Normal

Is Foot Fetish Normal

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Jessica Migala has been a health, fitness, and nutrition writer for almost 15 years. She has contributed to more than 40 print and digital publications, including EatingWell, Real Simple, and Runner's World. Jessica had her first editing role at Prevention magazine and, later, Michigan Avenue magazine in Chicago. She currently lives in the suburbs with her husband, two young sons, and beagle. When not reporting, Jessica likes runs, bike rides, and glasses of wine (in moderation, of course). Find her @jlmigala or on LinkedIn.

Many people find one specific body part especially sexy, like butts, abs, legs, or breasts. For some people, that body area is the foot—and their sexual interest in feet is an attraction better known as a foot fetish.

Where does the word fetish come in? “In general, a fetish is any object, concept, or situation that is sexualized,” Ashley Grinonneau-Denton, PhD, certified sex therapist and co-director of the Ohio Center for Relationship & Sexual Health, tells Health .

Toe kissing and sucking, watching videos of feet, taking photos of a partner’s feet, rubbing someone’s sweaty feet after a workout, genital stimulation with feet, or describing foot odor to one’s partner are some ways a foot fetish can play out, says Grinonneau-Denton.

Subtypes of foot fetishes exist, too, like this one. “Some people love to worship adorned feet, whether with jewels, tattoos, nail polish, feet in heels, socks, stockings, or bare feet,” sex therapist Moushumi Ghose, owner and director of Los Angeles Sex Therapy, tells Health .

Here's everything you need to know about foot fetishes...and the foot fetishists who focus their desire on this body part you may never think twice about.

More common than you'd think. While exact numbers are hard to come by, one study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine arrived at one. In the study, researchers asked the roughly one thousand participants to rate their fetish interests from a score of 1 to 5 (5 being the highest). About 10% said they had a foot fetish, and the same percentage admitted to having a shoe fetish. Overall, more men than women said they sexualized feet or shoes.

Yes—the word “fetish” just makes a foot fetish sound freaky. “To ‘fetishize’ something is often deemed an unhealthy obsession and is typically borne out of something being taboo or not normal," says Ghose. "Fetishizing is often not seen in a favorable light." Yet a more sex-positive approach is to ditch this line of thinking entirely and just consider a foot fetish another variation of healthy human sexuality.

Just as with any sexual preference, "there are many different forms that foot fetishes can take,” says Grinonneau-Denton. As mentioned above, some foot fetishists prefer adorned feet. Others go for naked feet only. Some people fetishize footwear, such as stilettos or sandals, but others focus on less sexy shoes like sneakers or boots.

If you’ve ever seen Vanderpump Rules , you know that one of the actors on this reality show has a self-proclaimed fetish for sweaty, stinky feet. “I have worked with individuals who are highly turned on by sweaty tennis shoes and may have an inclination toward the smell, the dirtiness, or both,” says Grinonneau-Denton.

Another type of foot fetish is to fantasize about what will happen when the shoes come off, and what kind of foot is under the shoe, adds Grinonneau-Denton.

Feet are an intimate part of the body and are typically covered up. For these reasons, they are thought of by some people as sensual and erotic, just as other covered-up body areas like breasts and butts are considered sexy. In many cases, the fetish arises from the fantasy of being close to and touching a body part that isn't randomly touched by strangers, says Grinonneau-Denton, the way a hand or upper arm might be.

Other foot fetishists enjoy the submission aspect. “The feet are at the bottom of one’s body, so you’re worshipping someone from below, which can be seen as a desire to be dominated,” says Ghose. And then there's the fact that your feet take a lot of wear and tear all day yet don't get the proper care they deserve. There's an erotic element here for foot fetishists, too. “The work of the foot worshipper is to worship something that is otherwise seen as less than,” she explains

If your partner is the one with the foot fetish and you’re on board with it, foot play can be very pleasurable for you, too. “There are a lot of nerve endings in the foot, which makes it a highly sensual erogenous zone,” says Ghose. You probably already know that a foot massage can feel amazing and even be a precursor to other sexual activities. But having your feet touched more sensually—teased with one fingertip, for example, or licked or sucked—can send tingles down your spine.

Remember, there’s no shame in finding feet and foot worshipping sexy. "As a society, we’ve historically gotten far too caught up in what we should and shouldn’t like sexually,” says Grinonneau-Denton.

Bottom line: a foot fetish is completely normal and healthy, so long as it doesn't become an obsession interfering with regular life, and assuming that a partner or other person involved consents to foot play. If you or your partner has a sexual desire toward feet, don’t be afraid to talk about it and explore it if you wish.

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By

Natalie Wolchover

published September 27, 2011

An Arkansas man identified as the "Toe Suck Fairy" was arrested Monday (Sept. 26) following a series of incidents in which he allegedly approached women in stores, commented on their feet and asked to suck their toes. According to Reuters, the culprit, Michael Robert Wyatt, 50, previously served a prison sentence for similar shenanigans. Last time, he even pretended to be a podiatrist in order to fondle and suck a woman's toes at a clothing store.
Though criminal cases are rare, foot fetishism itself is surprisingly common. Academic studies on the prevalence and membership of fetish discussion groups have found that feet and foot accessories are the most fetishized of all non-genital body parts and objects. Nearly half of all such fetishes focus on feet, and almost two-thirds of fetishes for objects associated with the body are for shoes and socks. [ Can Brain Scans Read People's Minds? ]
Sigmund Freud claimed that people sexualize feet because they resemble penises. Today, a more scientific theory comes from the neuroscientist Vilanayar Ramachandran, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego.
Ramachandran said he solved the mystery of foot fetishes while studying the brain malfunctions that lead to phantom limb syndrome, a condition where amputees feel as if their missing limbs are still attached to their bodies, and that they can move those limbs. He found that the syndrome resulted when a person's "body image map" the brain's map of the body, in which different body parts are associated with and controlled by different brain regions failed to erase the part of the map that corresponded to the amputated limb.
In the case of some phantom foot patients, Ramachandran found that the amputees' brains didn't just fail to erase the missing foot from their body image map, they accidentally rewired the map in a way that caused the person's phantom foot to become sexy. Phantom foot patients reported feeling sexual pleasure, and even orgasms , in their missing feet.
Long before Ramachandran began his work on phantom limb syndrome, it had been noted that the brain areas associated with genitalia and feet are adjacent to each other in the brain's body image map. But no one else had put 2 and 2 together and realized that foot fetishes could possibly result from cross-wiring in the brain between the foot and the genital parts.
As Ramachandran wrote in "Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind" (Harper, 1999): "Maybe even many of us so-called normal people have a bit of cross-wiring, which would explain why we like to have our toes sucked."
Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @ nattyover . Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @ llmysteries , then join us on Facebook .
Natalie Wolchover was a staff writer for Live Science from 2010 to 2012 and is currently a senior physics writer and editor for Quanta Magazine. She holds a bachelor's degree in physics from Tufts University and has studied physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Along with the staff of Quanta, Wolchover won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory writing for her work on the building of the James Webb Space Telescope. Her work has also appeared in the The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best Writing on Mathematics, Nature, The New Yorker and Popular Science. She was the 2016 winner of the Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award, an annual prize for young science journalists, as well as the winner of the 2017 Science Communication Award for the American Institute of Physics.
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