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Foot fetishism, foot partialism, foot worship, or podophilia is a pronounced sexual interest in feet. It is the most common form of sexual fetishism for otherwise non-sexual objects or body parts.

Characteristics

Foot fetishism has been defined as a pronounced sexual interest in the feet or footwear. Sigmund Freud considered foot binding as a form of fetishism. For a foot fetishist, points of attraction include the shape and size of the foot and toes and involtarie sensuality footsie (flirting) of feet Women in Heelpopping inclusive toes consisted attract and massage by eiaculation penis of feet (e.g., long toes, short toes, painted toenails, high arches, soles etc.), jewelry (toe rings, anklets, etc.), treatments (such as pedicures or massaging), state of dress (barefoot, sandals, flip flops, high heels, etc.), odor, and/or sensory interaction (e.g., smelling the foot, licking, kissing, tickling, biting, sucking toes, etc.).

Relative frequency

To estimate the relative frequency of fetishes, in 2006 researchers at the University of Bologna examined 381 internet discussions of fetish groups, in which at least 5,000 people had been participating. Researchers estimated the prevalences of different fetishes based on the following elements:

• (a) the number of discussion groups devoted to a particular fetish
• (b) the number of individuals participating in the groups; and
• (c) the number of messages exchanged.

It was concluded that the most common fetishes were for body parts or for objects usually associated with body parts (33% and 30% respectively). Among those people preferring body parts, feet and toes were preferred by the greatest number, with 47% of those sampled preferring them. Among those people preferring objects related to body parts, 32% were in groups related to footwear (shoes, boots, etc.).

Foot fetishism is the most common form of sexual fetish related to the body.

In August 2006, AOL released a database of the search terms submitted by their subscribers. In ranking only those phrases that included the word "fetish", it was found that the most common search was for feet.

Example cases

Health and disease

Some researchers have hypothesized that foot fetishism increases as a response to epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases. In one study, conducted by Dr. A James Giannini at Ohio State University an increased interest in feet as sexual objects was observed during the great gonorrhea epidemic of twelfth-century Europe, and the syphilis epidemics of the 16th and 19th centuries in Europe. In the same study, the frequency of foot-fetish depictions in pornographic literature was measured over a 30-year interval. An exponential increase was noted during the period of the current AIDS epidemic. In these cases, sexual foot play was viewed as a safe-sex alternative. However, the researchers noted that these epidemics overlapped periods of relative female emancipation. Sexual focus on female feet was also hypothesized to have been a reflection of a more dominant posture of the woman in sexual-social relations. (The first surviving mention of foot fetish is by Bertold of Regensburg in 1220.)

Causes

Neurologist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran proposed that foot fetishism is caused by the feet and the genitals occupying adjacent areas of the somatosensory cortex, possibly entailing some neural crosstalk between the two. Ramachandran has noted amputies reporting orgasms in their feet.

Desmond Morris considered foot fetishism the result of mal-imprinting at an early age, the tactile pressure of a foot/shoe being important in this.

Freud's reading of foot-fetishism also involved early imprinting; but he considered the smell of feet significant in this, as well as the foot as penis-symbol/surrogate (castration complex, especially when encountered while voyeuristic exploring the female body from below). Otto Fenichel similarly saw castration fear as significant in foot fetishism, citing a future fetishist who as an adolescent said to himself "You must remember this throughout life – that girls, too, have legs", to protect himself from the fear. Where fear of the (castrated) female body is too great, desire is felt not for shoes on female feet but for women's shoes alone, without women.

Georges Bataille saw the lure of the feet as linked to their anatomical baseness (abjection).

Literary examples

• In Thomas Pynchon's Bleeding Edge, the private eye heroine absent-mindedly "footles" a condom-clad man whose psychosexual profile and stiletto fetish she is investigating.
• The jester Feste, the main character in Alan Gordon's Fools' Guild series of historical mysteries, is a foot fetishist.

Notable foot fetishists

• Giacomo Casanova
• George du Maurier
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Thomas Hardy
• Elvis Presley
• Andy Warhol

See also

• Delusion and Dream in Jensen's Gradiva
• Elmer Batters
• Footjob
• Partialism
• Psychological splitting
• Shoe fetishism
• Tickle torture

References

1. Hickey, Eric W. (2006). Sex Crimes and Paraphilia. Pearson Education. p. 165. ISBN 9780131703506. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
2. ^ Scorolli, C., Ghirlanda, S., Enquist, M., Zattoni, S., & Jannini, E. A. (2007). "Relative prevalence of different fetishes". International Journal of Impotence Research. 19 (4): 432–437.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
3. Hacker, Authur (2012). China Illustrated. Turtle Publishing. ISBN 9781462906901.
4. Kippen, Cameron (July 2004). "The History of Footwear - Foot Fetish and Shoe Retifism". Department of Podiatry, Curtin University. Archived from the original on 13 August 2004. Retrieved 10 December 2014 – via National Library of Australia.
5. "Rex Ryan's Apparent Foot Fetish not Necessarily Unhealthy - ABC News". Abcnews.go.com. 23 December 2010. Retrieved 14 March 2013.
6. AOL's Accidental Release of Search Data – The Sexmind of America.aphrodisiology.com, accessed June 2007
7. AJ Giannini et al., op. cit.
8. Giannini, AJ; Colapietro, G; Slaby, AE; Melemis, SM; Bowman, RK (1998). "Sexualization of the female foot as a response to sexually transmitted epidemics: a preliminary study". Psychological reports. 83 (2): 491–8. doi:10.2466/pr0.83.6.491-498. PMID 9819924.
9. Coulton, G. C. (1923) Life in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
10. Kringelbach, Morten. Bodily Illusions. kringelbach.dk last accessed Sept 2006.
11. Blakeslee, Sandra (1999). Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind. HarperCollins. ISBN 9780688172176. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
12. Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape Trilogy (1994) p. 279-80
13. Sigmund Freud, On Sexuality (PFL 7) p. 68n
14. Quoted in O. Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1946) p. 327
15. O. Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1946) p. 343
16. Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess (1985) p. 23
17. Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge (2013) p. 225-6
18. Gordon, Alan (2010). The Parisian Prodigal. Minotaur Books. pp. 58, 86–87. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
19. ^ "Feet first". The Times. London. 20 May 2007. Retrieved 2 April 2010.
20. Beitiks, Edvins (3 August 1997). "Elvis". SFGate. Retrieved 20 May 2013.
21. "Pumped Up Perfume". Elle. Retrieved 14 October 2013.
22. Alastair Sooke (30 July 2007). "Lifting the lid on Warhol's Time Capsules". The Daily Telegraph. London, England. Retrieved 29 November 2008. Warhol had a serious foot fetish...

Further reading

• Havelock Ellis (1936), Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. II, New York: Random House
• William Rossi (1989), The Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe, Malabar: Krieger Publishing Company. ISBN 0894645730
• Sheila Jeffreys (2005), Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West, New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415351820

• Use dmy dates from July 2011
• Foot fetishism
• Paraphilias
• Sexual fetishism