Nineteen
EROTIC EXTREMITIES
When I want to imagine her, I can only evoke one meaningless detail: the chapped skin on her knees, like a boy’s; this is deeply touching and guides my thoughts into tantalizing regions of contradiction, into blissful antinomies. Everything else, above and below her knees, is transcendental and defies my imagination.
—BRUNO SCHULZ1
What typically is called foot fetishism actually comprises a nearly infinite variety of tastes. Briefly and incompletely to catalogue: foot fetishists may like feet, legs, or buttocks. They may favor specific parts of the foregoing, such as toes, soles, arches, insteps, heels, ankles, calves, knees, or thighs. Or they may be aroused by the absence of limbs: A sexual interest in amputees is clinically identified as acrotomophilia.
Foot lovers may love spike-heeled shoes, flats, slippers, loafers, mules, oxfords, or Mary Janes; sandals, open-toe shoes, cleats, or gym shoes; silk stockings, fishnets, seamed stockings, white cotton socks, or black nylon socks. They may like details of footgear, such as the lining, laces, or inner pad. They may like the shoes or hose to smell of perfume or cologne or powder or sweat or dirt or to have no odor at all. They may like leather boots, shiny boots, vinyl boots, rubber boots, suede boots, thigh-high boots, or military-issue boots, boots with heels, or boots with industrial soles. They may like huge feet or tiny ones; shapely, well-formed feet or rough, peculiar ones; shod feet or bare ones.
In this chapter we explore the diversity of interests which fall under the general heading of foot fetishism. We feature the further insights of Dian Hanson and three profiles:
• Doug Gaines is 37 years old and is the founder of Foot Fraternity. He teaches special education and owns a greeting-card company for gays and lesbians, as well as a bookkeeping service. He has been with his lover for 12½ years.
• Mark J. is 30 years old. He works in sales and is in a full-time relationship.
• Rob is 30 years old and unmarried.
WHAT Is IT?
Foot fetishism comprises a pronounced sexual interest in the lower limbs or in anything that covers portions of them. The allure ordinarily attributed to erogenous zones is literally translocated downward, so that the fetishist’s responses resemble a conventional person’s arousal at seeing genitals.
Because fashion history has supplied us with so fantastic a variety of footwear and legwear, nearly each individual foot fetishist seems to develop singular interests. These, presumably, are influenced by his early encounters with feet.
Most of our interviewees who listed foot fetishism as an interest recalled an erotic encounter with feet in childhood: crawling near an adult’s foot and feeling pleasantly stimulated, using a parent’s shoes as playthings, being tickled or nudged or trod on by a parent or other adult. Most, however, say that their desires already existed: The experience elicited a recognition of the desire. Also, while fetishes tend to be era-specific (today’s foot lover may worship a penny loafer; a century ago the high-button shoe was popular), the footwear styles that become the fetish center may not even have been present in one’s childhood. This strongly suggests that the precise source of excitement is amenable to change.
To ascertain why certain children eroticize feet and others, who may have similar contact, do not is thus far impossible. Some psychologists suggest that the interest is fixed when a trauma occurs in conjunction with exposure to the fetish, but this hypothesis can be neither proved nor disproved. Some of our interviewees’ earliest memories are entirely pleasurable, others’ are traumatic, and some are an admixture of the two.
[Enjoying being stepped on] seems very odd, though it was explained to me very well by a reader who talked about being a small child and playing on the floor. A neighbor woman stepped on his hand. The neighbor and the mother showed, him a great deal of affection and comfort after that and joked about stepping on him and that they were going to squash him. He loved the attention.
—DIAN HANSON
The foot lover typically comes to terms with his orientation in adulthood, if at all.
I want to affirm [people], to say, “You’re all right; you’re healthy; there’s nothing wrong with it.” You’d be surprised how many people just need to hear somebody say that. They say, “God, I’ve never voiced this to another living soul!” And these are people in their 30s and 40s. I think, “Geez, how could you live that long and never even tell anybody that this was what you wanted to do when it was so much a part of you?”
—DOUG GAINES
If any one generalization applies, it is that shame at his sexual difference is the fetishist’s chief source of anguish.
I thought I was weird; I thought it was shameful. I used to go through magazines—I still do—[and] cut out pictures of feet. I would hide them, [because] I thought that this isn’t good.
—MARK J.
Since the foot lover often perceives his fetish as fully sexual, it’s possible that along with his desire he has also translocated his shame. If so, it is a poignant irony: The impulse which may, in youth, have made feet more acceptable than sex organs as objects of desire can evoke the same guilty charge that the fetish should have relieved. The dilemma is further exacerbated when the foot fetishist realizes that he is sexually unusual.
When I was in junior high all the other guys were like, “Hey, this woman’s stacked!” And the first thing I looked at was their feet.
—MARK J.
While an array of groups and publications support the interest, many fetishists feel very uncomfortable with tastes which seem extreme or kinky. For example, many foot lovers are actively repelled by D&S or acts considered to be unclean, such as sniffing sweaty socks. This may be another manifestation of internal conflict: If the fetish is shameful, then other kinky desires are even less acceptable.
There are the people who write in and say, “I just like clean, pretty feet. I don’t want them to smell! I’m not into any of this smell stuff. [That’s] too weird!” Stekel, who was one of the original sex researchers, made an interesting comment. He said that if a person is simply not interested in one area of sexuality, they are generally indifferent—which does not carry any strong emotion.
—DIAN HANSON
The overwhelming majority of self-identified foot fetishists are male. Women—and especially lesbian—foot fetishists, however, are a small but visible presence in the D&S world. As a group, gay men seem to be most at peace with their foot-fetish desires. This may be because by separating from heterosexual culture, gay men have already confronted a momentous social challenge. Once they have acknowledged themselves as sexual outsiders, accepting other unusual aspects of their sexuality may require a second, but less painful, coming out.
I had two comings-out. One was coming out as gay, and the second was coming out of the foot closet.
—DOUG GAINES
Thus, while foot fetishists abound throughout alternative-sexuality communities, one is more likely to see foot eroticism in a gay environment than in a heterosexual one. Leather bars, for example, often have a submissive bootblack available to polish patrons’ shoes and boots, whereas foot play, though hardly unknown, is more of a catch-as-catch-can proposition at heterosexual D&S gatherings.
WHAT DO THEY LIKE?
Contact with feet or footwear—or having someone else make contact—is a completely eroticized experience for the foot fetishist.
I met a bootboy at [the] International Mr. Leather [competition] who literally gave me a foot massage through my boot. I got excited while he was doing it. By the time it was over, my feet felt fantastic, and my boots [had a] perfect, military spit-shine. Then he leaned over and washed his tongue on each boot, and I could feel [it] press through the boot against my foot. If I were a man, I would have come right there. As it was, when I got off the stool, I felt like I was walking two feet above the ground.
—LAURA ANTONIO
In many cases the foot lover is erotically and emotionally gratified by having a relationship
with the foot or footwear. Immediate sexual release is not a requirement.
The range of activities among foot fetishists spans a spectrum of stimuli, from fondling or massage to activities such as trampling or stomping. Kicking is known, though rarer. (It is also difficult to distinguish between the foot that kicks and the object of the kick: Some masochists fantasize specifically about kicks to the scrotum, but whether this is an extension of foot fetishism, with the foot as ultimate power symbol, or uniquely is a form of CBT is ambiguous.)
Fetishists also may combine foot worship with diverse erotic alternatives, including other fetish dressing, transvestism, or D&S play. Bondage is popular among D&Sers who either wish to be erotically coerced into foot worship or who, conversely, may wish to restrict the submissive’s movement. Dominants put their partners in hobbling footgear, such as spectacularly high-heeled shoes or boots that restrict the submissive to mincing steps and exaggerate the arch of the foot. Most popular are narrow, pointy-toed stilettos, which fans consider profoundly feminine. They create elaborate shoe-and-bondage combinations involving restrictive footwear and chains, stocks, or other bondage devices. Or they deliver diverse forms of pain to the foot, including whipping.
Immobility fantasies are also a prime turn-on for acrotomophiles, for whom the absence of a foot or a leg carries much of the same erotic charge that the foot or leg’s presence carries for the foot lover.
I’m primarily interested in leg amputees’ immobility.… The stump and the stump areas are of particular interest to me. Kind of as if there’s another sexual zone down there. It’s like having an extra breast or something.
—ROB
Tickling is a distinct fetish, and tickling purists reject any connection with D&S. But some “foot dominants” use tickling as a means of wielding power. Though putatively harmless, tickling can be a ferocious type of dominance. An immobilized and tickled partner is absolutely helpless; his purely physical response overwhelms his conscious control.
If you’ve got somebody strapped and tied to the bed, and you choose to tickle their feet, they can’t do anything but accept it until they beg you to stop.
—DOUG GAINES
For the most part, foot lovers prefer voluptuous encounters that engage all the senses. Visual stimuli are also important: Foot lovers often like to look at and to collect photos of feet. And to glimpse a woman nonchalantly dangling a shoe or kicking it off is thrilling.
If the foot is your sexual goal, then shoe dangling is a kind of striptease for the foot.
—DIAN HANSON
What women usually will do when they’re standing in line waiting for something is they’ll take one of their shoes and just slip their foot in and out and dangle it from their toes. That drives me nuts.
—MARK J.
By and large, foot lovers enjoy relatively gentle, aesthetically pleasing scenes that concentrate on soft caresses, kissing or licking, and worship. They revel in the sensuality of the object of their desires. Submissive foot lovers usually prefer psychological domination or comfortable bondage to pain.
I like to be ordered to smell feet or kiss them or lick them. I like the verbalization. I like being bound at a man’s feet, where I am helpless and he can use his feet on me any way he wishes. I like to be a footstool; I like to be his slave. I like to buy his shoes and socks for him and afterwards kiss his feet and thank him for allowing me to do that. It goes into many forms of humiliation.
—DOUG GAINES
Just kneeling to kiss a partner’s foot can be a delightful ritual. Some view boot kissing as a form of homage.
When I am being submissive to someone I really want to honor or flatter—not with emptiness but with a genuine compliment—I may offer to kiss their boots.
—LAURA ANTONIO
The moment of contact is exhilarating. The foot lover is at last fully engaged in a spiritual and deeply emotional connection with the object of his infatuation.
WHY DO THEY LIKE IT?
As a society, we accept that the torso is the sexiest area of the body. Thus, the foot fetishist seems sexually off kilter, as if he’s somehow missed the point. But feet—and especially boots—have a central place in our culture’s power symbology. Numerous writers have exploited the imagery—from Anthony Burgess’s description of a brutal kicking in A Clockwork Orange to George Orwell’s warning in 1984 that, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”2 In her poem “Daddy,” Sylvia Plath reiterates the inherent connection between the hated father and feet and boots. Indeed, the boots of the Nazi stormtrooper have become a metaphor for ruthless power, and the sound of boots in 1984 is inseparable from the tyranny of Big Brother’s troops.
That feet—the bully’s favorite weapon—can inspire terror provides an insight into their erotic appeal, for that which is powerful always has the power to arouse. Some submissives regard the spiked heel as a symbol of power; it literally and figuratively carries a pointed threat. For many dominants, wearing certain types of boots or shoes enhances their sense of personal power.
Wearing boots, for me, is an experience in becoming more confident. When I put on a heavy pair of boots, well-worn boots that fit comfortably, for one, I’m taller. Secondly, my stride is louder, firmer. Lastly, there is a sensual pleasure of the leather caressing my calves and the firmness of the shape of the boot around my foot.
—LAURA ANTONIO
Similarly, the notion of the servant or slave abasing himself by lying prostrate at the master’s feet is firmly rooted in our cultural consciousness. This image is singularly arousing to the submissive foot fetishist who, during an erotic encounter, relishes his physical, psychological, and even social inferiority to the dominant.
The excitement comes from being completely submissive to him sexually, of knowing that I’m placing him above me. I’m putting him on a pedestal and putting myself beneath him in homage and in worship to him.
—DOUG GAINES
In addition to the allure of power, however, aesthetic and sensual elements make feet, shoes, or boots exceptionally sexy. A well-formed foot or leg is a supreme blend of form, grace, and function, inspiring reverence in its devotees. And the materials from which a shoe or boot is made can deliver powerful erotic stimuli.
The feel of the leather against my face, and the taste of it on my tongue, was erotically powerful. It was unreal become real. It was something I’d only read about and experienced vicariously. And suddenly there I was really doing it, and I didn’t feel dumb: It felt as good as it read.
—LAURA ANTONIO
Interest in shoes is also a culturally acquired phenomenon: Imelda Marcos is not the only person who owns shoes for every possible occasion and mood. The smell and texture of leather, the bright gleam of a polished or patent leather shoe, and other details of shoe fashion win the favor not only of fetishists but of men and women the world over.
INTERVIEWS
DIAN HANSON
When Leg Show was created, everyone in the business, including myself, laughed at it. A magazine about legs? Who’s going to be interested in that? You know, “Americans want T-and-A.” Since I took over Leg Show, its sales have quadrupled. It went from being a bimonthly to an all-color monthly. There are about six imitators of Leg Show now. I think a large measure of its success was my moving it towards D&S. I think it’s the most undernourished market in the sex field in the U.S. today. There is a huge community of men who are interested in sexual submission in the United States, and I think in the world. Leg Show sells better in Europe than any of the other magazines I’ve ever worked on. It’s particularly of interest in England and [in] the Germanic countries. It reaches about a quarter of a million readers a month. Foot fetishism figures big in all of its permutations, which includes crushing with the feet, stockinged-foot fetishism, shoe dangling, all the myriad interests—everything below the waist except genitalia, which seem to be of least interest to the Leg Show readers.
I’d say the most common i
nterest is in a small, well formed, high arched, straight toed, soft, unblemished female foot with a certain amount of odor. Shoe dangling is equivalent to flashing. You see it all the time. A woman sits and crosses her legs, and she pops her shoe off at the heel and dangles it from the toes, generally slipping the foot around. Some women are really acrobatic with it. For the women I think it’s an unconscious habit to relieve the tightness of the shoes, but for men it can look like a very purposeful tease. I have to admit that I have fun with it sometimes and do it as a purposeful tease. I think there are other women who, once they find that out, can play with it.
From there, you get people who want to be walked on by high heels or bare feet. It gives you a nice peek up the skirt, for one thing, but it also impresses the power of the woman on the man. There’s a related fetish of men who want to be very small, from an inch to a foot high, and want to be stepped on. Beyond that, there are people who want to be kicked by feet; people who are interested in very dirty feet or huge feet, feet that look powerful.
Interestingly, I have one of the largest lesbian readerships of any of the so-called men’s magazines. Most of the women who have submissive foot fetishes are lesbian, in my readership. I try and keep Leg Show very reader-participation-oriented. It helps the readers to not feel so alone. This is what the letters express over and over: “I read Leg Show [and] I know I’m not alone, because I see so many other readers participating.” I just had an article written by a bisexual woman who is a [D&S] foot fetishist. She plays both roles but definitely likes to worship the feet of other women, though I believe she’s a married woman. She sent in some photographs of herself and her feet and wrote very candid memoirs of how she got interested in female feet and her original encounters with other women.
Different Loving Page 47
