For all our world’s ills and uglies, its aggressions macro and micro and mid, you have to admit that the truly exquisite facets of life are nearly always at hand—the embraces held, the arm-hair-ruffling breezes.
Or at foot—the blooms that rise from earth, warm sand gently exfoliating between toes; the marvelous, equine musculature of the human foot, its skeletal buttresses scaffolding mighty ankle; rough and calloused on the underside, plush and vascular on the surface.
Now you’re beginning to see the world like a foot fetishist. Feet are the subject of one of humans’ most popular obsessions, though information on this precious demographic is historically scarce and limited mostly to the research published by porn Web sites. Clips4Sale, a vaunted repository of video clips, consistently reports feet among the world’s most popular kinks. Other breakout fetishes, such as pegging and bimbofication, can be linked to current events like #MeToo or the Barbie movie, but our hunger for feet stays powerfully consistent and is centuries old. Lately, our love for them is becoming more exposed than ever.
In his 2018 book, Tell Me What You Want, a Kinsey Institute research fellow named Justin Lehmiller sketched out a portrait of American fetishes based on a survey of more than 4,000 people and found that as few as 5 percent of heterosexual women and as many as 18 percent of heterosexual men had fantasized about toes or feet, with higher incidences among L.G.B.T.Q.+ populations. Other surveys, with their limited sample sizes, have produced similar results, like a 2017 Belgian study, published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine (14.6 percent of all respondents). All available research indicates that we are not born with kinks but that they develop as a result of particular, indelible, sometimes inexplicable experiences.
“On the one hand, people, especially Gen Z, are more tolerant towards niche and specific sexual preferences,” says Anastasiia Fedorova, of Canvas8, a market-research firm, who writes a Substack called the Fetishist’s Heart. “But on the other, they’re aware of the widespread sexualization of this particular body part,” which makes them hesitant to show their feet. “Even more so to post photos of their feet online.”
“Feet pics,” those two words that describe a cottage fetish industry, “loom large in the public imagination,” Fedorova says. On the latest season of Emily in Paris; on Larsa Pippen’s OnlyFans; on the Row models and those modeling those models, switching out their Birkenstocks for the infinitely kinkier mesh flat, or the models modeling those models, copping the Temu version instead; on your friend’s Instagram, the two-word meme “For Free?” appearing beneath any unsponsored image of bare feet—the implication being that anybody taking a photo of their feet simply for the love of it is leaving money on the table.
We are not born with kinks; they develop as a result of particular, indelible, sometimes inexplicable experiences.
According to the fetish Web site FunwithFeet, the highest-earning foot shape is known as “the Peasant,” in which the largest three toes line up, followed by the cartoonish “Square.” The lowest-earning, “the Simian,” has toes collapsing inward on themselves. But shape is only one variable in the pleasure equation. The vast majority of users abhor hair of any kind.
“I’m a big proponent of perfect foot symmetry,” one user on the popular r/FootFetishTalks subreddit offered.
Another chimed in: “Long but plump toes. Darker hues of polish. On a darker skinned woman.”
One doesn’t mind small feet, “but she has to have long toes or I won’t indulge.”
FunwithFeet also alleges that around 10 percent of the U.S. populace are foot fetishists, but we’ll go ahead and wait for the official census. Could one in 10 of the people I know be harboring a secret, if mundane, desire? In fact, more people I know have had experiences on the other side of the transaction. My best friend in the world doesn’t sell feet pics, but she does have strangers in her Instagram D.M.’s offering to pay for her pedicures in exchange for a photo of the finished product. She does her own and pockets the cash. I heard that a dermatologist I know and love is constantly solicited for photos of her feet, but she makes more money at her day job.
For those in the market for feet pics, there are nearly endless online databases, the most notable being FeetFinder and wikiFeet. The latter’s archive spreads far and wide. An impulse to search oneself immediately occurs—I did indulge. There was nothing, though I did find photos of the actor Eileen Brennan’s son performing barefoot in a production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. (The community’s consensus: 3.9 out of 5 stars.) Linda Wells, the editor of Air Mail Look, has a five-star rating: “Beautiful Feet.” (Graydon Carter: no results.)
Feet are uniquely ripe for fetishes. In addition to their marvelous architecture, they offer a buffet of heightened sensorial experiences, from scent to touch to taste. No part of the human body labors as hard, save the hand or heart. “Quirofilia,” the Latin term for hand fetishism, is relatively much less common but does exist. “Nothing gets me harder than big ass huge long pink nail beds,” another Reddit user committed to the online record.
Heart fetishes are even less common, if you can believe it. What a shame, too. Nothing gets me harder than a big-ass, beautiful heart.
I think about my own feet quite often. I’m not disgusted by them, but neither am I enthralled—I regard them like I do my ears, or chicken marsala. If my lover and I found ourselves in the heat of the moment, and a toe found its way wherever a toe might, well … Shouldn’t we be so lucky to be so in love?
I wish I had a foot fetish, because having one might indicate a profound shift in my mind’s eye’s field of vision—I might notice the feet of others instead of excluding them completely to appraise my own. There they always are, sitting at the end of me. They look strong and capable, carrying the Sisyphean burden of me day after day. But they’re pallid here and jaundiced there, ravaged by multiple cases of athlete’s foot collected over a decade of competitive swimming. As much as I would love the economic opportunity that comes with having gorgeous dogs, I cannot claim them. Whatever! I move forward.
Just kidding—I don’t, because I would like to improve their appearance. This led me to Marcela Correa, an avowed foot fetishist who lives in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Correa has owned and operated a clinic on Park Avenue called Medi Pedi for more than a decade, specializing in hour-long medical pedicures sans gel or lacquers. She immigrated to the United States from Uruguay, where general foot care is supplanted with a professional class between the podiatrist and the pedicurist: the podologist. It’s a vocation that requires three years of study, though there isn’t an analogue for it in the United States. Here, Correa works as a medical nail technician, one who is able to divine ailments and imbalances simply by looking at feet.
Correa peers at my big toes through cat-eye glasses and instantly hypothesizes three issues: my diet and each of my calf muscles. Behind her hangs an anatomical poster of the foot, and Correa draws a line from my toe that winds up my ankle and the back of my leg—my flexor hallucis longus is tight and pulling my toes upward. Healthy toes are flexible ones. Correa can basically make a fist with hers. (The absolute healthiest form of footwear, according to her, is a pair of flip-flops.) But a more pressing issue lies in my gut, which Correa surmises is overly acidic. The proof is written on my toes in symmetrical fungal formations.
No problem. In fact, Correa is elated. She clasps her hands over my right foot and says a prayer, finishing with an announcement directed at me: “Your healing begins today!”
As a medical nail technician re-surfaces the bottom of my foot with a whirring tool, Correa explains the origin of her fetish. She first touched a stranger’s foot when she was eight, when a friendly neighbor needed help trimming his toenails. “I was fascinated that he asked me to touch his feet,” she remembers. It’s an act of profound, actually biblical intimacy. Correa is also a tactile learner and says that she would either be a podologist or a carpenter.
“For us, it’s more to honor them,” Correa says. Our feet hold us up—they’re the pedestals on which we stand. In America “it’s about how dirty they can get, how they can be utilized during sex.” Some of her customers will bring partners to their appointments, who may reach out to cop a feel during the treatment. This feels lascivious compared to what Correa is doing. “My fetish is about adoring,” she coos, as a very tiny ice pick excavates my big toe.
I wince. “I’m sensitive!”
My nail tech deadpans: “Yeah, you are.”
An hour later, when I ran my hand along the bottom of my foot, it felt like skimming the surface of a bucket of cream. It was a softness I had not recognized in myself since I was a toddler. Correa likes her clients to come by four times a year, but she doesn’t mind telling me that the best things for my feet health are free: regular sunlight, regular exposure to the ground, regular stretching. All we need is everything we have. Even now, I am struggling to keep my fingers on the keyboard, when they so desperately want to go south, to that new, familiar place. I get it! I want to kiss them, too.
Brennan Kilbane is a New York–based writer and the beauty editor at The Business of Fashion. He is originally from Cleveland, and his interviews and essays have appeared in Allure, GQ, and New York magazine
