Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission (68 page)

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:

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.

The foot lover typically comes to terms with his orientation in adulthood, if at all.

If any one generalization applies, it is that shame at his sexual difference is the fetishist’s chief source of anguish.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Contact with feet or footwear—or having someone else make contact—is a completely eroticized experience for the foot fetishist.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Just kneeling to kiss a partner’s foot can be a delightful ritual. Some view boot kissing as a form of homage.

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.

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.

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.