Dear Dr. Holmes:
I’d like to think I am a respectable man. I’ve been living a clean life. I have a good job and am pretty much financially stable as a bachelor. I have a wonderful fiancé who is also doing well in her chosen career. But I have a well-guarded and personal (sexual) idiosyncrasy which may be bordering on abnormality.
Here goes: I am a foot fetishist. Ever since grade school, I remember taking sexual delight in looking at a beautiful woman’s feet. In high school and college I tried to understand this penchant of mine by reading a number of psychological materials on the subject.
I think I hoped that being intelligent and rational about it would help me get over it. I came across a lot of theories about people like me being fixated on feet because when we were young we associated that body part with something sexually gratifying. For the life of me, I cannot recall any event which justifies that! Or perhaps I was too young to remember. I don’t really know! It finally dawned on me that I have a psychological disorder.
I am in my mid twenties. Up until now, I have experienced this distortion of the erotic impulse. This time though, I actually get to nuzzle my girlfriend’s feet. Since I do it quite often, it has become a not too pleasant surprise for her. she tries to be kind by trying to understand.
How will I console (no pun intended) myself? Is this a common deviation of the sexual appetite among men or do I have a problem?
FOOTSIES
Dear FOOTSIES:It is not at all common statistic-wise but neither does that mean you have a psychological disorder. If all your foot fetish means is that you take “delight in looking at a woman’s feet,” then hells bells, man, count your blessings. Your staring at the your object of desire is far less offensive than what leg- ass- and breast men have to go through to stare at theirs. In fact, if you come up with a good enough line: “I’d like to get a pair of shoes exactly like that for my mother. would you mind taking them off for a minute so I can look at the instep? Here, let me help you with that.” You could stare at their feet even more closely without them getting all huffy and upset.
Except, perhaps, for your girlfriend who sounds uncomfortable with your nuzzling her feet. what, exactly, do you mean by nuzzle? Is it friendly the way a mama cat nuzzles her kittens, licking and stroking them every chance she gets (YUM) or is it overbearingly brutal the way a grizzly bear attacks food leftover by campers (YUCK)? Do you pay as much attention to other parts of her body (YUM) or are her feet the only thing that interest you (YUCK)?
And what, exactly, does being “turned on” mean to you exactly? How do you deal with this? Does it give you a nice buzz, encouraging you to work even harder, love even more deeply, lust even more heartily? In that case, caps over the windmills and YUM YUM YUM. Wouldn’t it be great if we were *all* foot fetishists?!!?
...Or is it something that interferes with everything else you do? (YUCK) or something that cannot be rechanneled or sublimated to other exciting and worthwhile endeavors *in addition* to looking at feet? (YUCK).
if you answered yes to any YUCK item, please write to me again. I promise to answer your question more clinically, seriously and comprehensively next time around.
If, however, your answers are more of the YUM variety, then be thankful it’s feet you love and not something as rare as hen’s teeth, good salaries and unmitigated love with no strings attached.
All the best!
MG Holmes
(BodyMind Vol. 3 No. 1 - First posted: 2-13-99)
