foot fetish

5 of the Most Commonly Fetishized “Non-Sexual” Body Parts

Kate Sloan
Taken at the Gramercy Park Hotel in 2019

I find fetishes fascinating. It truly speaks to human ingenuity that we have found ways to get horny about all manner of things, from leather boots to mannequins to piss.

Some of the most commonly fetishized objects are body parts. While some features of human anatomy are so commonly fetishized as to escape the fetish label, such as breasts and butts, plenty of oft-lusted-after body parts are generally considered “non-sexual,” despite them carrying a sexual charge for many people.

I’ll refer to this study in choosing some body parts to tell you about in this post. Let’s get into it…

 

Feet

I mean, you probably knew this was gonna be the top item on this list. 47% of the fetishists in the study have a foot fetish; it’s often thought to be the most common “non-sexual” body part fetish.

Different people like feet for different reasons, ranging from the taboo of kissing and licking a “gross” or “dirty” body part, to the powerful imagery of kneeling to kiss a god(dess)’s feet. As for people who fetishize having their own feet touched in sexual ways, power play can be an element of that as well, as can the fact that the feet are just really damn sensitive.

Curious about this fetish? I go into it in more detail in my book 101 Kinky Things Even You Can Do, and you can also read more here on a different website.

 

Hair

7% of study respondents fetishized hair. This can refer to body hair as well as hair on the head. Folks with this fetish may enjoy looking at, touching, and/or licking hair. This makes sense to me, seeing as our society places a lot of importance on hair as a marker of beauty and identity.

There are lots of subdivisions within this kink – some people only fetishize particular types or colors of hair, for example (“blondes have more fun,” anyone?), while some fetishize specific hair-related actions, like someone getting a haircut or having their head shaved. This is how I initially discovered this fetish online: a friend of mine shaved her head in high school and fetishists started swarming the photos I posted on Flickr…

 

Bellies and belly buttons

3% of the study’s respondents said they were into the midriff and/or specifically the belly button. They might enjoy staring at bellies, touching them, humping them, or engaging in activities that allow for belly-to-belly contact, like wrestling, or sex in the missionary position.

I find it really interesting and, honestly, healing that many belly fetishists prefer chubby bellies. As someone who’s always been nervous about whether my stomach is “too big” (despite liking to have it kissed and complimented in the bedroom), it makes me happy that there are plenty of people out there who would like it because it’s not flat!

 

Legs

2% of respondents mentioned being into the legs and/or buttocks. It’s a little strange that the researchers grouped these two body parts together like this, since the butt is usually seen as a directly sexual body part and the legs are not, but I guess it makes sense because the two are so closely connected.

Historically, legs were fetishized a lot in the Victorian era because men would so rarely see a woman’s legs (or even her ankles) under those long skirts. I find it fascinating how cultural norms can have such a huge effect on what people find sexy, even though fetishes are often described by those who have them as feeling inborn and unchangeable.

 

Lips and/or teeth

2% of study respondents said they were into lips, teeth, or the mouth in general. This fetish goes beyond just enjoying oral sex and may involve fixating on specific lip shapes, long tongues, sharp teeth, or any number of other mouth-related features.

The mouth can obviously be a highly sexual zone for many of us, and is packed with nerve endings, so this makes a lot of sense to me. I wonder if mouth fetishists can ever have orgasms just from being kissed…

 

What anatomical fetishes do you find most interesting or intriguing?

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

So I Gave My First Footjob…

Kate Sloan
Sneakers by Converse, clogs by Lotta From Stockholm.

For reasons unknown, I’ve dated an above-average number of foot fetishists. I guess it makes sense if you consider that I mostly date other kinksters, and feet are one of the most common kinks. But when I think about the kind of person who would date multiple foot fetishists, I think about someone who has beautiful, soft, elegant feet, and I’ve never really thought of myself as that kind of person.

I think a lot of us grow up with feet-related insecurities, which may be part of why feet are fetishized so often. We worry about sweat, smells, dirtiness. We hide our feet away under socks and shoes much of the time, so that displaying them openly can feel almost as vulnerable as nudity. Still to this day, I feel weird in sandals, like I’m cosplaying as a type of girl I’ve never really been.

I’ve certainly never felt confident enough about my feet to want to model for fetish sites like Love Her Feet. But over the course of a few relationships with foot fetishists, I eventually got a little more comfortable taking foot pics when requested. (If you’re interested, I have an all-feet photo set available for purchase. That link is the only place on the internet where you can get sexy pictures of my feet!)

That being said, confidence in photos is a bit different from confidence in real life. When partners would want to do things like sniff my feet, massage them, or suck on my toes, I’d freeze up. Sometimes I’d enjoy these things when they would happen, but only if I was able to get over my near-paralyzing anxiety about it, which was rare.

Recently, my partner requested a footjob. They’ve requested one several times before but I’ve always felt too nervous to do it. I was worried not only about my feet but also about the contorted position I’d probably have to get into; I don’t have a lot of flexibility in my hips, knees or ankles due to my fibromyalgia, and a lot of the footjobs I’d seen in porn had involved someone’s legs being splayed wide open with their knees deeply bent to stroke a dick between their soles, a shape I knew my body just wouldn’t be able to get into. Hell, I can barely sit cross-legged on the floor for more than a few minutes before every joint below my waist starts throbbing with pain. On that note, I was also nervous about how I’d look while trying to bend myself into the right shape.

However, one of the skills I’ve picked up from therapy is being able to break down an anxiety-provoking situation to look more closely at the specific anxiety triggers it contains, in order to figure out if I can do anything about them. When I thought about each of the individual pieces of the puzzle that were fueling my footjob fears, I saw a few potential solutions, which could be used alone or in tandem:

  1. Get a pedicure prior to the footjob.
  2. Find a comfortable position that works for my body.
  3. Blindfold my partner so they can’t see what I’m doing.

I ended up doing the latter 2 things from this list. One night I had my partner lie on their back in bed and put a blindfold on. I laid on my side next to them and lubed up their dick and the sole of one of my feet. Then I bent my knee enough that my sole could rest on the underside of their dick and had just enough range of movement to slide up and down the length of it in a teasing manner.

And yes, my hip and knee joints started to ache after a few minutes, but I knew that wasn’t the end of the world. I kept up some low dirty talk in their ear while holding onto my leg with my arms, so that my arm muscles could take on some of the strain and give my leg a break. As the action crescendoed, at certain points I had to use my arms to physically move my leg up and down because my leg muscles and joints were just done. But, as often happens, the yummy neurochemicals of being in a sexy situation with a hot person were enough to make the pain mostly feel like part of the experience, rather than antithetical to it.

Eventually they came, and it was hot. I think I had them lick some of their own cum off my foot, possibly while still blindfolded. Overall, a positive experience – and one I definitely didn’t think I’d ever have, prior to being in this relationship.

The moral of the story is: In the realm of sex, as in other realms of life, you will encounter things that scare you but that seem worth doing anyway. Self-knowledge can be even more important than courage in these cases, because it is your knowledge of yourself, your body, and your brain that will enable you to approach the situation in a way that works for you. And when you do it your way, courage comes much more easily. Dip your toe in and see what happens.

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

My Weird Relationship with Foot Fetishism

Kate Sloan

Content note: This post contains some non-explicit, not-super-detailed descriptions of times that I was sexually creeped on by adults when I was a teen.

 

I’ve always had a complicated relationship to the foot fetish community. Some of my earliest memories of feeling creeped out and sexually taken advantage of are related to foot fetishism, unfortunately. But that just means I have to work harder to overcome my biases and embrace kinksters who approach this fetish in fully consensual, 100% respectful ways – unlike those who started harassing me online when I was 14.

I’ve been posting outfit photos on-and-off since 2006, and one thing that happens when you post outfit photos to an audience of any significant size is that you attract people who fetishize the stuff you wear. People flocked to my Flickr page to fawn over my leggings, my corduroy shorts, the leather gloves I’d occasionally put on for fancy events. Pretty much anything I ever wore, there would be somebody who’d fetishize it.

But unfortunately it was often the foot fetishists who were the most extreme in this behavior. Even when I was literally 14 years old, I would receive comments and messages from them regularly, demanding that I post more barefoot pics, wear more sandals, or even send them my old and unwanted pairs of shoes. Some of them would lie to me in order to achieve the result they wanted; I’ll never forget the one who told me he ran a “recycling plant” for old sneakers and would be happy to accept my donations. Even at 14, I saw right through that shit and called him out – but it made me feel deeply uncomfortable and violated nonetheless, to be so intensely sexualized by strangers who clearly just saw me as a body for their visual consumption.

It’s been 16 years since I first started posting outfit photos online, and I have a lot more perspective on human behavior now – not to mention, a lot more knowledge about the shame and secrecy that run rampant in fetish communities. It actually makes total sense to me that people who’ve had their deepest sexual desires shamed and stigmatized for many years would turn to unsavory tactics to get their needs met. I’m not saying it’s okay – it’s deeply, deeply not okay at all – but I do understand where the impulse comes from. It’s just not a good impulse, because it involves prioritizing your own pleasure and gratification over someone else’s personhood and safety – and that’s never acceptable, no matter how difficult it may have been to live with the fetish that you have.

 

These experiences have made me extra appreciative in adulthood of fetishists who are straightforward and respectful, e.g. those who politely request sexy feet pics from me with the clear knowledge that money will need to be exchanged in order for those photos to materialize. (If that’s something you’re interested in, by the way, you should click here.)

It’s not that paying for foot-related media is the only way to access it respectfully; it’s just that it’s the only way for an internet stranger to get foot-related media from me, specifically, and I know many others feel the same. That’s why websites like FunWithFeet.com are so cool – they connect people who want foot content with people who are willing to provide it, for an agreed-upon fee.

I always wished for something like this when I was in my late teens/early twenties, because it frustrated me to no end that random men would demand I post more pics of me in sandals, or whatever, and not even offer to buy me the sandals in question. I longed for platforms where consensual, ethical fetishism could be expressed and enjoyed by anyone who wanted to participate, and where no one would ever feel even remotely pressured into doing something they didn’t want to do. So it’s pretty awesome to me that FunWithFeet and other such foot-focused hubs exist.

 

Another aspect of all this is the way foot fetishism manifests in my personal life, as opposed to my professional life. I’ve had a few partners who were into feet to some degree, including my current partner. It was educational and weirdly cleansing to satisfy real-life partners’ desire for foot pics after having been lied to, used, grossed out and taken advantage of by so many foot fetishists as a teen.

A beloved partner politely requesting pictures of my feet felt completely different from a faceless internet stranger one-handedly and irately demanding I post foot pics for free. It still made me nervous at times, but in different ways: I was nervous about whether my feet were pretty enough to be fetishized, whether they needed a pedicure, whether they’d somehow be a turn-off instead of a turn-on.

Luckily, though, all my foot fetishist partners have been incredibly complimentary about my feet and have never made me feel the way those online strangers did – like my feet were my entire value and the rest of me didn’t matter. Even now, when we’re lying on the couch together watching a movie at night, my partner will sometimes sweetly ask if they can remove my socks and massage my feet while we watch – and though it still sometimes feels vulnerable, or embarrassing, or tickly, I usually say yes.

It can be healing to encounter something that used to make you feel scared, sad, used, and unimportant, and to find ways to feel exactly the opposite about it. I’m reminded, once again, of one of the central lessons I’ve learned about sex as a whole: consent makes all the difference.

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

In Defense of Wearing Socks During Sex

Kate Sloan

Recently, I asked my partner to write mini reviews of some lewd self-portraits I shot in Agent Provocateur lingerie (yep, I’m needy as fuck) and, in one of the shots, it became evident that I had teamed this very expensive, sexy ensemble with a pair of blue calf-high socks. Rather than do what most people would do and either wish they weren’t there or not even notice them, my partner noted that the socks “show me that you want to come, and they’re the only thing that will be left on you once I get my hands on you.” I giggled, blushed, and nodded. Exactly.

If you’d be mystified receiving a sext like that, let me explain. A study done in 2003 in the Netherlands, on the neural processes that contribute to orgasm, found (among numerous other things) that wearing socks increased female participants’ rate of orgasm from 50% to 80%. Innnteresting.

This makes sense to me, given what I’ve learned from sex researcher Emily Nagoski about how women can be more sensitive than men to the presence of “sexual brakes,” i.e. factors that inhibit sexual arousal both physically and psychologically. (For the record, I’m not really sure how this information relates to trans women or nonbinary people, or whether gender-non-conforming people were included in any of the relevant studies, although my past experiences reading sex research lead me to believe they probably weren’t sampled significantly or at all.) Having cold feet in the literal sense could give women cold feet in the metaphorical sense about having sex, because in some cases it’s a distraction significant enough that it prevents or slows down the arousal process – at least, for me, and seemingly for other women as well. This is likely compounded by the fact that women’s extremities, on average, run colder than men’s. (Again, I assume the research here refers only to cis people, but would be pleasantly surprised if that was not the case.)

In the many years since I first read about the socks study, I’ve cited it to multiple sexual partners when asked why I tend to keep my socks on during sex, or (in the cases of a few foot fetishists) when lustily asked to remove my socks. It’s interesting how just explaining “My feet get cold,” like I used to do before I knew about the science, was typically met with more resistance than the more recent and more airtight “Studies show wearing socks during sex helps with having orgasms.” It’s almost as if… people trust male scientists more than they trust women about women’s own bodies?! Gee, who’da thunk.

I should note here that many people have a legitimate aesthetic issue with the whole idea of socks during sex. Either they think it looks silly and weird (which is their prerogative – I know even ultra-busty pouty-lipped sex dolls would look kinda odd wearing woollen hiking socks and nothing else) or they’re turned on by feet and/or full nudity. When I fuck someone who feels this way, my partners’ orgasms may be inhibited almost as much by me wearing socks as mine would be by me not wearing socks – so I’m sometimes willing to bend my policy and work a little harder for my orgasms, knowing I can wriggle back into my nice warm socks when we’re done. I do, after all, want my partners to enjoy having sex with me!

But luckily for me, I’ve had about as many paramours who loved socks as ones who wanted to ban them from our bedroom. This, I think, can be attributed mostly to my interest in DD/lg – there are a lot of visual tropes within that fetish, and knee-high and thigh-high socks are high on the list for many kinksters. I still remember the time I settled into bed for a nice long phone-sex sesh with a daddy dom years ago: he asked me what I was wearing, I told him “a T-shirt, underwear, and some knee-high socks,” and he moaned/growled/grunted with such ferocity that I knew I had made the right choice even though he couldn’t even see my outfit.

Sometimes when I talk to other women about wearing socks during sex – and, yeah, my life is sufficiently weird that this topic does come up in conversation with friends sometimes – they seem slightly mystified by my decision to put my comfort first in a sexual scenario. I think this is sadly emblematic of our sexual culture. Mainstream porn, for example – while I adore much of it and think it is necessary and important – is full of messaging which suggests that hot sex and comfortable sex are basically mutually exclusive, especially for women (can you IMAGINE doing reverse cowgirl, while standing, for 20+ minutes straight?! I simply cannot). And indeed, there are some sex acts I enjoy greatly which could not be considered “comfortable” by any stretch of the imagination (getting paddled and getting throat-fucked come to mind), so it’s not like discomfort is incompatible with arousal for me. But for some reason, socks are one place where I draw a line. I’m rarely up for being uncomfortable in this particular way even though I’ll happily be uncomfortable in various other ways during sex from time to time.

I will say, too, that this has sometimes been a litmus test of sorts for how a new partner reacts to boundary-setting or mid-bang communication. Are they really so committed to their porn-borne sexual scripts that they’re going to insist on full nudity at the expense of my comfort? Are they really going to argue with me about this perfectly reasonable boundary I have set for my own body? Or are they going to say “Huh,” shrug it off, and move on like nothing is wrong (because nothing is)?

Despite being a foot fetishist, my current partner is so devoted to and interested in my pleasure and my orgasm that they’ll often encourage me to keep my socks on during sex. And this makes it all the more delicious for both of us when – after giving me a partly socks-enabled orgasm or two – they crawl down my body, rest their hand gently on my ankle, and ask so so sweetly, “May I take these off and look at your feet?”

Respecting sexual partners’ boundaries is so, so important, even if those boundaries don’t totally make sense to you. Every time a partner respects one of my boundaries without question, it becomes easier and more fun for me later on to bend my more flexible boundaries in the name of pleasure. Heeding my “no” now is likely to get you a “yes” later, for something else. I’m glad science exists to back me up when I set this particular boundary, but the truth is, I shouldn’t need a scientific citation to state what I want and have that be respected.

So when my partner compliments the socks I’m wearing in nudes ‘n’ lewds, I know it’s more than just a compliment. It’s an affirmation that my choices are valid, my boundaries are important, and I am beautiful regardless of which clothes I do, or don’t, remove.